He’s closer now. My hands ball to fists. The crowd is too thick, nowhere to run. I grit my teeth, open up the flames inside my chest to get ready, wait until the last moment—the man passes me by.

Gone.

It takes everything inside of me not to freeze there on the sidewalk in New York. If I had, the people behind me would have drawn attention to me, shouting. Instead, I walk a few more paces and weave through bodies until I reach a storefront, flatten my spine against it, and look back. The man in black with red eyes and brown hair is at the crosswalk, pausing. Then crossing with his hands in his pockets. I don’t know if he saw me, but I know the thought that he might have is terrifying. I know it would be bad if he did. Very, very bad.

“Pain-welded blade.”

“You are the sword.”

“Our sword.”

I stand ankle-deep in the widest part of my ancestral stream, shaking my head.

“I don’t understand. How did you call the flames on purpose?”

Jessie’s low, husky voice comes to me from the forest. She sounds older than she did in the blood walk.

“I showed you what you need to know. To call our root with intention, think of the power you possess and the woman who gave it to you.”

My mind flies to my mother at her writing desk. My mother in the kitchen. Her wide smile.

“But heed the rest of the memory, Bree: if you call too much, open the furnace too wide, the Hunter will find you.”

I gasp awake, back in the bedroom. The Hunter? Who is the Hunter? The man I saw didn’t look like any Merlin I’ve ever seen. Even Erebus’s irises are a dark red, not black. Is that what a Merlin who succumbs to his blood looks like?

Kizia feared “the Great Devourer,” some broker who punishes unauthorized demon feedings, who deals in “demon business.” Jessie warned of “the Hunter,” a roaming demon who came after her power when she used it. As much as I hate the Regents, at least I know who they are and what they want. Outside of the boundaries of the Legendborn world, all the rules are up in the air. Magic is currency, murder is business, and Rootcrafters are prey. How will we find Nick in all of this?

I don’t have every answer, but at least I have one. A beginning. A how. I hold my hand against my chest and feel the furnace back where it used to be. Fire in my chest that feels like home and my mother, ignited by Jessie’s memory.

I stare down at the bracelet in my lap, and the Pendragon necklace around my neck.