by Sarah Piper
No stone was left unturned, no puzzle piece unexamined. Some of the witches asked questions. Others shared their own observations from their time in the cave prisons or from rumors and whispers they’d picked up in their covens. Reva told us about things she’d witnessed as she’d traveled the shadows of Norah’s house, back when she’d been living there, corroborating a lot of what I’d discovered in Sophie’s book of shadows. And others remained quiet, simply taking it all in.
But again, no one laughed, or shouted, or turned their backs on us. They were with us. One hundred percent.
I took center stage again, knowing that the next part had to come from me. Knowing that every moment in my life had led me here, to this one.
Liam and I had spent countless hours debating destiny versus free will, fate versus choice. He’d always insisted I had some grand destiny, a special path that had been mapped out in the stars long before I was even born. I’d always believed I made my own choices—that no universal forces, no bloodlines, no supernatural conspiracies, no magic could conspire to bend my will, no matter what the prophecy or Death himself said.
But choice and destiny weren’t mutually exclusive. They could both exist, they could both be honored. Perhaps destiny merely nudged us in certain directions, placing opportunities in our path at every step. The rest? That would always be up to us.
I smiled, knowing I wouldn’t want it any other way.
“We all took a different road to get here,” I said, looking out again at the witches and loved ones that’d gathered. “Some of you were imprisoned, and you ended up here because by the time you were liberated, it was too dangerous for you to return home. Some of you had no homes to return to. Others came because there’s safety in numbers. Some of you just wanted to be part of something bigger than yourselves. But one thing we have in common is our sisterhood. Our magic. And our desire to live and love and practice in peace.”
“Give peace a chance, y’all,” Haley said, again making everyone chuckle. She had a knack for shining a light on the dark places, that was for certain.
“Unfortunately,” I continued, “that peace now comes at a price.” I took a deep breath, again drawing on the love and support of my rebels, my sister, my friends. “In three days, we’ll be leading a team to the cemetery outpost in the Olympic National Forest to liberate any remaining prisoners and gather additional intelligence about the siege in Blackmoon Bay and the enemy’s larger plans. We’ll need protective magic, offensive and defensive spellcasters, healers, fighters. What we’re facing there… It’s likely going to be brutal. We’ll fight monsters that used to be men, and men that made monsters out of their brothers. We’ll fight dark magic the likes of which we’ve never encountered before. And worse—we’ll fight the ideologies that allowed that magic to manifest in the first place.”
Fighting off a shiver, I pressed on. “Some of us may die. And those of us who do make it out alive will come back here, only to regroup for a bigger, deadlier mission: reclaiming the city of Blackmoon Bay—the place that many of us in this room once called home. Make no mistake—this is just the beginning of a much longer, much more difficult battle, and none of you signed up for it. So, if any witch, shifter, demon, or other ally wants out, now is your chance. There are no judgments here. You will still be protected, still have a home here, still be welcomed. Understood?”
Everyone nodded. I had no idea which way this was going to go, who would be left standing at the end of it all. I was running on those two magic words again—hope and faith.
Taking a deep breath, I made my final declaration. “I will ask that we all close our eyes now. Those who wish to remove themselves from consideration for the upcoming operation can quietly leave the room. For those who remain in this room after a count of one hundred, we’ll break up into groups, assess everyone’s skills and abilities, and make our plan of attack.”
I watched as everyone closed their eyes, then closed mine and began the count out loud. Over the sound of my voice, I heard the soft rustling of people rising from their chairs, shoes scuffing against the hardwood, footsteps bearing witches to the perceived safety of some other place.
I tried not to let my disappointment show. I’d made my choices, after all. It was only fair to give them the same opportunity, and stand by my promise not to judge.
“Ninety-nine… one hundred.” I opened my eyes.
And my heart nearly stopped.
Every chair and couch was empty.
Because every person in the room was now on their feet, standing before me. Not a soul remained seated, and not a soul had left. They’d merely risen, closing the spaces between them, drawing together.
From the center of the group rose a sparkling mist of the palest pink light, pulsing warm and bright, and their faces turned toward it, smiling. It was their magic. Their hope. Their solidarity. Their promise.
Haley looked up at me with tears in her eyes, her own smile bold and beautiful as ever.
“We’re with you, Gray,” she said. “All the fucking way.”
Forty-One
RONAN
Fucking hell, I hated the cold. Hated the waiting. Hated standing around in balls-deep snow with my thumb up my ass, counting down for the signal from the witches on the other side of the hill.
But once that signal came—the night sky lighting up with a fireball of bright orange attack magic— you bet your ass I wanted nothing more than to go back to that waiting. Back to the part before all hell broke loose.
But going back wasn’t an option. Not tonight.
“Ronan!” Ash shouted. “On your left!”
Heeding the warning, I spun around fast, swinging my sword for all it was worth. The Darkwinter soldier bearing down on me caught it in the face, dropping like a bag of wet sand. I had no idea whether he was dead or just wounded, and no time to check. I was already on the move.
Seven days to the hour of Gray’s meeting, after some of the most grueling magical, combat, and strategic training we’d ever endured, here we were, converging on a cemetery in the middle of the damn forest like a virus attacking its host.
Ten witches had comprised the first wave, slipping through the snow-covered forest from our makeshift basecamp on light feet, getting into position to launch the spell that would alert the whole forest to our presence. For the rest of us, there would be no sneak attacks, no quiet infiltration. Our best chance, we’d decided, was a full-on blitzkrieg.
Motion on my right, and Beaumont blurred into view, tearing out the throat of a hunter who’d had his sights set on Haley. She and Gray stood back to back a few feet ahead of me, channeling each other’s magic to fight through a cluster of Darkwinter guards who looked like they’d just been caught with their dicks in their hands. Hell, for all I know, they had been standing out here, pulling off a big old circle-jerk, no idea what was coming for them. It wasn’t every day your secret cemetery hideout got invaded by a bunch of pissed off, kickass, magic-toting broomstick riders.
One of them opened his mouth to shout something, but he didn’t get the chance. Gray lit ‘em all up like firecrackers.
That’s my girl.
“Lansky!” I shouted, spotting three more hunters ahead, charging toward two more witches fighting on the east side of the cemetery. “Twelve o’clock! Take those motherfuckers out!”
Lansky, who’d remained in his human form for just this purpose, raised his weapon and took aim, squeezing off three rounds. The hunters dropped out of sight, off the fucking planet.
Elena and Emilio were in full-on wolf mode, and now they charged ahead, barreling into a group of hunters and taking them down like bowling pins.
The snowmelt ran red with their blood.
I crept up behind an unsuspecting hunter trying to get the drop on Lansky, carving a fresh path to his kidney. Ahead of me, Jael lit up one of the dark fae with his own brand of fae magic—a golden orb that surrounded his prey and squeezed the life right out of him. Apparently, that particular spell only worked
on other fae, but it was a neat trick, and more effective for him than swinging a sword.
On the other side of the cemetery, Sunshine and Sparkle had staked out their own live buffet, devouring any hunter or Darkwinter snack in their path.
I never thought I’d be so grateful to roll with a pair of hellhounds.
“Heads up, hellspawn!” Beaumont blurred past me again, and I followed his path, teaming up with him on two more dark fae. One of them got a good jab in, slicing my forearm down to the fucking bone, but I repaid him in kind.
“Nothing says thanks like a sword to the throat, dickhole.” I watched him gurgle and choke on his last breath, then I spit on his corpse.
“Alright?” Beaumont asked, glancing at the blood soaking through my jacket sleeve. Looked like he was wearing the same amount, but the blood spilled down the front of his clothing wasn’t his.
“I’ll live.” I took a deep breath, shaking off the pain. That was one good thing about the cold—shit went numb a whole lot faster.
Fae-glamoured or not, everything about the cemetery was absolutely real: headstones jutting out of the ground at odd angles, just waiting to catch someone in the shins. Short, wrought-iron gating buried in the snow like caltrops, eager to tear through the soles of our feet. Crypts looming up out of the frosty mist, providing the perfect cover for a hunter damn near pissing himself at the chance to jump out and knife one of us.
Despite the odds, we persisted.
Side-by-side, with a combination of magic, speed, bloodlust, and brute force, my crew and I—no, fuck that. My family and I—we fought our way through three dozen guards, a combination of Darkwinter Knights and hunter pricks just like the ones we’d taken down in the warehouse back at the Cape. The brutal cold, slippery conditions, and fake-cemetery obstacle course made tonight’s assault a hell of a lot more challenging, and I was pretty sure we’d all be getting stitched, bandaged, and dosed up later.
But somehow, we survived it. We always fucking survived it. Gray, Darius, Emilio, Asher, and I—hell, even Liam, wherever his spooky ass was at the moment—we made sure of it. After everything we’d already been through, there was no way we were letting anyone on this frozen wasteland take us down.
“We clear?” I asked Ash, catching up with him after icing one last fae guard.
“Looks like.” He waved to Beaumont across the cemetery, and the vampire gave a thumbs-up. After doing a final sweep to ensure we’d obliterated every last guard spotted aboveground, we plundered the bodies for whatever useful weapons we could find, then regrouped in the middle of the cemetery to catch our breaths. So far, everything had gone according to plan. Norah’s intel had proved solid.
At least the traitorous bitch had been good for something.
She’d told us about a crypt at the end of a flagstone pathway in the southwest corner of the cemetery that would lead us underground, down into the facility proper. The location itself was easy to find—a large stone mausoleum, an archway carved with pentacles and moon symbols, an iron gate marking the entrance. Problem was, we had no idea what to expect beyond the gate. Because of the weather and the remote location of the cemetery, we weren’t able to do a full surveillance. We’d hiked a mile in from our makeshift basecamp, doing our best to stick to the paths with the most tree cover and the least amount of snow, but the first wave of witches had to move in fast. Once we’d gotten a visual on the place, we knew it was only a matter of time before they’d get a visual on us.
Now, we stood before the gate, wondering how many guards were down below. Did they have surveillance? Had they set a trap? Or had they all rushed out during our initial attack, leaving the rest of the place unguarded, free for the taking?
What, exactly, was worth taking down there?
“Alright, guys,” Gray said, wrapping her hand around the gate. “Let’s see what fresh hell awaits us next, shall we?”
She turned and caught my eyes for just a second, and I mouthed the only words I knew in that moment. The only ones I wanted her to know.
I fucking love you, Desario.
Without another word, Gray turned back toward the gate and wrenched it open.
But not before I’d caught that smile.
Forty-Two
GRAY
Blood. It was all around me, filling my nostrils, filling the air, coating my tongue with its acrid tang. It made my head spin, and I wasn’t a vampire. I could only imagine how Darius was dealing with it.
But dealing with it he was, never leaving my side, not for an instant. His hand on my shoulder kept me steady as I waited for the initial shock to recede.
“Breathe through your mouth, love,” he whispered, his lips brushing the shell of my ear. “It will be less unpleasant that way.”
After descending the dark and twisted staircase to the lower level, we’d assumed the lack of guards meant a trap, some mindfuck designed by the fae to lure us deeper into their maze of chaos.
But now, standing in the center of the large chamber that held the facility’s prison cells, I realized the truth.
At the first sign of our attack, any guards that might’ve been stationed down here had probably abandoned their posts, grateful for any excuse to get out into the fresh air, even if they had to risk death to do it.
The room was nearly identical to the one we’d found on the top floor of the warehouse, brightly illuminated, with morgue-like steel tables and shelves surrounded on three sides by glass-fronted prison cells. But where the warehouse room had been surgically spotless, this one was filthy. Each cell was smeared with blood, inside and out. The tables were slick with it. Walking across the floor was like walking across a viscous shallow river, each step more treacherous than the last. There were drains at the center of the room, but they’d overflowed long ago.
The worst part, though, wasn’t the blood.
It was the prisoners.
A dozen witches, two or three to a cell, all of them so weak and drained they hadn’t even flinched when we’d hit the lights. Eight shifters—a mix of wolf, panther, mountain lion, fox, most of them in their animal form, all of them trembling with fear. There were two deceased human males—vessels, Ronan and Asher determined. Demons that had likely been injected with Jonathan’s infamous devil’s trap venom, left to die. Three female vampires lay near death in another cell, chained to the wall, surrounded by blood yet prevented from drinking any of it.
One of them was Fiona Brentwood, so far gone she didn’t recognize any of us. Not even Darius.
I felt my mind trying to shut down inside, to block out the horrifying scene. But I forced myself to stay present, to take in every gruesome detail. I needed to see this. To feel it. All of us did.
If anyone had come here tonight with even a shred of doubt about the importance of our mission, the sight before us surely eradicated it.
“I’ll get to work on the security,” Jael said. The cells were locked by the same type of magical weave he’d found in the warehouse, and he needed a few minutes to untangle its complicated threads.
As he worked in silence, and the others spread out to guard the entrances, I grabbed Haley’s hand, holding it tight. Her face was as pale as mine must’ve been, and with good reason.
Somewhere in these cells were our sisters. I’d felt the connection as soon as we’d entered the chamber—a tug on my magic, on my heart. It was the same feeling I’d gotten when Haley and I clasped hands during the ice storm behind Elena’s house—when we’d transferred magic through our blood.
Like attracted like. Silversbane blood ran through my veins. It ran through Haley’s. And it ran through Adele’s and Georgie’s.
And right now, that blood was singing a siren song.
I only hoped we weren’t too late.
“Got it,” Jael announced, and the glass doors slid open.
Still, the prisoners didn’t move.
“They’re all in really bad shape,” McKenna said. She and Yvonne, another witch gifted with healing magic, tried to assess the
situation. I didn’t know much about healing, but it was obvious that these beings had been imprisoned for much longer than the ones we’d found in the warehouse.
I didn’t even want to think about what kinds of torments they’d been subjected to.
“Gray,” Haley whispered, tugging on my hand. “Over here.”
I followed her to a cell in the far right corner, where three witches huddled close, their eyes glazed. They were no more than skeletons with a thin layer of skin, barely breathing, unblinking.
“Adele?” she whispered. “Georgina?”
“They might not go by those names,” I reminded her.
“No, but hearing them might bring something back. A memory, a flash, anything.”
“Adele?” she tried again. “Georgie?”
My heart hammered in my throat, my stomach twisting. It was all I could do not to vomit, not to scream, not to break.
Please say something. Anything. Please.
“Adele?” she said once more.
And then, it happened.
One of the witches twitched. Slowly, agonizingly, her head turned toward us.
And I knew. I just knew.
The realization crashed over me, hard and fast. I’d seen her before. Blonde hair like mine, expressive brown eyes. Long limbs that held the ghost of muscles. And though she’d been brutalized to within an inch of her life, nearly unrecognizable, I knew in that instant she was our sister.
“It’s her,” I said to Haley. “I saw her in a vision. You and Georgie were there too.” It was the dream I’d had in the Shadowrealm, when they’d tried to warn me not to follow the man chasing the deer. They’d appeared again on the boat with Liam, floating on one of Hell’s lakes. They’d told me it was time to seek my own sword.
The one with the shorn head had been Haley. This one was Adele.