I WOKE TO A SOFT MATTRESS, the smell of sugar, and honey-warm sunlight pouring into the bedroom. Outside, tiny birds jumped from branch to branch on the tree beyond the bedroom window. I smiled as I stretched my arms over my head, delighting in the way my body ached from last night’s adventures. And then my smile slowly slipped away…

At some point, Fisher had carried me to bed. Not back into the small room where he’d slept as a child. He’d put me in his mother’s bed. And he wasn’t lying next to me under the duvet. The bedroom door was open, and through it, I could see the ominous black shape of a spiraling shadow gate.

“No. No, no, no, no, no!” I rocketed out of the bed, hissing when I stood on my boots. My heart sank at the sight of the pile of fresh clothes laid out for me on the chair by the window. Bypassing them, I ran into the living room, going from room to room, naked, trying to quell my rising panic.

“Fisher? Fisher!”

He wasn’t in the kitchen. Wasn’t in the other bedroom, either. The apartment was empty. Rivers of candle wax covered the furniture and ran down the shelves. The remnants of our dinner still sat on the counter by the sink in the kitchen. And in the center of the living room, where we’d spent most of our night tangled up in each other, was the gods-cursed shadow gate. I stared at it, my eyes flooding with tears. It swam in my vision, but there it remained, hovering an inch above the rug, making a dull rushing sound. I clapped my hands over my mouth, but they didn’t keep the loud sob I let out from ringing loudly around the apartment.

What have you done, Fisher? What have you done?

I found the note underneath the clothes he’d left for me.

This may seem dramatic now, but it’ll make sense in time, Saeris.

Go through the gate. It’ll take you back to Cahlish.

Wait there with the others. I’ll send Layne back as soon as I can. Tell Iseabail to sedate her the second she comes through the gate.

She’ll be close to transitioning. There won’t be much time. She’ll want to go back through the gate be/ore I close it, so you’ll have to be ready /or that. /ou have to stop her. This will all be /or nothing i/ she jumps back through.

Tell Lorreth to live his li/e. Tell him not to worry about me. I have endless patience and no interest in having martyrs /or /riends.

Tell Ren/is that I’m sorry. That he was the standard that I always held mysel/ to, and

/velia would have been a better place i/ I was hal/ as good as him.

And you, Osha. I release you /rom your oath. /ou know how to make the relics now. A sel/ish part o/ me wants to beg you to make

as many as you can so that my /riends and their /amilies can escape /velia be/ore this realm /alls. But I understand i/ you need to go. Find Hayden and Elroy. Help your

/riends. Then go exploring. There are countless realms out there, waiting to be /ound. Make one o/ them yours.

I’ve never been one to trust in the gods, but I choose to believe that all things come /rom the same place when li/e begins. I have hope that they return to the same place when it ends.

I’ll be waiting /or you there, Saeris Fane. F

I sank to my knees and sobbed. The last time I’d cried like this, my mother had been blowing away on the reckoning wind. I’d vowed I’d never care about anyone enough to experience this kind of pain again. But here I was, shattering.

I well and truly broke when I saw what rested on the mantlepiece above the fire.

Nimerelle.

The tarnished black sword sat amidst melted puddles of wax and the jars full of paintbrushes, sunlight flaring in a starburst at its tip. He hadn’t taken it with him.

I knew why. If Malcolm killed Fisher and laid his hand on a god sword, there was a chance he might find a way to convince it to channel. If that happened, there were no limits to the destruction he might wreak. And he could still the quicksilver. There would be no escape for me or for any of Fisher’s friends.

So Kingfisher had gone to Gillethrye to save Everlayne and everyone else he cared about.

And he had gone there alone and unarmed.

Carrion squawked, fumbling the book in his hands. He came dangerously close to falling off his chair as I stormed through the shadow gate and into Fisher’s bedroom.

“Gods a-fucking-live!” He gasped, clutching his chest. “A little

warning?”

“Where is everyone?” I demanded.

“I don’t know. In the library? Everyone’s going cross-eyed, trying to find a way to make sure they break this enthrallment thing. What are you doing with Fisher’s sword?”

I tossed Nimerelle onto the bed, along with the old shirt I’d found to wrap the grip so I could pick it up. “Never mind the sword. Why aren’t you with everybody else?” I snapped.

The back-alley thief shrugged shamelessly. “I came looking for Onyx. I couldn’t find him anywhere, so I guessed he was sleeping in here. Crazy bedroom. Have you seen the artwork?” He gestured to the slashed paintings that still hung on the walls, their canvases torn to ribbons. He carried on, not giving me room to speak. “I was going to leave, but then I figured maybe Fisher kept a diary. And guess what? He doesn’t. But he does have something even better.”

I crossed the room. “What time is it?”

“Wait. Don’t you want to know what I’m reading?”

“Let me guess. It’s a book of prophecies, and there are a ton of drawings of me in it with pointed ears.”

Carrion’s disappointment stole his grin. “How did you know?” “Carrion, I can’t do this right now. What time is it?”

“Nearly two, I s’pose. We had lunch a while ago. I wasn’t expecting anyone to step through that thing until much later. Ren said Fisher left a note for him, saying you’d be back before dusk.”

“Oh, yeah,” I fumed. “Fisher just loves leaving notes.”

By the bed, the shadow gate Fisher had left open for me snapped shut, somehow aware that it had served its purpose. I watched it vanish, my insides glowing white hot with rage.

“I’m sensing a little tension in the air,” Carrion quipped. “Have you two fallen out already?”

“If by fallen out you mean am I going to kill him, then the answer is yes.”

Lorreth, Ren, Te Léna, and Iseabail were in the library. Of the four, only Iseabail didn’t have her head buried in a book. She stood by the window, watching the snow come down, looking bored. Surprise shuttered across Ren’s face when he saw me enter.

“Saeris. Is everything…” He course-corrected himself mid-question. “What’s wrong? What’s happened?”

I was fit to fucking scream. Tossing the letter Fisher had written for me down onto the table in front of the general, I gripped the back of the chair the bastard had sat in yesterday, going along with all of our plan-making while he secretly made plans of his own, and I waited for Ren to scan the sloping handwriting on the paper.

His mouth hung open as he dropped the letter. Lorreth didn’t even ask to read it; he leaned across the table and took it, his expression darkening as his eyes flitted over the text. “Stupid bastard,” he hissed. Looking up at me, he asked in an incredulous tone, “What the fuck does he think he’s doing?”

Like I had an answer to that question. A thousand curses hovered on the tip of my tongue, but I trapped them behind my teeth. Only one question mattered right now, and everything hinged on its answer. “Is there a quicksilver pool at Gillethrye?”

Ren hadn’t said a word. He was visibly still in shock from the contents of the letter. He blinked when he realized that everyone was looking at him. “No. Not that I know of,” he said in a cracked voice. “There was one a long time ago, but Belikon took it when he came into power. He merged it with the pool at the Winter Palace so it would be large enough to transport an army.”

There it was then.

I had my answer.

There was no pool at Gillethrye.

Every scrap of hope I’d been clinging on to dematerialized in a puff of smoke.

There had been a chance. The smallest chance, but still a chance. Fisher had said there was more quicksilver here at Cahlish. A pool, most likely. He’d said I could have access to it once I’d figured out how to create the relics, which meant it was probably close by somewhere. If I’d found it, I could have made more relics, and then we could have gone and kicked Fisher’s ass for being so fucking stupid. But without a pool on the other end at Gillethrye…

It was hopeless.

We were fucked.

I let my head hang, numbness spreading through me like ice.

“Bastard.”

I half expected him to answer me, but my mind remained stubbornly silent.

How could he do this? To his friends? To me? He wasn’t alone in this, but he’d decided to take on this burden all by himself. It wasn’t heroic or brave. It was fucking stupid.

Lorreth ran a hand over his mouth, his rough stubble making a scraping sound against his palm. “I think I’m going to throw up,” he said matter-of- factly.

Ren pushed his chair away from the table but just sat there with his hands on his knees. I didn’t think he had the strength to stand. “You and me both, brother. You and me both,” he murmured.

It was Carrion who broke the silence next. “Saeris?” I looked up and saw that he had Fisher’s letter now. He held up the piece of parchment, a questioning look on his face. “How long was that shadow gate open just now? The one in Fisher’s bedroom?”

“I don’t know. Hours, probably. I have no idea when he opened it. It was there when I woke up.”

“No, no.” Carrion shook his head impatiently “How long did it stay open for after you came through it? I wasn’t paying attention, but we spoke before it closed, right?”

“Yes. I suppose…it took maybe ten seconds? Twelve?” “Does it always take that long?”

“Uhh…” I hadn’t paid much attention the other times I’d traveled through a gate with Fisher. There had always been something else on my mind.

Lorreth stepped in with an answer. “Yes. I don’t know if it’s always that long, but there’s always a delay. Fisher’s commented on it before.”

“Great. And here, he says in the letter that he wants you to be ready for Everlayne when he sends her through a gate back to Cahlish. That she’ll try and use it to get back to Malcolm. Which means that the gate isn’t one-way. If Everlayne can use it to come here—”

“Then we can also use it to go there!” I nearly sank to the floor. The relief…hells, I’d never known anything like it. My body started to shake.

Ren got to his feet, letting out a long exhale. “I could kiss you, Carrion Swift.”

Carrion seemed taken aback by this. And then somewhat interested. After thinking for a second, he said, “I wouldn’t be opposed. But maybe later. First, Saeris has work to do, and I plan on giving her a hand.”

“What work?” It was a miracle that I managed to ask the question. I was so full of adrenalin now that the library was spinning. I was definitely going to throw up.

Carrion grinned, all teeth and mischief. “I’m coming with you through that portal. I’m gonna help you save your asshole boyfriend. But first, I want one of those fancy swords.”

“Have you heard about the fire at the circus?” I paused for dramatic effect. “It was in tents. Get it? In tents.”

Carrion winced. “That was terrible.”

“Shut up. It asked for a joke. It didn’t specify that it had to be a good one. I was a metalworker and a thief in Zilvaren, not a comedian.”

“I was a smuggler and I’ve still got way better jokes than that.”

“You tell it a joke then!” I held out the crucible containing the quicksilver, and Carrion huffed, peering at the roiling liquid metal.

“All right. Fine. A husband turns to his wife one day and says, ‘y’know, I bet you can’t think of something to tell me that will make me both happy and sad at the same time.’ The wife doesn’t even need to think about it. She turns to her husband and says, ‘your cock is way bigger than your brother’s.’”

The quicksilver, which hadn’t made a peep over my joke, started to chuckle.

“What’s it doing?” Carrion asked. “It’s laughing, isn’t it?”

I rolled my eyes and ran the quicksilver along the edge of the heated blade I had clamped over the fire in the forge’s hearth. There hadn’t been time to make a new sword from scratch, but Ren had found a very nice- looking double-hander in Cahlish’s modest armory that Carrion had agreed would do. The quicksilver, which Ren had also brought from the armory— apparently, it had been in there all along—also thought the blade was reasonable enough to bind with and had consented to be forged into the sword, providing I told it a joke.

If it hadn’t approved of mine, it had clearly accepted Carrion’s as payment, because the quicksilver absorbed into the blade as soon as it made contact, casting a brilliant iridescent sheen along the weapon’s edge.

The sky darkened as I sharpened that edge against a wheel, and Carrion told a slew of additional jokes that grew bawdier as he went.

“Gods and martyrs, will you please stop,” I begged.

“I’m just trying to lighten the mood. You look like someone pissed in your water ration.”

“More jokes. Give us more jokes…”

I glowered at the sword, unable to comprehend its bad taste. If ever there was a weapon so perfectly suited to its owner, it was this one. Carrion delighted in telling it the filthiest jokes imaginable. And when I was finished, and Carrion pressed his fingertip against its point, giving it the tiniest taste of his blood, the blade responded immediately.

“Yes, yes. Our friend. Ours. He will name us.”

Carrion’s eyes rounded out of his head. “I heard that!”

“Good.” I flipped the sword and handed it to him. “Then give it a name and let’s go.” The evening was almost here, and the others were waiting for us.

Carrion held the sword, turning it this way and that. After much consideration, he said, “It looks like a Simon.”

“Simon?”

“Yeah. Simon. Don’t blame me. That’s what it looks—” He stopped talking and listened. “See. It likes the name. It wants to be Simon.”

“Fair enough.” The sword was done talking with me, apparently, so I asked, “Has it decided if it wants to gift you with magic in spite of your

frail human blood?”

Carrion smirked. “It says that’s for me to know and you to find out.” “Hope that means yes,” I grumbled.

Back in the library, Ren was pacing nervously, chewing on the inside of his cheek. Lorreth stared into the fire. “Where’s Te Léna and Iseabail?” I asked.

“They’re setting up a space to treat Layne,” Ren said. “Iseabail brought everything with her that she thinks she’ll need for her sedation spell to work. Te Léna’s confident that she can suppress the venom in Layne’s blood long enough to start healing her body, but…”

“But?”

“This has never been done before. That we know of, anyway. The cure for the blood curse was lost over a thousand years ago, and that only helped the Fae who had been cursed, not turned. Turned vampires need to die before they transition, and witch magic can’t affect the dead. There’s a chance Malcolm’s venom will kill Layne before she can be healed, even if she is frozen by Iseabail’s magic.”

Lorreth fidgeted in his seat. “I don’t trust her. The witch,” he clarified before I could ask who he was referring to. “Dragon lovers. They’re the reason we’re in this mess in the first place. If it weren’t for them, there wouldn’t even be any vampires.”

“Come now. Don’t tell me you still believe that,” a soft, lilting voice asked from the doorway. It was Iseabail, of course. Her thick red hair flowed down her back, the top section clasped back in a clip. Her aquamarine eyes bored into Lorreth, sharp as daggers. “My people have been persecuted my whole life thanks to those vicious rumors. We proved centuries ago that we had nothing to do with the curse that afflicted your kind. The Balquhidder Clan was one of the five families charged by your dead King Daianthus with finding a cure for the Fae curse. We were instrumental in breaking it. I’ve come here of my own free will to help you heal the daughter of a tyrant who has a bounty on my family’s heads. Anyone would think you’d be grateful, Warrior.” She squinted at him. “What was your name again?”

“You know damned well what my name is,” Lorreth rumbled. “We’ve met before, Witch.”

“Oh?” Iseabail shot Lorreth a feline smirk. “Really? I must have forgotten.”

Ren brought his fist down onto the table, startling all of us. “Enough. We’re already on edge and stressed. We don’t need to be bickering amongst ourselves as well. Lorreth, Iseabail’s right. She came here to help us, and she didn’t have to.”

Lorreth’s eyes burned with surprising hatred, but he ducked his head and did the right thing; he only sounded slightly insincere when he apologized. “I’m sorry. We’re all very grateful to you for coming.”

The redhead looked as if she enjoyed watching the warrior squirm. You could have cut the mounting tension in the room with a knife. I didn’t have it in me to repeat any of the terrible jokes Carrion had told back in the forge, though, so I was going to have to diffuse the prickly energy another way. I stepped toward the table, glancing back at Carrion over my shoulder. “Come on. Why don’t you tell everyone what you named your new sw—”

A hole opened in the air, black and angry.

A streak of dark blue hurtled from it and crashed onto the table. Books flew everywhere.

The wood shattered.

“FUCK!” It was Ren. He was ahead of everyone else in the library, rushing forward to help Everlayne. She’d fallen from the fucking ceiling. The shadow gate wasn’t a vertical doorway this time. It was horizontal and ten feet up in the air…and Everlayne had just smashed our only means of reaching it with her body.

“Fuck!” Carrion cried.

“Quickly!” Lorreth raced around the shattered table and roughly grabbed my arm. There was no time for pleasantries. I saw what he was going to do written on his face, and I was okay with it. But…

“Wait! My sword!” Idiot. I was such a fucking idiot! Solace wasn’t strapped to my waist. It was still light outside. Taladaius had said Malcolm would meet Fisher at dusk, but it was still very light outside. I wasn’t ready! “Carrion first!” I hollered.

The sword was on the reading stand by the far window. I sprinted for it.

Grabbed it. Turned.

Lorreth and Ren were lifting Carrion through the gate. His torso had already disappeared. As if he suddenly pulled himself up from the other side, Carrion’s leg’s whipped upwards and he was gone.

“Saeris!” Everlayne croaked. She wasn’t dead. Even as I flew across the library toward Lorreth’s outstretched arms, I had enough time to thank the

gods that she was fucking alive. I couldn’t stop to comfort her, though. “I’ll be back soon, Layne!”

Lorreth’s hands closed around my waist. Renfis grabbed my legs.

Everlayne’s frantic cry pierced through me as the fighters below thrust me up into the shadow gate. “Saeris! Wait! The water!”

But it was too late to panic. No time to ask her what she meant. The gate took hold of me, a frozen, wind tearing at my clothes, tearing me inside out. I reached blindly for whatever handhold Carrion had used to pull himself up, but there was no handhold. There was a swift, disorienting shift in gravity, and suddenly I was upside down.

Suddenly, I was

f a l l i n g