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“Attagirl.”

A few feet to Elyria’s other side, Jocelyn released a low curse. She threw another handful of seeds from her palm in a glittering arc. They began growing as soon as they hit the grass, forming a thicket of thorny bushes. Several of the cultists shrieked, their tight line faltering, as jagged roots punched through the ground, pinning their legs.

But, again, it bought them only a few moments. Because with the number of sanguinagi, the sheer amount of power at their bloodied fingertips, they were able to make quick work of the fae’s defenses.

It was as though the cultists had learned something about how best to wield their magic in the time since Elyria had last confronted them.

They were stronger together.

Elyria swallowed hard. “We need to cut down their numbers. Separate them.”

“Fall back to the schoolhouse, Ellie. We’re on it.” And then Kit sprang into the air, soaring to the left, hurling two icy six-pointed throwing stars at the cultists as she flitted away.

“Four for each of us,” Jocelyn called over her shoulder, sprinting to the right. “Easy as pie.”

It was not four cultists that ended up approaching Elyria. No, only two came for her, while another three chased after Kit. The other seven, though, followed Jocelyn around the side of the schoolhouse, where she then ran toward the trees, leaving a trail of briars in her wake.

Why are so many of them chasing her? Elyria wondered. And it wasn’t until the pair of advancing cultists had finally reached her, wasn’t until she’d sliced one’s throat, then shoved her dagger between the ribs of the other, wasn’t until the wet words had fallen from the sanguinagi’s dying lips, that Elyria understood.

“You are foolish to try to stop us. He will stop at nothing to have her back,” the cultist rasped, blood dribbling from the corner of her mouth. “And then nothing will stop him.”

And Elyria realized that in the haze of battle, it was difficult to tell who was who. That the skewed tint of night and Elderglade’s luminous flora painted everything in a cool, bluish light. That everyone’s hair had taken on the same sort of colorless tone.

And that there was only one fae in this clearing who did not have wings.

They were targeting the wrong wildshaper.

They thought Jocelyn was Elyria.

And they would stop at nothing to take her.

“Four hells,” Elyria breathed, sprinting after Jocelyn, the bloodied dagger heavy in her hand. “Four fucking hells!” she hissed as she burst through the trees.

By the time Elyria caught up with her, Jocelyn was engaged in battle with four different sanguinagi, her sword scraping against crystal blades. One of them held no weapon but had bloodred ribbons streaming from each of her ten fingers, trying desperately to wrap them around Jocelyn’s limbs—her feet, her ankles, her wrists. But the fae was a blur, ducking and dodging and kicking and swinging. She hacked at the ribbons, and the cultist screamed in pain. Then she landed a blow right in the center of one of her other attacker’s chests, sending him careening into the third and fourth, knocking them over as if they were ninepins.

The sight might have sent a bolt of pride running up Elyria’s spine were it not for the rest of the scene unfolding before her. Because Jocelyn wasn’t the only one fighting.

There was the young sylvan woman wailing on a cultist with her flipball bat.

There was the mixedborn girl brandishing her jagged batons with a white-knuckled grip.

There was the sylvan boy with his paring knife, thrusting it into a sanguinagi’s shoulder.

And behind them all, tiny shadows in the darkness peered out from behind trees and crouched against the leaf-strewn ground. Behind them all, at least ten children hid.

The path Jocelyn had taken to draw the sanguinagi away had inadvertently collided with the younglings’ escape route. And now the children had the attention of these raging blood mages. Not just children, either. Mixedborn children. The very antithesis of everything Malakar believed in, the personification of everything his cult hated.

Elyria leapt forward into the fray, but she had arrived too late. Between the three young guardians, they had taken one cultist down.

But only one.

She heard it all before she saw it—the strangled cry as a red crystal scimitar sliced across the sylvan woman’s chest, the sound of her crumpling to the ground, her body folded in on itself.

The sylvan boy gurgled, his green eyes full of pain and heartbreak as they met Elyria’s before he, too, dropped to the forest floor, a sanguinagi axe embedded in his chest.

Elyria’s heart cracked.

She had been right.