Page 2

Eve tilts her head back and screams. As she does, movement catches the corner of my eye. They’re free—my mages are free.

There’s a flash of white and then Snow releases a roar that shakes me to my core. He thunders toward Eve while Kole pulls roots from the ground and binds her ankles. Luther rushes to my side. Tanner too. I let down my shield of fire and take each of their hands.

“Want to Johnny these wolves?” Luther asks, raising his eyebrows at me.

The image of Johnny’s foul, loathsome body exploding from the inside out fills my head. “Try and stop me,” I reply.

Together, we stride toward my wall of flames. The wolves are trapped. They have nowhere to go. Behind them, Ragnor is still in the fountain, clutching Elena’s soaking-wet corpse to his chest. “Do not let them pass!” he yells. “Stop them!”

“You take the fountain,” I tell Tanner, flicking my eyes from him to Ragnor. “We’ll take the wolves.”

Tanner squeezes my hand briefly. I open a window in the flames and let him pass. A wolf lunges for him, and then we do it. At the exact same moment, Luther and I tighten our grip on each other. The flames disappear. The wolves shudder and yelp. They howl. The smell of singed fur fills the air. More howling and then… BOOM.

Pieces of wolf fly through the air. Some splatter the walls of the mansion. Some litter the earth. Some land in the fountain, filling it with gunk, and slime, and blood.

Ragnor stands up. Elena drips in his arms. “Help us! Why aren’t you helping us?!” he yells at the sky. “Dark King, you must stop her. Stop The Phoenix!”

Tanner is at the side of the fountain now. He lifts his arms and pulls the water from it, sending it sloshing over the sides and flooding the ground, washing away remnants of wolf. Ragnor’s eyes widen, he drops back to his knees and clutches Elena close, stroking her face. Tanner presses his fingers to his temples. My eyes narrow. I watch as he steps slowly forward, and Ragnor looks up.

“You want to know what hell feels like?” Tanner growls.

“What’s he doing?” I look at Luther. He glances from me to Tanner as if he’s unsure whether he should be letting this happen. Then at the exact same moment that Eve’s screams fill the air, thunder booms above us. The slash of lightning is back, ripping open the sky. There’s another clap of thunder. A sharp gasp comes from the direction of the fountain.

By the time I turn to look, Ragnor is no longer staring at a dead body. He holds a woman in his arms—a woman with long dark hair, pale skin, and wide eyes. She is still gasping for breath as if she’s just surfaced from the bottom of the ocean. Eyes wide, she grabs Ragnor’s shoulders, pulling at him with her long fingers.

“It’s alright, my love, you’re safe. You’re safe,” he whispers.

Staring at them, Tanner stumbles back and grabs his head. He cries out, and Luther catches him. “Tanner?” he asks. “Tanner? What is it?”

Ragnor is climbing out of the fountain. “Eve! Inside!” he yells at her and begins to run.

“No—” I lunge for him. “I’m not letting him go.” I’m about to do to him what I did to the wolves when I catch Elena’s face. A moment ago, she didn’t exist but now she’s here, and she didn’t ask for any of this, and she’s Sam’s mother. She’s terrified of me, clinging onto Ragnor like he’s her valiant protector and I’m the evil witch trying to kill them.

I stop, wavering on the spot.

Behind us, another of Eve’s screams fills the air. Bright white light, coming from the hole in the sky, is pummeling into her body. “He’s filling me up,” she cries. “The Shadow King is filling me up.”

“The roots won’t hold her,” Kole shouts. He’s running toward me, Snow at his side. “We need to get out of here.”

He stops and looks at Tanner, who’s still doubled over, hands gripping his head. Kole slips his arm around Tanner’s waist and pulls him. “We have to go, Tanner. Now.”

I can’t move. Ragnor is on the steps, carrying Elena back inside. Bloody pieces of wolf decorate his hair and face. Hers too.

“We’ll have another chance,” Luther says as the ground begins to rumble beneath us and the sky flickers. “This isn’t our moment.”

“The Shadow King is coming,” Eve yells then—just like that—the white light disappears, and the sky is zipped shut. She turns toward us. Her eyes are nothing more than pools of darkness in her gaunt face. She ticks her head to the side, then opens her mouth. This time, as she screams, a torrent of blackness comes flying out of her. It winds up into the air like smoke, but then I realize it isn’t smoke; it’s flies. Thousands of swarming black flies that keep coming and coming.

“Run.” Luther grabs my hand. “Run! Now!”

2

SAM

At first, there’s no pain. One second, I’m staring at Nova, reaching for her, desperately digging my nails into the cold earth, trying to stay with her. The next second, I’m falling.

Above me, the ground seals itself back up. The light disappears. There is only blackness. Blackness and the sensation of falling.

I don’t land on anything. Instead, my whole body jolts—the way it does when you’re on the cusp of sleep and are pried away from it. My eyes try to adjust to the light but there is nothing to adjust to. It’s as if I’m suspended in emptiness. Miles and miles of nothing presses down on me, squeezing the air from my lungs.