Mary Anne, Essex, Zara, and Courtney were waiting for us in the kitchen, fresh coffee filling the air with its welcome smell. There was no sign of Jackson, Aerden, and the other four demons.
Startled, I stared at Zara. More than half of her hair was now jet black. Her usually glowing skin had become duller, and a strange dark vein had appeared on her neck, snaking up from her shirt. What was happening to her?
“I’m so glad you’re home,” Mary Anne said, standing to give me a hug. “What the heck is going on? Jackson told us to come here and wait for word, but we saw some pretty strange stuff in the woods when we came through the portal.”
“So it’s happening here, too?” I asked.
Footsteps sounded on the stairs and Jackson and Aerden appeared in the doorway to the kitchen. I walked over to Jackson and threw my arms around him.
“I can’t believe this is happening,” I said against his ear. “What are we going to do?”
“We’re going to figure this out together,” he said, pulling away and squeezing my hand.
“Everyone grab some coffee and something to eat if you’re hungry. I don’t think we’re going to be getting much sleep for a while, and we really need to talk.”
“What about Angela?” Jackson asked when everyone got up and started making plates of food. “Shouldn’t she be here, too?”
“I need her there to help keep the Southern Kingdom safe for now,” I said. “We’ll fill her in later. I’ll need her to come help Sophie. She’s beat up pretty badly.”
“Sophie?” he asked. “She wasn’t taken?”
I shook my head. “She’s here. I’ll explain when everyone’s listening.”
Once we were all settled around the table, I started the meeting.
“A very powerful spell seems to be holding the world suspended in time. As far as we know, all the Primas and members of the six covens who joined our alliance have been kidnapped. It’s hard to tell if they were taken in groups or all at the same time, but it’s obvious they were taken by surprise, and without any apparent struggle.”
“And they knew we were coming,” Lea said. “My ability to see the events of the past connected to that place has been blocked. I never even knew that was possible.”
“Do you think the emerald priestess is behind this?” Mary Anne asked.
“Yes,” I said. “She left a message for me with the girl upstairs.”
All eyes turned to me.
“When I got to Cypress, Eloise and Caroline were gone, but I found Sophie locked inside an iron cage, just like the one I rescued my sister from in the basement at Winterhaven a few months ago.”
Zara gasped and pulled a hand to her mouth. “How would they have gotten in without me knowing?” she asked. “I conjured specific warning spells at every entrance to that house so that if anyone came inside, I’d know about it.”
“I’m not sure,” I said. “Maybe those kinds of warnings don’t work against the emerald priestess. Maybe she dispelled them before she went in, but I’m positive that cage came from her house.”
“Is she okay? The girl, I mean,” Zara asked. She coughed and ran a hand over her forehead.
“She’s scratched up and can’t see. She’s very weak, but she’s alive. Courtney, after the meeting is done, can you go up and see if you can help restore her power?” I asked.
Courtney pushed her hair out of her face and nodded.
“Thank you.”
“You said this girl was some kind of clue that led you to believe the emerald priestess was responsible for this?” Aerden asked. He threw a glance toward Lea that I couldn’t read.
“She handed me an emerald stone with a message inside,” I said. I looked over at Jackson. “The emerald priestess appeared to me and said that I had taken someone precious from her, so in return she was going to take everyone I cared about away from me.”
I pressed my lips together and looked down at the table, stifling the tears that threatened to fall. Someone had already taken Eloise and Caroline. They probably had Meredith, too. I couldn’t let them take the people in this room away from me, too. I wouldn’t survive it.
“There was a second message on the porch when I came back from the houses of the other witches in town, just to see if they were gone,” I said.
Lea’s head snapped up. “What? Why didn’t you tell me that? Maybe whoever left it was still in that town, Harper.”
I shook my head and pushed my hair back from my face. “We weren’t prepared for another fight, Lea,” I said.
“What did the second message say?” Jackson asked.
“That for every hour she didn’t get what she wanted, she would kill another witch from the emerald gates,” I said. “To keep her spell running. She said this was all my fault.”
“What does she want?” Aerden asked.
“She said she wanted me to be surprised.”
“Well, that’s just lovely,” Mary Anne said, rolling her eyes. “We could all use a little more surprise in our lives, right? Because two attacks in one night isn’t enough.”
“We need to keep eyes on Brighton Manor and the Southern Kingdom,” I said. “If she wants something we have, those are the two places she’ll come looking.”
“In her messages, did she ever say she was responsible for the attack on the domed city?” Jackson asked.
“She didn’t have to,” I said. “It’s obvious, isn’t it? The guards may not have found any emerald summoning stones, but I think we know for sure who sent those hunters to attack us.”
Aerden and Lea shared another pointed look.
“What?” I asked. “If you guys know something, you need to tell us.”
Lea shook her head, but I got the feeling she was holding something back. She didn’t trust me to lead this group, and I could see it in her eyes.
I hated that there was this tension between Lea and me, but I had no idea how to fix it. Not without giving up Jackson, and that was something I could never do.
“There’s something else that’s been bothering me,” I said. “How did she find out about our alliances? The emerald gates have been very careful to carry out their duties as ordered so no one would be suspicious. Other than Eloise, only the people living in this house knew which gates had joined us.”
“Are you suggesting one of us told them?” Lea asked. “That’s ridiculous.”
“I hope so,” I said. “But I’ve been blindsided before by people who claimed to be loyal friends and turned out to be working for my greatest enemy.”
“Still, everyone here has proved themselves over and over,” Lea said. “Maybe Eloise told them.”
My jaw tensed and I bit down on the inside of my lip. “Eloise did not tell them,” I said. “In case you forgot, she fought on our side during the last battle. Also, she’d be putting her own life in danger, since she’s part of the alliance. It had to have been someone else.”
“Maybe they were watching all along,” Aerden said. He rarely spoke in our group meetings, and I was surprised to hear him talk.
“How?”
He closed his eyes and pressed two fingers to his forehead, as if he’d suddenly been overcome by a terrible headache. “My memories of those years have been jumbled in my head for the last few months,” he said. “But after that fight tonight, some things have become clearer.”
He didn’t expand on what he meant by that, but I could tell he was wrestling with something.
“I remember this feeling of the Primas I lived inside always being worried that the Order was watching them,” he said. It was the most he had ever said about his time as a slave to the Order. “It was a constant fear. They were never sure how their priestess was spying on them, only that there were too many instances of Priestess Winter knowing exactly what was going on in their coven for her not to be listening.”
“That would have been awesome to know before we met with the Primas,” Mary Anne mumbled.
I closed my eyes and let my head fall into my hands. Th
is whole time we’d been careful not to be seen meeting with a Prima. We’d used glamours and other disguises. We often set up meetings miles away from their towns, thinking that would keep us all safe.
I’d never thought of the possibility that the Order would still be listening to everything we said. What if they’d been watching us the whole time through something the Primas wore or something similar to the tattoo the Order gave to recruits? The emerald priestess was right. This was my fault.
“What do we do now?” I asked, lifting my head. “Lea, do you know where Erick, Joost, Mordecai, and Cristo are?”
“I contacted them on their com stones when you were checking on the list of members in Cypress,” she said. “Erick and Joost are in California. They confirmed that the world is frozen over there as well, and that the Primas in those two towns are missing. Mordecai was on his way to the town in Texas, and Cristo was heading to Oregon. They said they’d let me know what they found, but that the world was frozen in darkness everywhere they’d been to so far.”
“So we at least can assume the entire United States is affected,” I said, my hands starting to tremble. “Possibly the world. That means we’re dealing with someone powerful and evil enough to cast a spell capable of stopping time indefinitely. That kind of dark magic has to involve human sacrifice. I can’t even imagine how many deaths it took to cast the spell. We have no idea what they want or how long they intend to keep us in darkness, but we know she’s going to continue to kill someone for every hour the spell is maintained.”
“What’s our next step?” Jackson asked.
I took a moment, listening to the sound of my breath go in and out. I kept thinking there must be someone else who could make these decisions and lead us in the right direction, but they were all looking to me. What if I chose wrong? What if my decisions put us all in more danger?
I longed for my father.
“We try to figure out what the hell this priestess wants from us. Someone needs to go after the hunter,” I said, finally. I knew Jackson wouldn’t be happy with it, but there was only one person who could track her and hope to come back alive.
Lea stood and nodded, understanding what I was asking before I even said the words. “I’ll go,” she said.
Aerden moved to stand, but then sat back down again. Worry crossed his features.
“I’m good at tracking hunters,” she said. “I’ll leave right away.”
I nodded. “Thank you. Make sure you take one of the ruby com stones so you can keep us updated on where you are,” I said. “If you find her, see if she’ll lead you to whoever she’s working for. Anything you can find out about what those hunters were after inside the dome is going to be important to us now. It’s no coincidence these attacks happened on the same night, and we need to know why they were there. I think it was more than just revenge. This witch has an agenda.”
“Essex and I will go to Venom,” Mary Anne said. “We’ll fly up to Chicago now that the entrance has been fixed.”
“Why Venom?” I asked.
“Well, I’m guessing the priestess’s spell didn’t affect us because we were outside the boundaries of this world at the time. If that’s true, there’s a chance everyone who was at Venom last night is unaffected, too. The club exists in a space between worlds, doesn’t it?”
“Great idea,” I said. “And if he’s okay, Rend might be able to help us gather information. A lot of demons and witches pass through Venom on a weekly basis. Maybe he overheard something strange or knows someone who can help us figure out how to get the world running again.”
“Just be careful,” Jackson said. “I don’t like the idea of us splitting up for too long. It makes us more vulnerable.”
“What should I tell Mordecai and the guys?” Lea asked. “Should they come back here?”
“Yes, have them come back here when they’re done checking out those other towns,” I said. “With the world the way it is, they should be able to fly in demon form without any problems. We may need them soon.”
She nodded and left to go pack her things.
“You should try to get some rest,” Jackson said, reaching over to take my hand.
“How can I possibly sleep with Eloise and Caroline missing?” I asked. “More than three thousand witches gone because they agreed to help us? Every hour we don’t figure this out, someone else dies. It’s all my fault, Jackson. I’m the one who put them in danger.”
“We were all a part of it, Harper,” he said. “And those witches knew what they were getting into when they joined with us.”
“Not all of them,” I said, the tears beginning to fall now. “They took the children, too, Jackson. Those little girls have no idea what the Order even is, much less which side they’d be on if they knew. They’re innocents, and God knows what that witch is doing to them right now.”
I began to cry and Jackson wrapped his arms around me. Mary Anne stood and placed a hand on my shoulder.
“We all knew the risks we were taking when we started this fight,” she said. “We just have to find out where this witch is keeping them and go kick her ass.”
I laughed despite my tears and wiped the wetness from my cheeks.
“This witch is more dangerous than we knew,” I said. “Maybe Priestess Winter wasn’t as strong as some of her other sisters. Or maybe they’re working together this time. All I know is that a spell powerful enough to stop time across the entire globe is beyond my comprehension. It terrifies me.”
“We have something stronger than that,” Jackson said, standing and pulling me into his arms.
“What?” I asked.
He smiled down at me and wiped more tears from my eyes.
“We have each other.”
The Memory Of His Warmth
Fear and doubt rolled through my veins like a toxic tide.
Ever since those tense moments at the Cypress Prima’s house, my heart had been pounding. I’d been struggling to stay calm during the meeting, but now that I was alone in the privacy of my own room, the panic was starting to seep in. I couldn’t stand still. I couldn’t even think straight.
What the hell was going on?
I knew it was possible to lock the memories of objects or places. Hell, I’d done it myself a dozen times. But I’d never once come across a memory locked by someone else.
And there was only one demon I knew who had the ability other than myself.
But what would he have been doing in Cypress? As far as I knew, my father had never even been to the human world. From what Andros had told me, my father hadn’t left the King’s City in decades.
When I was a little girl, he used to venture out to the villages to check on his subjects and resolve disputes. He’d even taken joy in those trips, always telling me that it was a king’s duty to know what was going on in even the farthest corner of his kingdom.
The stronger the Order became, though, the less he left the safety of his castle. If any of the villagers needed to see the king for any reason, they had to travel to the castle and request a meeting with him. After Aerden’s disappearance, he had stopped handling a lot of the business of the kingdom directly, passing the responsibility to his council members.
I hadn't been home to the castle or even set foot in the King’s City in more than thirty years, and in that time, many said the king had become reclusive and mysterious, rarely making appearances. It got worse each year, which was part of the reason Andros and the higher members of the Resistance had become so desperate for me to stand up against my father.
But Andros didn’t know what he was asking of me. My father may not be the demon he used to be, but he was still my king. He had been the ruler of the Northern Kingdom for more than six hundred years. Ripping that control from him would not be easy. And worse, it would be treason.
A betrayal of the worst kind.
In our kingdom, no king had ever been overthrown. They were left to rule as they saw fit until the time came when they decided to pass the crown to t
heir oldest child.
But if the rumors were true and my father had brought a stone guardian to the city, there might be no other choice. Especially if he’d had anything to do with the attacks against us tonight.
Who else could have possibly locked that memory in darkness?
I closed my eyes and leaned against the wooden frame of my closet door.
I had a lot of decisions to make. Once I tracked down this hunter and found out what she knew, I would have to decide whether to come back here to be a part of the fight or to join Andros and the Resistance in a fight against my father.
I took a deep breath and straightened my shoulders.
I didn’t have time to be scared. I had to follow my heart above all, and my heart was telling me that I belonged in the Shadow World. I may have abandoned my father, and he may have abandoned his people, but I needed to show the demons of the Northern Kingdom that I had not abandoned them. I believed in what Harper and the Demon Liberation Movement were doing here in the human world, but I had a duty as heir to the throne in the Northern Kingdom.
Besides, if we were successful in bringing him down, I would have a lot more power to help the Demon Liberation Movement as Queen of the North than I would ever have as a mere princess.
I clenched my jaw and grabbed the small backpack from the bottom of my closet. I stuffed a handful of shirts and an extra pair of black leather pants inside. I didn’t have room to take much, but all I really needed was a few changes of clothes and my weapons.
I set the pack on my bed and went into the bathroom to take a shower. I left the water cold, the freezing temperature clearing my head and helping me focus on the journey I was about to take.
When I got out, I dressed and put my hair into one long braid that reached all the way down my back.
The door to my room creaked as it opened. Aerden set his own leather backpack on the bed next to mine. “I’m coming with you,” he said.
I sighed and pointed. “Close the door.”
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