As soon as Helena skittered onto the bridge leading to Corina’s property line, she felt a cool, silky wind wash over her: magical wards. A few paces ahead of her, Aleksi laid Corina down in the grass.
“They’re never going to find us here,” he said, not looking at Helena. “Corina keeps this place hidden from everyone.”
Helena didn’t say anything, just stared at the curved line of his back. Byleth. It was harder to believe here, his shirt hanging ripped and bloody from his hunched shoulders, his hair stringy with sweat.
“But I should have killed them.” He whirled around. “I was so close.”
Helena jolted. Don’t let him know you know the truth.
She had to find a way to contact Juniper.
“They’re blood mages,” Helena said. “When you killed that guy, it gave them a huge boost to their power. You killing him was their entire plan. I heard them talking about it.”
Aleksi’s shoulders slumped. Beads of sweat crowned his forehead. “I’m sorry you got pulled back into this,” he muttered.
Not going to admit I’m right? Helena thought, but she kept it to herself. “Well, be careful the next time you decide to kidnap someone.”
Aleksi snorted in response.
Helena knelt down and pressed a hand on Corina’s chest. Her heartbeat was thin but steady. “They said they put her soul in the Inner Liminal.” She shook her head. “Do you know what that means?”
“Yes,” Aleksi said. “She’s just on the other side of the veil. I felt it. That was the first sign that something was wrong.”
Helena heard his footsteps on the wet ground. Her whole body tensed.
“Fuck. That’s how they did it, isn’t it?”
“What?” Helena peered up at Aleksi. He was frowning down at her.
He pointed at the burn on her arm. “They used the Flame of Dusab, didn’t they?”
“I don’t know—”
He crouched beside her, so close that Helena could smell his sweat, a scent like smoke and the forest.
“I don’t know what that is. It was a blue flame.”
“Lineage blood,” he murmured.
Helena drew her hand away from Corina and cradled her burned arm against her chest.
“Shit!” He fell back on his heels, his hands slumped in the grass. “This is such a fucking mess. How the fuck did Gavin get out?”
Helena stared at him. In this moment, there in the green sunlight, he was just Aleksi Haakanen, his skin ashen beneath the smears of blood and dirt. He grabbed at the tattered rags of his shirt and yanked them up over his head, throwing them off into the grass. His bare chest gleamed in the dappled sunlight. Helena forced herself to look away.
“Let me see your arm,” Aleksi said suddenly.
“What?”
He was already pulling her arm gently toward him. She was so startled by his touch, by the smooth cool skin of his palm, that she didn’t protest. He looked at the burn, his brow furrowed.
“The Flame of Dusab.” He shook his head. “You don’t know anything about it?”
“I don’t—” Helena took a deep breath. “If I learned about it, I’ve forgotten.”
“It’s blood magic.” His hand brushed her arm, making the hairs stand on end. “It’ll leave a black scar—the magic’s gotten into your DNA. But I can leach out some of the Flame’s taint.” He lifted his face to her, his eyes dark and luminous. Helena felt a shiver inside her chest.
“We need to rescue Corina,” she said shakily.
“We’re going to need Dominic for that,” he said. “And you’re going to need to be at your best. The leaching won’t take long.”
“My best!” squawked Helena. “You can’t be serious. I don’t have any ability—”
“You’ve got some.” Aleksi’s voice was dark and thick. He was still holding her arm. “You stopped Gavin and Aniela from restraining me. It was powerful enough to break through the shard.”
“The what?” Helena looked up at him. “Are you talking about that light?”
Aleksi nodded.
“All I did was a sigil,” Helena said. “There’s no way—”
Aleksi looked at her, his face hard. “It was strong,” he said flatly. “If it overpowered the shard.”
“What the hell is a shard?” Helena cried, exasperated.
“It’s a piece of me. From when Gavin pulled me through. It’s an old way humans have of controlling legionnaires.”
A piece of him. It had looked like sunlight shining through old glass.
“Wait,” Helena said, realization closing a fist around her heart. “You mean he can control you?”
“No. I told you, I’m not a legionnaire. All he manages is to weaken me enough so that I can’t fight back.” Aleksi scooped up Corina, his back muscles flexing beneath his skin. “Let me take Corina inside and then I’ll work on your arm. Wait here.”
Helena watched as he carried her up the porch steps and then disappeared into the trailer. Once she was alone, she closed her eyes and let out a long, shaky breath. Already her mind was healing over the scars of memory that magic always left behind. She remembered the encounter in hazy fragments, the way she might remember a dream. Mud, grass, that glint of light he said was a piece of himself. It seemed unreal. As unreal as him being Byleth.
But her body, that didn’t forget so easily. Every muscle ached. Her skin was coated with the sticky residue of sweat. And the burn was tender, flaring up in a slight stinging pain every time the wind rustled across the clearing.
The screen door banged and Aleksi bounded down the steps. Helena stood up, her limbs weak. “Is she going to be okay?” she asked. “If we don’t go in right away—”
Aleksi gave her a sharp half smile. “She’s gone conjuring in the Inner Liminal on her own hundreds of times. She knows how to handle herself in there. But we need to act fast on that arm of yours.”
Helena looked down at it. “Not the first scar I’ve gotten from a demon,” she murmured.
Aleksi raised an eyebrow. “Well, you didn’t get that from a demon, did you? You got it from an egomaniacal blood mage. But this other scar—now, that’s something I’d like to hear about.”
There was a curve in his voice that almost made her think he was flirting. Almost. She shuddered.
“Let’s see your arm.”
She held it out to him, and he leaned close to the burn and took a deep breath. “The taint’s still fresh,” he said. “Good.” He peered up at her. “This is probably going to hurt.”
“Wonderful.”
Aleksi smiled. A real smile this time, big enough that it shattered the harsh lines of his face, and Helena felt a strange surge of calm.
Then he lifted her arm to his lips and brushed them gently across the burn. A searing pain shot straight up to Helena’s shoulder.
She shrieked and tried to jerk away, but Aleksi held her tight. “I told you it would hurt,” he said. “I’m trying to be as gentle as I can.”
“What are you doing?”
He paused, his lips hovering above her arm. When he spoke, she felt the puffs of his breath. “I’m eating it.”
Helena stared at him. “You mean the poison?”
“Not poison to me,” he said, and then he kissed the burn again—it was the only word for it, the way he pressed his lips against the burned skin. Pain reverberated up her arm, but this time she dug her feet into the ground and didn’t move, instead lifting her gaze up toward the patches of blue sky between the outstretched trees. The pain washed over her. It was the only thing she could feel except for the soft moistness of Aleksi’s tongue as he lapped at her wound in gentle, quick bursts. She sucked in her breath. Her entire body trembled.
And then, slowly and steadily, like a tide going out, the pain receded, leaving in its wake a prickling warmth that seemed to sink deep into her belly. She dropped her gaze down to Aleksi, who was licking the wound more intently, his eyes closed.
For a split second Helena wondered what it would be like for those lips to press against hers.
Aleksi drew his head away from her arm. His tongue disappeared inside his mouth. When he looked at her, she saw the impressions of a distorted, demonic face. She jerked back, her skin crawling, and pressed her hand to the scars on her chest.
And then it was just Aleksi. Human. And, if she was being honest with herself, handsome.
“Got all that I could,” he said.
“Thank you.” Helena pulled her arm away. The burn didn’t sting anymore, and it had faded to a pale pink, like a new scar.
“I can’t get rid of it entirely,” he said. “But that’s what it’ll look like. Normal scar tissue.” There was a faint rasp on his voice, a drawing out of all the S’s.
“Thank you,” she said softly.
They stood for a moment, looking at each other. A hot breeze kicked up and blew Aleksi’s hair across his face. He pushed it aside. She felt a surge of calm. He was a king of Hell, and like everyone in the Lineage, he underestimated her. He trusted her. She was sure of it.
If her parents would have been impressed by the Children of Adrasteia, wait until she brought them information about Byleth.
So Helena took a deep breath, and took a deep risk.
“Gavin told me who you really are,” she said.
Aleksi’s hand froze in his hair. “I thought so,” he said carefully. “I could—taste your discomfort with me.”
Helena took a careful step toward him. “What does it mean,” she said in a low voice, “that Gavin was able to summon you? I thought the kings of Hell were supposed to be the most powerful.”
“We are.”
The words felt like an arrow.
“Now you understand why I have to bind him.” Aleksi lifted his eyes toward her, his expression serious. “No human should have that much power.”
She could bring that power to the Lineage, if she asked the right questions.
“The damage he could do to both of our worlds—” Aleksi shook his head. “He is very, very dangerous.”
“You’re dangerous, too,” Helena whispered. Make him underestimate you.
Aleksi just stared at her. The wound on her arm prickled, and Helena wrapped her fingers around it, feeling the tender pink skin.
“Not to you,” Aleksi finally said.
Helena looked down at her arm. She suddenly wanted to change the subject.
“What did it taste like?” she asked. It was the first question she could think of.
He frowned at her.
She blushed. “Sorry,” she muttered. “I just—it’s kind of interesting. I mean, you ate the poison?”
Aleksi smiled a little. “I can see why you left the Lineage.”
She frowned. “I left because I sucked at magic.”
“You don’t suck at magic,” he said. “You left because you don’t see my people as monsters.”
The wind blew around them. It smelled like the swamp, like soil and stagnant water and the rich dark green of the shadows lurking under the trees.
That wasn’t true. Sure, Helena didn’t see Aleksi as a monster now, but he looked human and he had saved her and—
She thought of the endless lessons with her mother, Juniper and her sitting at the kitchen table while Mom told them of the horrors of the Infernal realm. We are the only ones standing between the unbelieving fools of our world and those monsters of Hell, she’d say, always with a flair for the dramatic, like the priest at the Lineage church they went to every Sunday.
“First time someone told you you don’t have to be ashamed of it, huh?” Aleksi said, interrupting her reverie.
“No, I just mean—” Helena sighed. “It’s complicated, okay?”
Aleksi laughed. “You’ll get rid of that Lineage brainwashing eventually.”
Helena glared at him.
“And to answer your question,” he said. “It tastes like home.”
“So, what? Like apple pie and ice cream?”
“Not exactly.” He took a deep breath. “It tasted like the air of my holdings in the northern Hellands. The water of the lake where I was created. The first thing I ever remember tasting.”
Helena hadn’t expected his answer to be so beautiful.
You’re too susceptible.
“And it tasted a little like you,” he said, looking at her.
Her blush came back with a fervor. “Okay, I don’t even know what to say about that.” She laughed nervously. “I hope that didn’t ruin it.”
“Not at all.” His eyes burned into her. “Not at all.”
Helena sat on the porch, waiting for Dominic. Aleksi told her that they’d just arrived in New Orleans when he was dragged back to the swamp by Gavin, so Dominic should have pulled up to Corina’s house an hour ago, assuming he had immediately turned back around when Aleksi was summoned. Helena was worried; Corina hadn’t shown any improvement for the last hours she had been waiting.
Helena rubbed the pink scarring on her wrist listlessly, pressing her thumb against the wound to feel the strange new ridges and folds of her skin. It didn’t hurt. But it was still a reminder.
Every time she tried to come back to her family’s world, she walked away with a scar.
She wondered what Juniper had told her parents. Helena hadn’t spoken more than a few words to either of them since she left home eleven years ago. It hadn’t been an easy departure: her mother had screamed a litany of profanities while Helena gathered her things, culminating in a curse worse than any of them. Spirit Traitor. What the Lineage called blood mages and cultists, people like Dominic and Corina and Gavin. People who willingly trafficked with the Infernal realm, who conjured demons and drew upon their power. People who chose the wrong side of an existential war.
People who don’t see demons as monsters.
Helena could still remember it, the exact moment of heartbreak: standing in the foyer of the house, her suitcase packed, a taxi idling outside to take her to the airport. She had hoped her mother would say goodbye. Instead she had called Helena the worst thing she could think of.
“Mom, what the fuck?” Juniper had said. “She’s just going to college.”
“She’s abandoning the cause,” Mom had hissed, eyes burning. “And she’s abandoning all of humanity.”
Their father had been in the backyard, avoiding the entire argument. Juniper was the only one in Helena’s family who had ever stood up for her.
Helena had been too tired to defend herself. She had already explained her reasons over and over, in a thousand different conversations. Her mother had tried every tactic she could think of to get Helena to stay. All they ever succeeded in doing was talking past each other.
Helena had walked out of her house for the last time that day, the suitcase wheels snagging on the cement as she strode to the taxi. It would be another six years before she’d speak to her mother again, on the phone at a Christmas celebration at Juniper’s apartment, buzzed from the eggnog. Her mother had been less than impressed by Helena’s job as an accountant, and Helena hadn’t even bothered to bring up the YouTube channel, or the reviews she’d written for zines around the Internet. Mom thought music was a waste of time.
You don’t see my people as monsters.
Aleksi’s words kept flittering through Helena’s thoughts. It was something Mom would probably agree with, and that would horrify her, the idea that she agreed with a demon on anything.
But Helena knew it wasn’t true. She touched her chest distractedly, felt the scar rising up above her bra line. She’d been eighteen years old when that demon attacked her, digging its claws into her flesh. She’d only survived because Juniper had blasted it with a banishing spell, sent it crashing up against the far wall. They’d been in an old warehouse and the demon shrieks had rebounded through the empty space. Juniper, just sixteen years old, had banished the demon back to the Infernal realms while Helena bled on the cement floor.
Now Aleksi had the audacity to tell her she didn’t see his people as monsters. That she could do magic. He knew nothing about her.
He knew how to save you, whispered a voice in the back of her head, and suddenly Helena was thinking of his mouth on her arm, the warm, sloppy kiss as he lapped up the poison of the Flame.
And then she was thinking of the heat that had coiled inside her like a snake, the soft, slithery suggestion that she liked it—
Anger and embarrassment swelled up inside her. Some kind of Upper Court Infernal magic was making her feel that way. She was sure of it.
The trees rustled, and Helena jerked herself back to the present. She leaned forward, gazing over the glinting marsh water.
A disturbance rippled through the underbrush, moving toward the bridge. Helena’s chest tightened. Was it Dominic? Had he finally made it here?
Or had Gavin and his followers found a way through the wards?
Helena stood up, put her hand on the door, prepared to call out for Aleksi.
Dominic burst out onto the bridge in a storm of shredded leaves. He ran across it and then dropped into the wet grass.
“Dominic?” Helena hopped down the porch steps and jogged over to where Dominic lay gasping. He rolled over onto his back. His skin was flushed red and dripping sweat, bits of grass sticking to his cheek. His hair was dark and matted—with blood, Helena realized with a jolt.
“You,” he gasped. “What are you doing here?”
“Aleksi!” Helena shouted back at the house. Then she dropped down to her knees. “What happened to you?”
Dominic groaned and rubbed his head. His hands were streaked with blood. “Fucking Gavin,” he muttered. “He ambushed me on my way here. The whole goddamn cult has us surrounded.”
Fear sparked through Helena and she looked out at the swamp, the trees receding deep into the shadows. “How close?” she whispered.
“Right on the edge of the wards,” Dominic muttered. “They’re fanning out to search for us, but the wards have them confused. You can thank Corina for that.”
Corina. Would Dominic even be able to help them pull her out of the Inner Liminal in this state?
“Aleksi!” Helena shouted again, drawing up to her feet.
“I don’t want to see that asshole,” Dominic muttered. “Get Corina.”
The trailer door swung open and Aleksi appeared, sleek and dark in the murky air of the swamp. He looked at Helena questioningly; then, when he saw Dominic, he bounded off the porch.
“It was Gavin,” Helena said. “Dominic said they have us surrounded—”
Aleksi slid to his knees, stopping at Dominic’s side. “What’d they do to you?”
“A good old-fashioned Zhaimper binding,” Dominic said. “Good thing they didn’t catch me totally off guard. When you vanished out of the van, I figured Gavin was behind it. Where’s Corina?”
“Gavin trapped her in the Inner Liminal,” Aleksi said.
Dominic groaned and struggled to sit up. “Shit,” he said softly. “What are you thinking? The Call of Gahnin?”
“That’s the only thing that ever works.”
Dominic pushed his hands into the ground and then immediately collapsed back down, sucking in deep breaths of air.
“Can I help?” Helena said softly, still standing a few paces away. “Get some water or—something?”
“Yes, get him some water,” Aleksi said. Then, to Dominic: “You aren’t in any shape to be doing the Call.”
“I’ll be fine. We need to get Corina out of there.”
“She can hold her own—”
Their voices faded as Helena stepped into the dark, cool trailer. She filled a glass with water from the tap and then stepped back outside. It felt worthless, this glass of water. But she had to make it clear she was on their side. The last thing she wanted was to get thrown out to Gavin.
Outside, Dominic had pushed himself up to a sitting position and was cross-legged in the grass, his head lolling forward, scraggy hair covering his face. Aleksi stood beside him, looking out into the woods.
“Here’s your water,” Helena said.
Dominic grunted and reached out one hand without looking at her. She handed him the glass and he gulped the water down, then let out a groan of pain. “Fuck!” he shouted, and hurled the glass into the murky bayou, where it landed with a splash and sank.
Helena frowned. She didn’t think Corina liked him that much, that she’d be okay with him throwing her dishes around.
“Helena,” Aleksi said. “I need to talk to you.”
She stepped gingerly around Dominic and over to Aleksi’s side. “What’s wrong?” she whispered, nodding toward Dominic. “The way he’s acting, there’s clearly something wrong.”
“It’s Corina. We can’t leave her in the Inner Liminal.”
“What?” Helena felt a swell of dread. “I thought you said she went in there all the time!”
“I didn’t realize she had gotten herself into—some trouble, the last time she was there.” He looked at Helena with a dark expression. She felt a quiver of fear.
“Trouble?” she said. “What kind of trouble?”
“The kind that could get her killed, if she hasn’t been already. You and I need to do the Call of Gahnin. Now.”
“The Call of—” Dizziness swept over Helena. “I don’t even know what that is! Why can’t Dominic—”
“It would kill him, the state he’s in.”
Dominic stared out at the trees.
“It’s just going to be you and me.”
Helena shook her head. “No, I can’t—I have no talent—”
Aleksi whipped his gaze toward her. “You have enough,” he said. “This isn’t negotiable.”
“You can’t force me to cast a blood magic spell,” Helena snapped.
“Can’t I?” Aleksi arched an eyebrow at her. “I haven’t lost all my Infernal powers in this realm. Especially not in a Liminal.”
Fear bolted in Helena’s chest, although she tried to cover it up by glowering at him. “You wouldn’t be that cruel,” she said, not knowing if she believed that.
“I wouldn’t think you’d be so cruel,” Aleksi said, “that you wouldn’t want to help Corina Vincent.”
Helena glared at him.
“She was going to drive you back to Houston herself. You know she would have answered every one of your questions about Double Chaos and—”
Helena’s fear melted into shame. “Okay, I get it!”
Aleksi smiled—rather smugly, Helena thought.
“Of course I don’t want Corina to die,” she continued, taking a step back “But blood magic—” She shook her head. “It’s not just that it’s an abomination—”
Aleksi rolled his eyes. “I thought you weren’t Lineage anymore.”
“It doesn’t matter if I’m Lineage or not,” she said. “A blood sacrifice is too extreme for any form of magic. But it’s not just that.” She looked down at her hands, her nails still dark with dirt from the fight with Gavin. The scar still pink and shiny around her wrist. “I told you, I can’t do magic. I’ll just make it worse.”
For a moment, Aleksi didn’t say anything, and the only sound was the wind rattling through the trees. “What did the Lineage tell you,” he said, “to make you think that?”
“Nothing!” Helena snapped. “I’ve just never been able to do any magic. And blood magic is a million times more dangerous—my parents said it would kill me, I’m too susceptible to demonic—” She realized what she was saying. “Influences,” she finished.
Aleksi grinned, his eyebrow quirked. “Maybe you need more demonic influences in your life.”
Helena glared. “Oh, and let me guess. You’re the one to provide those influences?”
“I wouldn’t be opposed. However, as much as I’d like to keep discussing this—we don’t have time.” He paused. “If you don’t want Corina to die in the Inner Liminal, then you’re going to have to help me.” He stared down at her. “What’s it going to be?”
Helena hesitated as the wind picked up again. She could feel the dampness from the marsh blowing across her skin, beading into sweat. She should say no. He was talking about blood magic—potentially even genuine Infernal magic.
Something jolted in her thoughts. She was one of the few humans who had seen a demon king perform magic and survived—certainly one of the very few such humans who had ties to the Lineage, who could take that information back to the leaders.
She also knew she couldn’t let Corina die. And so she nodded, just once.
“Good,” Aleksi said. “Dominic has offered us his blood for the ritual. I need you to collect it. I’ll set up Corina.”
“You want me to collect Dominic’s blood?” The swamp spun around her. She closed her eyes. You won’t be killing him. It’ll be just like a protection vial.
When she opened her eyes, Aleksi was staring at her.
“Okay,” she whispered.
He nodded. “Use one of the bowls. The vessel doesn’t matter. Just the blood, and the fact that it’s collected by the caster.” His eyes flashed. “Which means you. Dominic can’t cut himself. When you’re done, meet me around back.”
Then he whipped around and vanished into the swamp.
Helena glanced at Dominic, who had stretched out on his back, his eyes squeezed shut.
I can do this, she told herself. I can take it back to the Lineage.
She ran into the trailer’s kitchen and flung open cupboard doors until she found a stack of ceramic bowls. Then she pulled a chef’s knife from the knife rack and went back out to Dominic. He tilted his head to look at her. His skin was shiny and pale, his eyes sunken.
“You better not fuck this up,” he said. “Especially after you wasted all that time arguing about fucking blood magic.”
Helena knelt down beside him, set the bowl in the grass, fear burning at her cheeks. She could feel his gaze following her movement. “Aleksi told me—”
“I know what he fucking told you.” Dominic held out his arm. “Cut up near the elbow. Go across, not down. The last thing I need is for you to bleed me out.”
Helena took a deep, shuddery breath. The skin of Dominic’s inner arm was dark with tattoos and ridged with thin, straight scars. “You use a lot of your own blood,” she said.
“Best way to do it,” he muttered. “But Aleksi wasn’t going to let you slice up yourself. Get cutting.”
Helena frowned. Why would a demon—a king of Hell—care one way or the other?
She ground her teeth together and pressed the point of the knife into Dominic’s skin. He didn’t react except to tilt his head back, revealing the arch of his neck. Blood welled up across the tattoos. Helena pulled the knife across his arm’s width and the blood pattered into the bowl.
“How much—”
“I’ll tell you.”
Dominic lifted his head, watching the blood drip off his arm, and Helena sat awkwardly with the bowl in both hands. She and Dominic didn’t speak. She didn’t know what there was to say.
Then: “That’s good.”
Helena pulled the bowl away and Dominic slapped his hand over the cut. “Gotta let it clot naturally,” he mumbled.
Helena stood up. The blood in the bowl was bright and garish in the dim light.
“We’ll get her back,” she said, and even she didn’t believe herself.
Dominic didn’t answer.
Helena took a deep breath and walked slowly to the back of the trailer, keeping her eyes on the blood. She could smell it, a faint coppery scent like old pennies. Blood magic. She was about to do blood magic.
When Helena turned the corner of the trailer, she knew immediately where the ritual would take place. It was what she had mistaken for a conjure pile last night. In the yard was a circle of dead grass and black soil three feet across, the center piled high with freshly picked swamp plants: Spanish moss, saw grass, something a dark, shiny green she didn’t recognize. The air shimmered with Infernal magic.
Her eyes watered.
She set the bowl down in the grass by her feet, numb to the reality of what she was about to do.
Five minutes later, Aleksi walked around the side of the trailer, Corina in his arms. He nodded at the bowl. “Good job.”
Helena picked it up and followed him over to the black circle. He laid Corina down gently, resting her head on the pile of plants. Then he pulled out tufts of moss and draped them on her open eyes. He nudged her mouth open with two fingers and pressed some on her tongue.
“We have to ground her to this side of the Liminal,” he said. “Let me see the blood.” Aleksi crouched down beside Corina and pushed up her shirt to reveal her smooth belly. He gestured for Helena to crouch as well.
“You have to draw three sigils in the blood. I’ll tell you what they need to look like.” He paused. “This really should be your blood.”
“What?” She looked over at him, trembling a little.
“The spell is stronger with Lineage blood. But you—”
Helena felt herself holding her breath. He wouldn’t meet her eye.
“You’ve sacrificed enough for us,” he murmured.
Helena opened her mouth. To protest? To say she didn’t mind, that Corina was worth it?
That he was worth it?
Did you seriously just think that?
“Go on,” he said softly. “It works best if you use your thumb.”
Helena pressed her thumb against the blood’s surface. It was sticky, like an unset jam, and warm. She told herself that doing this blood magic was a necessary evil: not only to save Corina’s life, but to come back to her family.
“Draw a diagonal line, the top point on Corina’s left side.”
As Helena traced the line, she became suddenly very aware of the sounds of the swamp: the rattle of wind in the trees, the screech of grasshoppers, the creak of the trailer as it pressed against its cinder block frame. She heard the pant of her own breath. The thud of her heartbeat.
Somehow, she also heard Aleksi’s heartbeat, staccato and strange.
“Good.” Aleksi’s mouth was right beside her ear. His hand was on her shoulder. “Now draw a line crosswise. Hook it up at the end.”
Helena did as she said, her hands shaking. Energy pulsed through her bloodstream, crackling and uncomfortable. The world grew very loud. She could hear her blood cells bumping into each other.
The first sigil was finished. “Go to her forehead,” Aleksi whispered, and Helena did. She did everything he said, and it was as if they were one being, fused together at the point where his palm pressed into her shoulder. As she traced the sigil, she found she knew what the shape would look like before Aleksi told her, as if his thoughts had spilled over into hers. When the second was finished, she already knew what he was going to say.
“Her left foot,” she breathed.
“Yes.” He was so close; he was part of her. Her chest was tight. “It’s working.” A pause. “You have more talent with magic than you think.”
She closed her eyes against the compliment, her heart pounding like a hummingbird. She shouldn’t be complimented by that at all, and yet part of her was.
She traced the last sigil in time with Aleksi’s instructions. The sun slid behind a cloud and the light in the yard turned loamy and gray.
Aleksi’s fingers curled, pressing softly into her skin. “Mark me with the blood,” he said.
Helena dipped her fingers into the bowl and then pressed them to Aleksi’s forehead, drew them down in four smeared lines. The air cracked; his visage changed, and she saw him as Byleth: slitted red eyes, gray leathery skin, great monstrous horns. Just for half a second. A camera flash vision of the Infernal world.
Her heart thudded.
Then Aleksi dipped his own hand into the bowl and ran his fingers down her face. His touch was like electricity. The blood tingled against her skin.
“Go on the other side of the circle,” he said. “Concentrate. Pull out your magic. I’ll do the rest.”
Your magic. How often had she been told she didn’t have magic? That she was too orderly, too ordinary?
And yet she felt it, pounding inside her, as if Aleksi’s voice had dived into her system and ignited it.
She crawled over to the other side of the circle. Put her blood-streaked hands on Corina’s stomach. Her ears buzzed. Energy pulsed to the beat of her heart, a steady, rhythmic thumping that seemed to draw gravity away from her.
Aleksi lay his hands atop hers, and the energy, the magic, inside her sparked. She lifted her gaze and found him staring at her, eyes glittering.
“You’re doing perfectly,” he whispered.
He closed his eyes and intoned in garbled, painful syllables. It had to be the Infernal tongue. Helena braced herself for the allergic reaction, but for the first time in her life she was able to sense the dark magic wrapping around her without watery eyes or an itchy throat. She concentrated on the magic, the way it settled against her skin like oil. She could feel it reacting to her own magic, making her blood churn. Her fingers flexed against Corina’s stomach, and Aleksi’s fingers curled around her hand, squeezed them gently.
His voice rose. He threw back his head and chanted toward the sky. Clouds gathered, pulling in tighter over the sun. The light faded. The air temperature dropped. Magic rose up in Helena’s throat, curling into unfamiliar, inhuman words.
Infernal.
She made a strangled sound, not sure what to do, and Aleksi dropped his gaze to her and nodded, once. The intensity of his concentration heightened his features, and Helena’s magic rippled inside her.
She opened her mouth and let the Infernal words come.
They were sharp, like broken glass. They hurt her tongue and made the back of her head buzz with the beginnings of madness. And yet her voice wound together with Aleksi’s until their chanting became a song, vicious and powerful. It pounded deep inside her chest, and she felt it like a drumbeat blasting out of a speaker. Aleksi’s fingers tightened around hers, and he looked her straight in the eye as they chanted. His irises burned red in the unnatural darkness, and Helena felt herself changing, the magic working into her DNA, drawing itself out into the open.
There was a scent like cordite, like metal, like cold weather.
A charge slammed through Helena, yanking her back—but Aleksi held firm to her hands, pulling her back toward him. He was still chanting. Still staring right into her eyes. Still wrapping his fingers up in hers.
And then Corina let out a loud, strangled gasp.
Immediately, the clouds vanished. The space filled with sunlight and heat and the song of insects. Aleksi dropped back on the grass, his hair hanging lank in his face. Helena took deep breaths, her body buzzing from the ritual.
Corina sat up, groaning. “Took you fucking long enough!” She rubbed at her forehead. “The spirits had my scent. Christ, I will kill Gavin for sending me back there.”
She shook her head. Her gaze flicked over Helena, then her eyes widened. “Hold up—you did that? Not Dominic?”
“Aleksi did,” Helena said softly.
“You did plenty.” Aleksi pushed his hair away. He looked drained, weakened. “Especially for someone who hasn’t been trained as a blood mage. I would never have guessed—” He squeezed the bridge of his nose. “I need to rest.”
“Where is Dominic?” Corina scrambled to her feet, whipping her head around. “Did Gavin get him?”
“He was injured,” Helena said, rising up shakily. Aleksi lay down in the grass, his chest rising and falling. “We should go inside, shouldn’t we? Gavin—”
“The wards protect the yard,” Corina said. “And they’re strong. I can feel them.” She looked at Helena. “Now why don’t you catch me up?”