Guilt punctures my conscience for using her friends as a means to get Blaise out of here, hopefully to safety, but I can’t bring myself to regret it.

Until Blaise grabs my hands, then drags them up to her face, tucking my fingers underneath her chin while another rests at the base of her skull.

“What are you do—”

A sickening crack as Blaise yanks my hands up and to the side.

A thud as Blaise’s body slumps behind me.

No.

I’m still dizzy from burning, but I manage to turn around in the alcove, cupping Blaise’s lifeless face as it lolls to the side. I’m back in the dungeon, cracking Blaise’s neck at the force of a command I couldn’t even remember until that very second.

No, no, no.

But Blaise’s curse will heal her, I remind myself, digging my fingers into my knees. She’ll wake up any moment now.

But why—

The shadows of the paldihv unfurl themselves from her face, seeping into my skin.

Oh. Oh, Blaise.

I grab her hands, intent on doing the same thing to her that she did to me, giving the paldihv back.

But then the wyvern shrieks, thrashing as it lands on the floor across from the alcove.

I only have time to guard Blaise’s limp body with my own as it spears its barbed tail at us, skewering me through my stomach.

CHAPTER 103

EVANDER

Orion and I cut through the colonnades of the palace. It wasn’t difficult to get in, given a wyvern had already smashed through one of the marble domes.

I can’t imagine that was part of Azrael’s plan.

Ellie and her father managed to rally the entire art district into forging weapons and armor that might stand a chance against the Others.

We’ve yet to test them.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m confident in my wife’s genius, but it would have been nice if we’d had time to put them through a few trials.

Oh well.

I left my wife and daughter home in Othian. I intend for this to be the last time I do that.

As we race through the palace, Orion and I fight back to back. Summoning plant life is difficult in Naenden, where the sun licks the moisture out of the air, causing my magic to groan inside of me. Getting it to function is like prodding an adolescent to get out of bed in the morning.

Still, we manage, though we quickly find that summoning succulents takes far less effort and produces much more efficient results. Spindled plants are rather effective in fighting Others.

We’ve just cut through the central portion of the palace, ichor already staining our enameled armor, when we spot her.

She’s standing. Rather, lounging, in the middle of the palace garden, garbed in pajamas, flicking her wrist lazily as trees spring from the ground and spear through a host of attacking Others. Some trees have even sprouted high and fast enough to spear wyverns in midair.

Orion and I look at our vines, which to be honest, we were quite proud of only minutes earlier.

“Is it possible to love someone, and utterly hate them at the same time?” I ask, staring at my sister, Olwen. She yawns before snapping her fingers and producing a flytrap plant, which subsequently snaps the head off an oncoming wyvern.

“Well, it seems like she’s got the gardens covered,” says Orion, who frankly looks a tad relieved, when up above us a pair of servants scream.

He sprints for the steps, and I turn toward my estranged sister.

A mere jumps out in front of me, but I slash through it with ease. Moments later, I find myself fighting alongside my sister in the garden.

“Evander?” Olwen asks, voice dripping with what sounds less like sibling rivalry and more like simple derision. “What are you doing here?”

She prances off the bench, looking a bit like a ballerina as she does. Behind her shoots a stream of wooden arrows that pierces the beasts in the sky.

What a showoff.

I instantly regret the decision to come out here.

“Helping,” I say, sending my own thorns twisting around the neck of a mere.

Olwen allows the edges of her lips to droop at the same time her eyebrows raise. It’s the kind of expression made when someone you previously considered an imbecile does something mirroring that of someone with average intelligence.

“You’ve been practicing your magic. I told you that you might need it someday.”

“Twelve seconds,” I say, to which she raises an eyebrow.

“Twelve seconds for you to say the words ‘I told you’ in succession.”

Her eyes don’t participate in her grin. “So what? Did Father send you to die in his stead? I hear he likes that wife of yours well enough to be content to name her heir over either of us.”

My throat tightens. She doesn’t know. “Father didn’t send me. I came of my own accord.”

Olwen peers out beyond a shattered portion of the garden wall and into the desert plains, where Dwellen’s army still marches on the city. “And you took his army with you? Well, I might become his favorite one of these days, after all.”

“Father’s dead, Olwen.”

If I wasn’t watching for it, I might have missed the shock that flickers across Olwen’s otherwise bored features. “How?”

“Wyvern,” I say, not really wishing to relive the moment.

“Hm,” she says, as if told her that lip rings were now in fashion and not that our father had been slaughtered.

Before I can say as much, a formation of a half dozen wyverns swoop from the sky, nosediving directly toward us.