When the scent of blood hit Lanthe, her legs buckled.

Their bodies were decapitated; the heads lay at unnatural angles, inches from their necks.

Sabine threw up; Lanthe collapsed with a scream, her vision going dark as she hovered on the verge of unconsciousness.

Mother and Father were dead. Never to return.

Mother with her gaze frenzied as she beheld her precious gold. Father with his lost look whenever he beheld his crazed wife. Both dead . . .

Lanthe dimly comprehended that the room had filled with Vrekeners, their wings flickering in the lightning-filled night. The leader held a fire scythe with a blade of black flames.

Then she saw Thronos. His eyes were wide, and he was trying to reach her, but one of the men held him back.

How could Thronos have led these killers here? After all the time they’d shared?

After my confession just this morning . . . ?

To Sabine, the leader intoned, “Come peaceably, young sorceress. We do not wish to hurt you. We wish to put you on the path of goodness.”

Sabine, the Queen of Illusions, gave a chilling laugh as she called up her power. Her amber eyes started to glimmer like shining metal, stark against her fire-red hair. “We know what you do to Sorceri girls. You plan to turn us into biddable, grave crones like your sour-faced women. We’d rather fight to the death!” She began creating her illusions; at once, the soldiers hunched down, as if they believed the ceiling was pressing down on them.

Even betrayed like this, Lanthe wanted to ask Sabine to spare Thronos, but her lips moved soundlessly. Mother and Father are dead.

Had her parents ever even awakened tonight?

Sabine raised her palms toward the leader, using her sorcery to make him see his worst nightmares. He fell to his knees, dropping his scythe to claw at his eyes.

With a smile, Sabine snatched up his weapon. She swung for his neck, was still smiling when blood spurted across her beautiful, ruthless face.

Thronos gave a grief-stricken yell as the Vrekener’s head rolled to Sabine’s feet.

Was the leader Thronos’s father?

Lanthe’s sight was dim, but she thought Sabine’s illusions were . . . fading? Her sister would be facing these foes alone, all bent on avenging their leader.

Lanthe found her voice just as a Vrekener sidled up behind Sabine.

“Ai-bee, behind you!”

Too late. The male had already struck. He slit Sabine’s throat, blood painting the walls as her small body fell.

Lanthe’s daze burned away. She scrambled to her feet, shrieking, “Ai-bee?” She ran for her sister, kneeling beside her. “No, no, no, Ai-bee, don’t die, don’t die, don’t die!” Lanthe’s own sorcery was manifesting itself. The air grew warm, as electric as the lightning surrounding them.

Sabine is leaving me. Because of Thronos and these men. My entire family taken from me in one night. A clarity such as she’d never known swept over her.

My family dies; the Vrekeners pay.

No longer would she hesitate to use her power. No mercy—for any of them.

She commanded the soldiers, “Do not move! You stab yourself! Fight each other—to the death!”

The room was thick with whorls of sorcery, and the abbey quaked all around them, the ancient rock walls groaning. A fracture forked along one of the stained-glass windows. In an earsplitting rush, it shattered.

She turned to her betrayer, the boy she’d thought she loved. The boy who’d led these fiends straight to her home.

He was wending his way around bodies to reach her, now that the adult who’d guarded him was dead.

Voice breaking, she sobbed, “I trusted you. Sabine was everything to me.” Then, louder, she commanded him: “Jump through the window”—the one hundreds of feet above the valley floor—“and do not use your wings on the way down!”

His silver eyes pleaded for her not to do this thing, so she turned back to her sister’s body, refusing to watch.

He never made a sound all the way down.

“Live, Ai-bee!” Lanthe screamed, but Sabine’s glassy gaze was sightless, her chest still of breath. “HEAL!” she commanded, using all the power she possessed. The room quaked harder, jostling furniture. Mother’s head hit the floor and rolled, Father’s right behind hers. “Don’t leave me! LIVE!”

More sorcery, more, more, MORE . . .

Sabine’s eyes fluttered open—they were bright, lucid. “Wh-what happened?”

While Lanthe was utterly emptied of sorcery, Sabine bounded to her feet, appearing rested.

I brought her back. She’s all I have now.

They fled from the abbey into the night. Yet in the valley, Lanthe trailed behind Sabine. She looked back over her shoulder, saw Thronos on the ground, clinging to life.

His body lay broken, limbs and wings twisted, skin flayed.

Somehow he raised his hand off the ground to reach for her with yearning in his eyes. . . .

Now, hundreds of years later, Thronos raised his hand off the ground to reach for her once more.

Just as she’d done that night, Lanthe turned from him and ran.

EIGHT

Hoping to find Carrow and her crew, Lanthe headed for low ground. In the steady rain, she sprinted over uneven terrain. Though her lungs began to burn, she kept up a punishing pace, slowing only to hide when she sensed other immortals.

All the while, she tried not to think about Thronos. So why did she keep seeing his scars, his misery?

She refused to feel guilt about leaving him behind earlier, much less for making him jump as a boy.