Chapter Thirteen

“Hand me that borage blossom,” Corina said.

Helena stared at the pile of dried herbs and flowers scattered across the kitchen table. They reminded her of the butterflies her grandfather had kept on display in his library, dusty and crumbling but also sweetly familiar. She was surprised by how many of the plants she remembered from the years spent memorizing them as a child.

“That’s starflower, right?” She plucked a frail, trembling blossom, its petals as transparent and delicate as wet Kleenex, and held her breath as she walked it over to Corina’s workstation by the sink.

Corina immediately crumbled the blossom in her fist and tossed it into the glass bowl she was using to prepare a double batch of healing tincture. “Secret recipe,” she’d said with a wink when she asked Helena to help her prepare it. “Been passed down through the generations. A little blood, a little swamp, a little conjure. But it works.”

The healing tincture was for tonight. For Dominic, mostly. On the stove a big Crock-Pot was bubbling away a reinforcement for the wards, the ceramic sealing off the toxic fumes of its steam. The smell still drifted through the air, though: bone marrow and salt and a strong undercurrent of licorice from the bundles of fresh agastache Helena had dropped in the pot an hour ago, before the spell turned.

“Almost ready for you,” Corina said.

Helena nodded, her throat tight. Corina lifted up the big silver chef’s knife and slammed it down on the hog legs Helena had just finished defrosting in the microwave. The knife made a whooshing sound, sharp and unnatural, and her skin prickled.

Her thoughts kept twisting over to the last message from Juniper. She hadn’t had a chance to check the phone again, to ask for clarification. Not with Dominic stomping around the house.

Another whoosh of the knife. The air thickened with a dampness like an encroaching storm, and whorls of condensation coalesced into gray clouds near the ceiling.

“Get ready.” Corina’s voice was tense. “You remember which flower?”

Helena’s mouth was dry. “Boneset.” It was the only fresh plant on the table, a great bouquet of it sticking haphazardly out of an old pitcher. Corina had some growing down at the edge of the ward lines.

“Good girl.”

Helena pulled the boneset out of the pitcher and walked over to where Corina was hunched over her workstation. The pig leg chunks lay scattered across the counter, the bone fragments curdling and blackening. Now the air smelled like rot and licorice.

Corina sucked in a deep breath, curled her fingers around the edge of the counter. Her hair hung lank from the humidity, falling around her bare shoulders. The strange gray clouds began to churn like hurricanes, and Helena felt a shift in the barometric pressure of the room. Her ears popped. Her lungs felt light.

The herb mixture in the glass bowl spiraled up into the air, moving in a thin, serpentine line. Corina held up one arm and the herbs flowed around it like a bracelet, covering her skin with a rough, granular powder. Corina held her arm over the bowl. Her jaw clenched. With her other hand, she picked up the knife.

“One,” she whispered, the knife glinting.

Helena didn’t dare breathe.

“Two.”

A bolt of lightning sliced out of the clouds and struck a spot in the wall above the refrigerator, blackening the wallpaper.

“Three!” Corina screamed, and plunged the knife into her herb-covered arm. Blood shot out in a jet, splattering hot and red into the glass bowl. Thunder boomed from the clouds, tinny and small. Corina gasped, sagged against the counter, her blood still pulsing into the bowl. Helena took a step forward.

“Not yet,” Corina choked out. Her blood was black with the magic, satiny like oil. It pumped into the bowl while the storm clouds raged and churned.

And then: rain. A localized column of rain that crashed down over the workstation, pattering against the tile.

“Now!” cried Corina, and Helena dove forward into the rain and pressed the boneset onto Corina’s wounded arm. Immediately the herbs flaked away, and Corina stumbled backward, pulling Helena along with her. “Don’t want to stay in that rain too long,” she murmured. “Here, I’ve got it.”

Slowly, Helena let go of the boneset. Corina pressed it down into place, her blood turning the tiny white blossoms pink. For a moment, the two of them stood dripping beside the kitchen table, watching a tiny storm douse Corina’s kitchen counter with water and dilute the magic-soaked blood waiting in the bowl.

“I need to sit down,” Corina said.

“Are you sure you’re okay?” Helena followed her over to the living room but kept her eyes on the storm. It unnerved her, seeing that wind and rain and lightning in miniature. She’d never seen magic like that: not Lineage, not blood magic. Regional magic, her mother would call it. Magic you conjured out of the earth itself.

Corina collapsed down on the couch with a sigh, still pressing the boneset into her arm. She let out a long, low breath and stared up at the ceiling. Helena sat down beside her.

“That spell—” she started, fiddling with the hem of her shirt. “That was a lot more intense than you made it sound.”

Corina dropped her head to the side. Her skin was waxy and ashen, her eyes dull. “Magic as dark as those boys are going to be doing needs a powerful protection.”

Helena frowned. What the hell did Corina mean by dark? She didn’t bat her eye at blood magic or Infernal magic.

“God only knows how Dominic survived the first time,” Corina muttered.

Helena swallowed a weight in her throat. “What exactly—”

“Are they going to do?” Corina shook her head and peeled back the boneset. “I think I should let Aleksi answer that.” She peered up at Helena. “Honestly, I don’t know the details. Let’s just pray they let us stay back here in the wards, where it’s safe.”

Helena shivered. That didn’t sound like Corina, and it only deepened her uncertainty. Aleksi hadn’t told her anything about it, really, only that she should stay inside while he and Dominic made their preparations on the conduit. It was advice that Corina had agreed with, even though she didn’t say it in so many words—but Helena knew she’d asked for her help partially to keep her away from the window in her room, where she had full view of everything that happened out there.

Thunder rumbled out of the storm in the kitchen.

“Fucking Gavin Vargo,” Corina muttered, tossing the spent boneset onto the floor. The cut along her arm was black and vicious-looking, smeared with dried blood and a few powdery boneset blossoms, jarring in their delicacy.

“What do you know about him?” Helena said.

“Not much. He’s one of those occultists who show up out of nowhere and become, you know, cultists.”

Helena laughed a little. “I studied plenty of those types when I was a kid.”

“Oh, I bet.”

“I’d never heard of the Children of Adrasteia, though. I don’t even know what that name means.” Helena leaned forward on the couch. “Is your arm okay? Do I need to get any water or—”

Corina shook her head. “I’ve got to leave it untreated until the storm evaporates. Boneset’s the only thing that doesn’t interfere with the spell, but it’ll at least clot the blood.” She shrugged. “I’m surprised you’d never heard of the Adrasteia before, though.”

“What? Why not?”

“It’s an old Infernal story. I figured you would have studied the Infernal myths and such.”

Helena frowned.

“Like a—” Corina hitched her shoulders. “A know-your-enemy type deal.”

Helena had studied demons under the Lineage. But as monsters, inhuman and unknowable. To admit they had myths—

That was dangerously close to admitting they weren’t so different from humans.

“So you want to hear it? The Adrasteia?” Corina’s voice snapped Helena out of her thoughts. She nodded.

“Okay.” Corina settled back against the couch. “So, way back at the dawn of human history, or something like that, demons used to teach humans magic.”

“I knew that,” Helena said. “Aleksi told me.”

“Look at you.” Corina laughed. “Well, did he tell you why they stopped?”

The night Aleksi had told Helena about the Black Emperor, and about magic, was the night she had kissed him. The night everything started.

“Something about humans wanting to know the source of magic,” she finally said. “Which is—”

“The Black Emperor,” Corina finished. “Yes, I imagine Aleksi would have made sure you knew the correct name. So the Adrasteia is an old myth about why the Infernal realms stopped teaching magic to humans—although it was too late by then, as you can see.” She gestured expansively toward the kitchen, where the rain made a patter against the counter. Helena smiled.

“The Adrasteia is the story of Adras,” Corina continued. “A demon who had been working closely with a human student. The Adrasteia doesn’t name the human—apparently the name was cursed, and it will burn the tongue of any demon who speaks it out loud, or something. This human wanted to see the source of all magic. He wanted to gaze upon the Black Emperor for himself.”

Helena blinked in surprise. “Aleksi said that would drive a human mad.”

“Well, they know that now,” Corina said with a sly smile. “Adras agreed to take him across the veils. But the human betrayed him—he didn’t just want to look at the Black Emperor, he wanted to bring the Black Emperor back with him.”

“Aleksi said that would destroy both of our worlds!”

“He didn’t actually succeed. He was caught before he could manage and was banished back to Earth. No one knows what became of him.”

The rain in the kitchen was softening, and Corina stood up, checking the wound on her arm. “Gavin was inspired by that story,” she said. “Unfortunately for us.”

“He wants to be a madman from a demonic myth,” Helena said.

Corina laughed sharply. “He thinks he can transcend the myth. His whole cult—it’s about overcoming the limits of human magic. About shredding the veils so they can cross freely into the Infernal realms.” She shook her head. “He’s so hungry for power, he’s lied to himself about the danger.”

The words hung sharp on the air. For a moment they said nothing. Then Corina glanced over her shoulder at Helena, a darkness flashing across her face that unmoored Helena’s stomach. “Aleksi didn’t tell you what he and Dominic have to do, to cast this binding.”

It wasn’t a question, but Helena answered anyway. “No.”

“Well.” Corina squinted down at her arm again. “I just want you to understand. How important this is, that we stop Gavin.”

The rain fell away, filling the trailer with an eerie, echoing silence and the stony scent of petrichor. Moisture seemed to seep out of the walls, and Helena felt as if she were in a cave, deep under the surface of the Earth.

“I understand how important it is,” Helena said, biting back her annoyance.

“Good.” Corina looked up, at the curtains fluttering across the window. “Make sure you don’t forget it.”

Helena slipped into her bedroom and eased the door shut. She felt drained and sluggish, the air in the living room and kitchen turned to molasses from the magical preparations. The bedroom air felt like a kiss.

She pulled out the phone from under the mattress, and her heart squeezed inside her chest. Ten missed calls. Dozens of texts. All from Juniper.

Helena crouched down beside the bed, skimming through the messages. They were all variations on the same thing: Dude, you’re not as safe as you think. Tell me where you are. We’ve got to get you out of there.

The last message, though, sent a chill of terror lancing through her heart.

Gavin Vargo is not the problem, Juniper wrote. That blood mage isn’t a blood mage. CALL ME.

She knew about Aleksi.

Helena peered out the window—Dominic and Aleksi were crouched side by side in the conduit, their voices muted by the oil slick shimmer of magic surrounding them. Corina was watching TV in the living room, waiting for the two of them to be finished.

Her finger hovered over the call button. But she didn’t press it. Because she knew what she’d get if she did: Juniper yelling at her that Aleksi was a demon, that she had to get out before he ripped her heart out of her chest, the way all demons did.

But Helena knew it wasn’t true. Aleksi had traced the scar on her chest in the moments before she climbed on top of him and offered herself completely, his touch gentle and warm. It had sent shivers of pleasure through her spine, not wracks of pain.

Her phone buzzed and a new message popped up on the screen. Helena stared down at the long block of text, her hands shaking.

The phone slipped out of Helena’s hands and landed on the bed. Her breath was tight in her chest.

Three hours. Juniper would be walking into the swamp right in the middle of the binding.

Helena tapped furiously on the phone: STAY WHERE YOU ARE I’M SAFE GAVIN IS A LIAR.

Out in the trailer, the front door slammed. Helena peered out the curtain. Aleksi was still in the conduit, bathed in the light of the setting sun, but Dominic was not.

The phone buzzed. Who is this? What have you done with Helena?

“Shit,” Helena whispered. She stared down at the phone, trying to decide what to say—or if it was worth it to say anything at all.

Footsteps thudded against the floor, loud and heavy. The kind of footsteps made by combat boots.

Helena turned off the phone completely and shoved it back under the mattress just as someone knocked on the door.

“Hey, get out here,” Dominic said. “We need to finalize our plans.”

“On my way.” She pulled open the door and stepped into the hallway. Juniper would be here in three hours. Assuming she didn’t get herself killed, she’d drag Dominic and Corina both back to the Lineage. They’d both be tortured.

She couldn’t let that happen to them. She couldn’t.

“Are you ready to cast the banishing?” Helena asked him, her voice a little shaky.

“Still strengthening it,” he said.

Helena’s blood pounded in her ears. “The sun’s setting,” she said.

“Yeah, well, the spell’s not strong enough yet.” Dominic narrowed his eyes. “What’s wrong with you?”

Helena felt nausea rise up in her stomach as she followed Dominic into the living room. Aleksi stepped in through the front door. His glamour looked all wrong, like the glamours of lesser demons. Distorted. Not quite human. Not quite demon, either.

“Your girl’s acting all fucked up,” Dominic said.

“Leave her alone.” But when Aleksi looked over at Helena, he frowned.

“Told you,” Dominic said.

Corina peeled herself off the sofa and joined the two men, her face twisted in concern. “Helena?” she said softly. “Did something happen?”

Helena took a deep breath. Long beams of orange light fell through the slats in the blinds. Three hours.

“We have to do the binding now,” Helena said.

Everyone stared at her.

“The wards are holding fine,” Corina said. “I just reinforced them.”

“It’s not that,” Helena said weakly. She turned to Aleksi. Even with the distorted glamour, his eyes still looked human, bright and kind. She didn’t want to tell him she’d been speaking to her sister. She didn’t want to tell any of them.

“Spit it out,” Dominic growled.

Helena closed her eyes. “My sister knows where I am,” she whispered. “She’s on her way here now.”

The silence was choking. Helena stared at the window, at the lines of fading light.

“If we wait to do the binding,” Helena said, “she’ll walk into the middle of it.” Tears brimmed along her lash line, and she willed them not to fall. She could feel the anger and confusion and betrayal rising up off the others, but she couldn’t bring herself to look over at them.

Dominic was the first to speak. “How do you know the Lineage is on its way?” His voice was low and dangerous.

“Not the Lineage,” Helena said hopelessly. “My sister. She just wants me—”

“Your sister is the Lineage!” Dominic grabbed Helena’s arm and yanked her around, forcing her to face all three of them. Aleksi’s face was unreadable.

“Don’t grab her like that,” Corina snapped.

“She fucking betrayed us!” Dominic leaned in close. “How did you find out? You’ve been talking to them, haven’t you?”

“I’ve been talking to her,” Helena said carefully. “I bought a phone when I was in New Orleans—”

“Fucking hell!” Dominic whirled away from her and jabbed a finger at Aleksi. “I told you,” he snarled. “We should have dumped her on the side of the road.”

“I promise I won’t let her take you into the Lineage!” Helena cried.

“Bullshit,” Dominic snapped.

“Calm down,” Aleksi said. And then, for the first time since her confession, he looked over at Helena. His failing glamour made him feel all the more distant. “You want to do the binding before she gets here.” His voice was flat.

“Gavin told her where I am,” Helena said in a rush. “And he told her who you were.”

Aleksi’s shoulders slumped a little.

“She’ll help him,” Helena said, “if we don’t do it now.”

Dominic let out a string of curses. “And she’ll help with fucking Lineage magic,” he said to Aleksi. “Which means everything we’ve already prepared is shot to shit.”

“We have three hours,” Helena said. “If I can help make the spell stronger—”

Dominic let out a shrill, bitter laugh. “How?”

“I can help as well,” Corina said. “You told me that you were close. Bring in our magic and we’ll have Gavin bound. Then we can worry about Helena’s sister.”

“And how are we going to fight the Lineage if we’re all wiped out from the binding?”

“You don’t have to fight the Lineage.” Helena trembled, looked over at Aleksi. “She’s by herself. She wants to take me back to Houston.”

“Gavin is the threat here,” Aleksi said. “Not the Lineage. I’ve told you this hundreds of times.”

He glanced over at Helena and she felt a pang in her chest. I’m sorry, she thought, although she couldn’t bring herself to say it out loud.

“We can use your hands,” he said flatly.

Corina frowned. “Are you sure—”

“Yes,” Aleksi said. “We need you to throw the bones.”

Corina’s face flickered. “Ah,” she said. “Yes, I suppose that would do it—”

Helena felt dizzy. “What exactly will I be doing?” she said.

Aleksi looked at her. “Let’s just say you’ll need a knife.”

Helena’s chest tightened. Blood magic. They needed her to do some kind of blood magic.

But what choice did she have? The binding needed to be complete before Juniper arrived. Otherwise she would intervene.

Or get killed trying to intervene.

“Are you sure this is the best way?” Corina said softly.

“We don’t have a choice.” Aleksi flicked his eyes over to Helena. “Not if we need to strengthen the spell immediately. Your conjure and some extra blood is our best bet.”

“Are we really going to trust her?” Dominic gestured over at Helena. “Are you really going to—”

Aleksi shot him an angry glare. “I told you,” he said, low and dangerous, “the Lineage is not our concern here. Whatever loyalty she has to them—”

Helena thought she heard a sharp sting of bitterness in his voice, and she opened her mouth to protest. But there was nothing to say. The Lineage was her family.

“—is irrelevant right now. She has no loyalty to the Children of Adrasteia.” His eyes flashed, and he looked over at Helena. “Do you?”

“No, of course not!” Helena shook her head. “I’ll do what needs to be done. It’s just—she’s my sister.”

Dominic scoffed.

“I understand,” Aleksi said flatly. He pulled open the front door. “Get her prepared. We have to act now.”

And then he was gone, the screen door slamming hard in its frame.

Helena swallowed back a surge of guilt. She could feel Dominic glaring at her, his gaze hot and vicious.

“I’m sorry,” she said numbly. “I promise I won’t let them torture you again.”

Dominic’s eyes narrowed, and he stomped past her, out through the front door.

Helena turned to Corina, who was frowning deeply. “I’m sorry,” she said again, and Corina just shook her head.

“I didn’t want to help Aleksi and Dom with this,” Corina said. “I didn’t want you to help them. But here we are.”

She ducked into the kitchen, leaving Helena alone in the living room, the light in the windows turning purple with twilight. A few moments later, Corina reemerged.

“Here.” Corina handed Helena a small silver pocketknife. It felt like a beetle in Helena’s palm. “They need you to pull blood. Cut from your arm, not your palm like they do in the movies. For the love of the gods, watch out for veins.” Her voice was tight. “Fuck, I hope this works.”

For a moment, they looked at each other. Helena did not know what to say.

Her idol. The force behind her favorite band. And she’d betrayed her for the Lineage.

“Help me get the supplies ready,” Corina said flatly.

Helena nodded and followed Corina into the kitchen, where they gathered up the jars of ointment they had prepared earlier, tucking them into a worn backpack. “Go on out,” Corina said when they were finished, pulling the backpack over her shoulder. “I’ve got one more thing to get.”

Helena swallowed her fear and went out on the porch. The insects shrieked a symphony in the falling light. Aleksi stood in the middle of the yard, a smudge on the green grass. Helena squeezed her fist around the pocketknife and walked over to his side. Hesitantly.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered roughly. He kept staring out at the marsh. “I just had to tell her I was safe. That she shouldn’t come looking for me—”

“It’s fine,” he said, not looking at her. “I don’t give a shit about the Lineage. Tell them what you want.”

“I didn’t tell her about you,” Helena said in a small voice. “Who you are.”

Aleksi glanced over at her. Swamp wind stirred around them. Something in his expression softened. “Thank you,” he said hoarsely. “And thank you for your help.”

Hesitantly, Helena slipped her hand into his, braiding their fingers together. Aleksi didn’t pull away. He closed his eyes and the wind blew his hair back and Helena felt a quake of something deeper than fear, a sense of the world going sideways.

“Come on,” he said, guiding her toward the woods. Dominic brushed past them, Corina’s backpack over his shoulder, and halted himself at the bridge, peering out at the woods. Corina stayed right behind them, muttering to herself in French.

“Old Cajun protection charm,” she said, stopping at Helena’s side. She looked past her, at Aleksi. “You sure we can do this now?”

“It’ll be fine,” Aleksi said, before stepping into the trees.

The air in the swamp was thick and syrupy, vibrating with the music of insects. The wards Corina had strengthened throughout the last few days buzzed in Helena’s eardrums. Sweat prickled and dripped down the long line of her spine, and her palm was slick against Aleksi’s, slick enough to be uncomfortable.

They picked their way through the dense undergrowth, branches scraping on Helena’s bare legs, mud splattering up around her ankles. Sound was muffled; all Helena could hear was her breathing.

But she could see firelight flickering through the trees.

A few paces ahead, Dominic stopped abruptly and shrugged off the backpack.

“This where we’re doing it?” Corina said to Aleksi.

“Best to stay inside the wards as much as we can.” Aleksi stared straight ahead. His voice was flattened but rough at the edges, hints of the Infernal language seeping out. He glanced over at Helena and his eyes glowed red again. “And you shouldn’t leave the wards at all. Promise me.”

Helena squeezed her pocketknife. “I thought you needed my hands.”

His glamour shimmered. “I’ll bring the sacrifice to you.”

“The sacrifice—” But he was gone, a black shadow sliding through the trees.

Dominic pulled out a red cloth and a black bowl and laid them both out on the wet ground.

“Sacrifice?” Helena said to Corina. “I thought it was my blood—”

“I thought so, too,” Corina said darkly.

“I need you,” Dominic called out, his voice distorted by the wards.

Corina shouldered her bag and knelt down beside him on the red fabric. Helena took deep, panicky breaths. I’ll bring the sacrifice to you. She couldn’t let herself think about what that meant. What Juniper was forcing them to do.

Corina upended her bag. Bleached bones scattered across the fabric. Helena crept closer, trembling, as Corina leaned back on her heels and tossed the bones up in the air. The clatter they made was louder than the insects.

A shout from deep in the woods.

A rattle of gunfire.

Helena screeched and dropped down beside Corina. The pocketknife slipped and landed in the mud. She groped for it, the mud squeezing black between her fingers. More screams.

A thunderous, inhuman roar.

Dominic bellowed something in the blood mages’ tongue, broken glass words that stabbed inside Helena’s head. Corina threw the bones up in the air again, and they arched in a dozen perfect parabolas. Most of them looked like they had belonged to swamp animals, raccoons and opossums. But some were bigger. Familiar.

Dread gnawed at Helena’s chest.

Dominic picked up a big silver knife and drew it down his arm with a sharp, piercing scream and flung the blood across the falling bones. They were always falling, Helena thought, everything in a fuzz. They never landed.

Neither did Dominic’s blood.

She pressed into the trunk of a tree, her muddy fingers clutched around the pocketknife. Corina bent backward, her face tilted toward the sky, her eyes wide open and nothing but black as the bones orbited through the air, clacking out a rhythm that matched the rhythm of Dominic’s chanting. He smeared his face and his bare chest with the blood from his arm—when had he taken off his shirt? His pants? He was naked, Helena realized with a jolt, his hands lifted toward the sky, blood streaming down his arm.

A black, Infernal roar echoed from beyond the trees. The ground vibrated at the sound of it, shooting darts of energy up through the tree Helena leaned against.

All the trees trembled, branches whipping back and forth, shredded leaves raining around them.

Corina and Dominic wailed their blood mage spells.

The bones spun.

And then Aleksi was there, his clothes ragged, his tattoos stark against his pale skin. He dragged something behind him, a dark mass that bent the underbrush.

“Now,” he gasped, his voice distorted.

He flung the mass onto the red fabric.

It was a man, bearded and bloodied. His face was mottled with angry bruises. Aleksi looked up at her with his glowing eyes.

Suddenly the pocketknife seemed to weigh a million pounds.

Helena shook her head, tears brimming her vision.

“I have to clear the—” The rest of the sentence fell into Infernal, and for a moment his glamour disappeared and Helena caught a glimpse of arching black wings. “Now.”

The man on the blanket groaned, dropped his head. He wore the charm of the Children of Adrasteia around his neck.

“I can’t,” she whispered.

Aleksi stared at her through his broken glamour. “Please,” he said. “For the—” More Infernal. It shredded the inside of Helena’s ears. She stood up, shaking.

Juniper, sitting in the driver’s seat of her car. A leak.

Helena closed her eyes and against her eyelids saw an explosion of nothingness. Her world. Aleksi’s world.

“Now!” Aleksi roared, and when Helena opened her eyes he was gone, the trees tilting in his wake. She stumbled over to the red fabric and fell to her knees beside the man. He coughed; blood splattered across the black bowl.

The air thrummed with a surge of magic.

We think there might be a leak.

She grabbed the man’s wrist and held it above the bowl. Flicked out the blade on the pocketknife.

The wind changed; it swirled around her like a cyclone. And it brought with it the bones. Dominic’s blood.

Screams from beyond the wards.

Helena sucked in a deep breath of air. She pressed the tip of the knife into the man’s arm.

For a moment everything went still. The bones hung like ornaments around Helena’s shoulders. A single droplet of blood glistened, a tiny immoveable jewel. Something dark and strange and powerful reached up from inside her, a hand clawing up the inside of her throat. The trees whispered in Infernal.

“No!” She yanked the knife away, terror lancing through her. A drop of blood splattered into the bowl with a hiss. The pocketknife slipped out of Helena’s hand, and the man groaned and pulled away from her, back toward the maelstrom of magic out in the woods.

Everything became a blur. The bones, the blood. Helena’s thoughts.

She thought she heard Corina’s voice.

Darkness.