KANE

SHADOWHOLD WAS NOT A PLACE partial to goodbyes. Barracks of soldiers meant the majority of those who lived here had calloused against the

word years ago.

And that suited me just fine.

Griffin would tell Dagan and Lieutenant Eardley and all the rest where I’d gone. Better to spare them the discomfort and false encouragements of a formal send-off.

The hot water had barely registered across my skin as I’d bathed. The pork and cider tasted like sawdust as I’d swallowed each bite.

Acorn slept in my quarters while I packed, and I didn’t bother to wake him. I didn’t know who that farewell would be more painful for.

But this bedroom—

Her melodic voice filtered in with every crisp breeze through my balcony. Her delicate movements—her arched back, those strong legs— conjured every time the gossamer around my bed shifted in the wind. I couldn’t spend another moment in this hollowed-out room. The heart of it had been scooped out like guts from a gourd.

I braced myself against my writing desk and the wood groaned under my weight.

The only loose end that itched at my conscience was Leigh.

She would most likely hear from Dagan that I’d returned and left once more without saying goodbye. I’d never see the little one again and she’d think I’d orchestrated it as such.

The thought guttered through my mind. She didn’t deserve that. But the last time I’d seen her—

I couldn’t even make out her face when she’d launched herself in my direction. Heart in my throat, I’d pulled Leigh tightly into myself, felt her arms wrap around my waist, gripping the back of my leather armor, sobbing for her sister, begging me to tell her it wasn’t true…It had destroyed me. I couldn’t face those huge blue eyes now and admit I was leaving her, too.

I’d been so numb that day, I’d hardly muttered soothing hushes as I held Leigh, promising her all would be right.

And the truth was, it would be, for her.

Leigh would grow up in a world unthreatened by my father. I would make it so. She’d always miss her sister, of course. But soon she’d find ways to store that grief deep within herself. Or expel it in constructive, useful outlets. When I was gone, Griffin would purchase her and Ryder a cottage somewhere in Willowridge or a smaller, quieter town outside the capital. Or they could stay here, where Dagan could teach her to wield her sword like Arwen used to. Show her how to push the pain outward.

And one day Leigh would move on. She’d still cry occasionally. She’d tell her close friends, and teachers, and first love of her sister, the bravest, kindest person she’d ever known. The fabled savior of Evendell, and the girl who had run back into sure peril for the mother they both loved.

And one day Leigh would realize it had been months since she’d last thought of Arwen’s contagious smile or her chocolate-brown hair tied into a braid as she ran.

Leigh would be all right. Mari, too. Dagan. Ryder. And I—

I’d never wake up the same again. And that would be all right for me; I didn’t particularly want to. It would feel like a disgrace—a profound

betrayal—to feel at ease. Laughing, grinning, joking when Arwen wasn’t here with me. It wasn’t something I’d ever be capable of.

So I wrote Leigh a letter. A short one, because I’d never had much of a way with words, and even if I had, there was no way to explain that truth: that she’d just have to wait for the grief to run its course.

I left it for her on my desk and headed for the stables.

I’d have to ride for Willowridge on a horse, since I couldn’t shift. By the time I drew near, my vacant chest—whatever space my heart had once occupied—had been encased once more in resolute, unfeeling steel. And I was grateful.

Inside I found Ryder, leaning against one of the stalls, smoking a cigar, thick smoke curling into the flared nostrils of the horse above him.

“Inflicting your filthy habit on the steeds?”

Ryder spun, shock winning out over fear in his eyes—but only by a hair. “You’re back.”

Before I could respond with a dig at his observation skills, the high- pitched squeals of girlish laughter pierced the air. My chest ached with Leigh’s voice, filtering out into the night like seeds of a windblown dandelion. “Ryder!” she sang. “Ryyyyder!”

“Maybe he’s in the library.” Beth’s voice, too.

Guilt and quiet wrath rippled through me. Mostly at myself, but also at this weasel, who was flattening himself against the raw wood and holding in a gasp of tobacco smoke.

“Are you hiding from little girls?”

“I just need a minute, all right?” Ryder said as a cloud of swirling gray escaped from his mouth alongside his confession.

Ire spasmed in my neck. “You are their only remaining protector.”

“Well, that can be a lot of pressure, Kane.” Another thick run of smoke billowed out.

I sneered. “King Ravenwood.”

“King Ravenwood,” he agreed, alarm flickering in his eyes. “Of course.” Ryder backed up a step onto a pitchfork, his elbow clanging

against the wood as it flew up, sending the horses around us into fits and grunts.

“So Arwen dies because of your stupidity, leaving you sole guardian to Leigh and her seer friend after two decades of barely lifting a finger for anyone but yourself…and you cannot handle one iota of that responsibility?”

“Hey,” he said, eyes clearing. “That’s not fair—”

“Whatever will you do without your abused older sister to pile all your obligations on?” If I had my power, obsidian shadows would have spun off my body in rivulets. It would have been a terrible effort to keep myself from pummeling his lazy mug.

Ryder swallowed a gulp. “I love Leigh. You know I do. But Beth is an odd one. Doesn’t talk much. Doesn’t make people feel…comfortable.”

“She’s a child.”

“Yeah,” Ryder said, hands raised in defense. “I know. But they’re inseparable. They require constant entertainment. And I’ve got to hone my skills before the war, and—”

I could have laughed myself hoarse. “As if you would lift a single finger in battle.” Arwen had sacrificed everything for her family. For this entire continent. I was mere hours from giving my life, too. And this insect couldn’t take care of the one person I’d leave behind who needed him most. “I always knew you were as selfish as they came. But now I see your condition is far graver: you’re a coward.”

He staggered back a bit with my vitriol but I was too incensed to stop. Anger I thought I’d long since moved past barked through my bones. “Those two little girls have seen more brutality in their combined eighteen years than you have in all your living days. You’d be lucky to protect them with your life. At least then it would be fucking worth something.”

Fuming, I pushed past him, my back itching where my wings once spread.

BY THE TIME I REACHED Briar’s the sky was awash in muted shades of blue, the night too new for stars.

Her sprawling lawn was bare of lavender—the precipice of winter meant all those rows had been harvested, dried, and pressed, now likely filling antique crystal jars and thin satin sachets.

My footfalls were heavy on the veranda and I swung the iron knocker with more force than necessary, still acclimating to my mortality.

Cori, Briar’s handmaiden, didn’t seem surprised by my arrival as she welcomed me inside. I wondered if Griffin had sent a raven, or if she’d simply spied my horse tethered to the wrought-iron gates.

“Briar’s upstairs in the library,” she said with a well-mannered smile. “May I get you anything?”

My eyes lingered on the polished maple staircase. The paintings in their ivory frames. The last time I’d been here…Slick, soft skin and discarded white silk flashed across my mind. My heart gave an agonizing tug.

“No.” When I realized how ragged I’d sounded, I added a gruff, “Thank you.”

Cori just nodded primly and I prowled up that beckoning staircase. The hallway was shadowed in fuzzy-edged slants of periwinkle as twilight filtered through the banister.

It was no shock that after all these months, I’d find Mari with her freckled nose embedded in a book. Her copper hair was pulled up with a single quill as she lay prone on the patchwork quilt of Briar’s least accommodating bedroom: the one so swollen with books that the sorceress affectionately referred to it as her library.

Briar was bundled in the corner in a dark silk robe, dewy from bathing, her hair still dripping on the hardwood floors. As Mari read in comfortable silence, Briar’s long back dipped to scan one of the many shelves crammed with grimoires.

“Welcome, Prince Ravenwood.” Briar spoke without turning, her voice like a razor coated in honey. “How nice to see you’ve made it back to Onyx

Kingdom in one piece.”

I gritted my teeth, leaning against the doorway. So she was in a mood. “Evening.”

Mari gasped, though she remained on the bed. “Kane?”

She didn’t appear glad to see me. Startled, perhaps, but not glad. Griffin hadn’t been lying when he’d said Mari blamed us for Arwen’s death. Strangely, though, I’d missed the witch more than I’d expected to. Somehow we’d actually become friends. And because of that, I knew better than to ask how her tutelage was going.

“Briar,” I managed. “As usual, I need your help.”

Briar only continued to scan those shelves for something that eluded her. “Mari can help you.”

“I can’t actually,” Mari said to Briar pointedly. “Not without an amulet that a certain sophisticated yet very disorganized witch refuses to make for me.”

“Not with that attitude,” the sorceress lilted.

I pushed from the doorframe and strolled into the room, stopping at the foot of the bed before the unlit hearth, also packed with parchment and leather.

“Well, one of you needs to try.” I studied Mari, her legs kicking lazily behind her as she returned to her book. “Mari, I am your king.”

Mari looked up, pinning her punishing gaze on me. “You are my dead friend’s lover,” she said. “Possibly her murderer, depending on one’s perspective.”

Briar turned at that, violet eyes flaring. “Mari.”

I bit my cheek, an axe lodged in my heart. “That’s cruel.” Mari’s eyes burned hot on mine. “It’s true.”

When I said nothing—the word “murderer” hacking into my mind repeatedly—Mari added, “And even if it weren’t, I can’t help you anyway. I haven’t done any real magic since Peridot.”

Briar scoffed, sitting down on the bed beside Mari. A familiar, comfortable gesture.

“If I’m so unhelpful, why are you reading the grimoire I gifted you? And for the third time by my count.”

The nearly fossilized pentagrams on the cover told me Mari was not flipping through any common spell book. The one in her hands was a relic of some sort.

Mari looked up from the pages to glare at her mentor. “Because I’m bored. The better question is why you think anyone has need for this cloaking spell. Invisibility: the most useless of magic for the most useless of witches.” She turned another page, eyes finding mine. “I don’t know why I’m still here.”

“Griffin told me you were feeling as much.”

At my commander’s name, Mari’s legs ceased their rhythmic, leisurely kicks behind her. “I might feel better if I had another amulet.”

“Don’t whine, little witch.” “Mari,” I tried again.

Like a child, she flipped another page of the book. I reached out and snatched it from her hands.

“Hey!”

“Be careful with that,” Briar snipped.

“I need one of you two to open a portal to Lumera for me.”

Mari’s russet eyes lifted to mine under long, morose lashes, and she righted herself into a sitting position. “Why? Where are you going?”

“The capital. Solaris.”

My gaze slid to Briar, and I handed her the ancient book. The immortal witch’s expression had turned grave. She’d been the one to tell me of the White Crow. She knew what my return—what going to Lumera—meant.

Mari frowned. At Briar. At me. “Well, I just told you—I can’t do basic magic. Not even an invisibility spell, let alone opening a portal between realms.”

“If you need aid there,” Briar said, putting the grimoire down and tying her robe more tightly, “the Antler coven serves the rebel king, Hart Renwick. They travel through the Dreaded Vale, never in one spot for too long lest they be found by your father’s army.”

I nodded my thanks. She finally understood why I’d come. “Who’s Hart Renwick?” Mari asked.

“A Fae leading a revolution against my father,” I said. “He’s spent the last few years building up quite the army, and now apparently he has a coven fighting for him, too.”

I’d never met the kid, but my spies spoke highly of the powerful half- Fae who had, over time, amassed an army of dissenters and had taken to calling himself the rebel king. He and his army stole through the realm, marauding lighte outposts, freeing fringe and border cities from Lazarus’s reign, and inciting small yet formidable acts of revolt across the realm. The sheer feat of evading capture the last few years was impressive in its own right.

“What are you going to do there?” Mari asked, voice small. She was bright. She had an inkling.

“I’m going to avenge Arwen.” Mari’s eyes cast down to her hands.

“You were right,” I said to her, and only her. “It’s my fault she died.”

When her eyes found mine, they were swimming with sorrow. “Do you regret it?”

Whether Mari meant Hemlock Isle, or bringing Arwen to Shadowhold in the first place, or anything that happened in between, I still said, “Yes. Everything. I regret giving her hope. Having it myself…Thinking somehow we had a future.”

Foolish. All of it.

Outside beyond the small, rickety balcony, the cool evening had become a starless night of pure pitch. I sucked in a breath that did nothing to quell the sorrow in my gut.

“Goodbye, Mari,” I said.

Briar closed her eyes and began to chant the words I’d heard her utter only a handful of times. The sheets on the bed fluttered, the balcony curtains rolling on an earthy wind.

I braced myself for the split in time and space…but no such thing occurred.

“Briar?”

“Quiet,” she shushed. “It’s not coming readily. The realm is growing more untethered. I don’t…I can’t…”

The walls of the miniature library shook, molding cracking and beams groaning overhead. Mari and I exchanged one panicked look before the enchanted wind halted and Briar’s eyes flew open.

“I can’t do it alone, Kane.”

My heartbeat had started to pound in my ears. “What do you mean?

You’re the—”

“I know what I am,” she sniped, more shrill than I’d ever heard her. Both of our eyes fell to Mari.

“No way,” she said, scooting back on the bed, curls falling behind her shoulder. “Don’t look at me like that.”

“We’re of the same coven,” Briar said. “It’s the only way.” “I have a lot of faith in you,” I added.

“That faith is tragically misplaced,” she said, chewing her lip. “Arwen would be so disappointed in me now.”

“No,” Briar said. “She wouldn’t.”

“None of us—especially Arwen—could stop believing in you if we tried,” I said, kneeling so our eyes aligned. “That’s not how friendship works.”

“I’m going to fail you both. I know I am.” She cut her eyes to Briar. “Without the amulet…”

“Your magic was never born from the amulet,” Briar said. “As I’ve told you nearly every day, little witch. The amulet was a mere crutch, but you can access that power all on your own.”

“You’re wrong.” Mari shook her head at both of us. “I’m not worth anything alone.”

I didn’t have endless time to play psychoanalyst. I had a father to kill and a woman to die for. I ran a hand down my face, over my bearded cheeks and chin. “None of us are. That’s why I need your help.”

But Mari didn’t seem to hear me. Her wheels were turning. “Even if we opened a portal…there won’t be any way back to this realm unless you take

us with you. We’d have to do it again.”

Briar’s words held an edge of foreboding as she said, “He won’t need one.”

We both cut our gazes in her direction.

“What?” Mari’s voice had ratcheted up an octave. “Why?” “He’s full-blooded now. It’s a one-way ticket he’s after.”

In an effort not to hide how wrong she was about her first belief, I schooled my face.

But Mari only stared me down. “That…that shouldn’t be possible.

How?”

“A sorcerer,” I said. “In the Pearl Mountains.”

Mari’s head shook softly as she processed the weight of my words. Then her eyes landed on mine once more. This time they welled with remorse. “Kane, you can’t.”

“No.” My laugh was a mere rasp. “Not without your help.”

“That’s not what I mean and you know it,” she snipped, but her expression was one of horror. “It’s a suicide mission.”

“Mari,” I said softly. “This is what Arwen died for. This is what I need to do—what we need to do, so that her death is not in vain.”

“That is some faulty logic. Your death won’t bring her back, Kane. It won’t right that egregious, universal, catastrophic wrong. And you.” She turned to Briar. “You’re just going to let him do this?”

Sympathy emanated from Briar as she studied Mari’s pained expression. She lifted one elegant hand and brushed a curl from Mari’s face, a strangely maternal gesture. “Lazarus must die. For what he’s done. For what he plans to do. For Arwen. This is how we end his life.”

“I’ve already lost Arwen…” Mari said, her voice hoarse. “I can’t lose anyone else.”

“If you don’t help us now”—my next words stung more to imagine than to utter—“we will lose them all.”

Mari said nothing to that, and I couldn’t think past the truth I’d laid bare.

How much more suffering was in store for all of us if I failed.

An owl hooted from beyond the balcony doors. Somewhere farther away, horses and their carriages stomped rhythmic noises into the city’s cobblestone, and a slight breeze brushed curled strands of red around Mari’s chin.

“Together?” Briar asked.

“Fine,” Mari muttered in the end, standing from the bed and chewing her lip. “I can try.”

Briar stood, too, and lifted her arms to the wooden beams across the ceiling. Mari copied the movement. They began to utter a low, practiced spell, and I wondered if Briar had already attempted this with Mari before to no avail. Perhaps in hopes—or with faith—that I’d succeed in finding the White Crow.

A static charge rent the room and sent every hair on my body standing on end.

“You’re not controlling the magic,” Briar said to Mari, though both their eyes were closed. “You’re letting it play with you.”

“I am trying my best,” Mari bit through gritted teeth.

“You can do this, little witch,” Briar soothed. I didn’t think I’d ever heard her talk to anyone with such warmth. “Do this for your friend. It’s what she would have wanted. Honor her, with your power.”

“I can’t,” Mari cried. “It’s too—”

A rumble of thunder struck outside, though the night sky sparkled, dark and clear.

And though tears had begun to fall steadily down Mari’s cheeks, and my stomach twisted with the awareness that I was witnessing something too personal, or that I’d brought this sorrow upon Mari myself—

Pages rustled across the room.

Clearly bolstered by the progress, Mari whispered the incantation more fervently. Those tears, falling freely now, as she chanted. Like an oath. Like a prayer—

All the books in the compact library—cracked and old, pulpy and new— fluttering, whirring, spinning around us.

Mari’s eyes snapped open and then shone. A little awe, a little pride, a little fear…

Briar gave her a nod of encouragement and the air, crackling with texture as they chanted, wrinkled around us.

The space between the two of them bent and retreated, yawning outward and splitting in half, edges rippling in translucent light.

Mari swallowed a gasp. Books tumbled to the floor.

My own heart raced at the sight. I’d never grow accustomed to time carving itself open in this way.

Briar’s eyes pierced mine. The inky-black portal undulated between us, warped matter reflected in its rift. “Go, Kane. Go and finish what we started.”