Annika pulled a deep green throw off a sofa, tucked it around Sasha’s legs.

“Thanks. I’m really okay. It just kept going, stronger and stronger, then dropped away so fast.” She took the water with another thanks, sipped. “Honestly, I’d kill for coffee. Why don’t we go— Oh.” When a thick mug appeared in Bran’s hand, she smiled, her voice melting with love as she touched his cheek. “Bran. Don’t look so worried. I’m fine.”

“Your hands are cold,” he told her, and wrapped them around the mug.

“It all felt so urgent. I had to get the images down. I swear I heard their voices in my head, telling me to show them to you, to all of you. I saw them as clearly as I see all of you. And . . . I felt, I almost felt I could reach out and touch them.”

She sipped coffee, sighed deep. “Your mother, you said, Anni, the brunette with the bow.”

“It’s so like her. She’s very beautiful.”

“And my grandmother—like Bran and Doyle’s connection. I didn’t know her—my mother’s mother—when she was young. I barely know her at all, really. But I know it. The goddess is Celene, the seer, who created the Fire Star, to gift the new queen with sight and wisdom. Riley and Sawyer’s closest connection is Luna—dove and sword—the Water Star, who gifted the queen with heart and compassion. And the last is Arianrhod, the warrior, for courage.”

“And we six have some of all of them,” Riley said.

“Yes. They chose a mate, conceived a child, guided, loved, nurtured, and sent the child, on their sixteenth birthday, from their world to ours. I felt their grief.”

Annika knelt down, laid her head in Sasha’s lap. “My mother wept when I left to come to you. She was proud, but she cried. It would be hard to send a son or daughter away.”

“It was, and from that time, they could only watch. And to this time, they can only watch, and hope. It’s hard to explain, but we’re their children. They feel we are. We’re their hope, what they began that night.”

“The last drawing?”

Sasha looked up at Doyle. “A nightmare.”

Riley stepped out, lifted the sketch pad, brought it back. “Looks like things are going to get hot.”

With a weak laugh, Sasha looked at the sketch. They stood between house and cliff, armed in the dark night while Nerezza rode the firestorm. Flames rained from the sky, singeing the ground, the trees, opening fissures in the earth that yawned wide, vomited up more fire. It burned even her winged creatures that dived and slashed at the six.

On her beast, Nerezza hurled down spears of flame while her hair, black-streaked white, flew behind her. Her beauty calcified, like a sharp gem crusted with mold.

And the mold was madness.

“I can’t say when she’ll come like this, but she’ll come. She wants the stars, craves them, but she’d destroy us even if that destroys her chances of getting them. When she comes, as she comes here, it’s only to burn us to ash.”

“I can work with that.”

All eyes shifted to Bran, who stroked a hand over Sasha’s hair. “I can certainly begin to. The firestorm here is more powerful, more vicious than what we dealt with in Capri. But foretold is forewarned, after all. And we’ll be forearmed.”

“I appreciate your optimism,” Riley said. “But, you know, even witches burn. Historically anyway.”

“That simple fact means we like to conjure protections and shields and spells against just that. And as this will be no ordinary fire, it’ll take an extraordinary spell. I’ll work on it.”

He leaned down, kissed the top of Sasha’s head. “For now, I believe it’s Sawyer’s round in the kitchen.”

“After training,” Doyle said flatly. “Train, then eat. With the exception,” he said before Riley could speak. “As Riley needs fuel. Grab it quick,” he told her, and looked down at the sketch again. “We’ve a lot of work to do.”

• • •

To make it quick, Riley blended an energy smoothie—added in a couple of raw eggs. Not the tastiest, and certainly not what her appetite yearned for—but it would do the job.

He’d already started them on warm-ups—stretching, light jogging—by the time she stepped outside. Standing back for a moment gave her a different perspective of her team. Sasha looked a little washed out—small wonder—but game. Annika—well, Annika was Annika, laughing her way through squats and lunges. Bran and Sawyer? They’d both been in excellent shape when this whole deal started, but now? Ripped City. You had to admire it.

Doyle? The man had started out the sheriff of Ripped City. Though he looked a little rough around the edges to her eye, as promised, he began to work everybody’s ass off.

She joined in, determined to work her own ass off. Fiery fissures in the ground, flames raining from the sky, and a very pissed-off god with psychotic tendencies served as one hell of a motivation.

Calisthenics followed by a five-mile run, and Riley broke a good sweat. She didn’t complain when Doyle ordered them up to the gym. Hell, she was just getting started.

He split them into groups. Free weights, bench presses, pull-ups, switched them off, switched them again.

“How much can you handle?” he asked Riley when she lay on the bench.

“One thirty-five.”

He gave her a dubious stare. “That’s more than you weigh.”