Almost a week had passed since Jim’s attack on my father’s tower. The first magic wave came and went without any action from my father, but last night magic hit hard and Jim’s scouts reported a large force heading our way. This was it.

Somewhere within those woods, Curran and the bulk of our forces hid.

Christopher waited next to me. Behind me the seven Masters of the Dead stood, each with a single vampire parked by their feet like a mutated hairless cat. Jim put renders all around us with Desandra in the lead. We wouldn’t be able to enter the main Keep, but he understood what was about to happen. If my father attacked with his magic and if I blocked that attack—which was a pretty big “if” at this point—people had to see it. The Masters of the Dead had to see it.

The Keep below us swarmed with shapeshifters. Jim was front and center, Dali next to him.

Jim had shared intelligence from his scouts. My father couldn’t pull the entire Golden Legion together on short notice, but he had put together a force of over two hundred undead, enough to decimate an army five times that size. He’d kept human reserves in Virginia, something none of us knew about, and they had arrived last night. Together with his mages, the Pack scouts estimated that he was fielding almost three thousand combatants.

Jim had called for a complete mobilization. Everyone older than eighteen would fight. Anyone above sixteen could volunteer. He ended up with around six hundred troops. We brought one hundred twenty vampires to the fight. Ghastek had gotten every journeyman with half a hint of talent and put them on the field. He stood next to me now, the skin on his face too tight.

We were outnumbered and outgunned, several times to one.

“Wondering if you shouldn’t have rolled the dice?” I asked.

“No. It’s too late.”

A red light claimed the horizon, glowing like a second sunrise. Wolves fled from the woods and sprinted to the safety of the Keep.

“It begins,” my aunt said in my ear.

If I failed, everything was over.

In the distance trees collapsed as if torn aside by an invisible tornado half a mile wide. Smoke billowed, white and thick, and lightning crackled within it. My father was coming.

“Take and hold,” Erra’s voice whispered.

“Hey, Kate? You’re nobody’s bitch,” Desandra said.

Behind me, one of the navigators drew a tense breath.

The smoke was almost to the boundary. My father’s fury loomed, a magic storm devouring all before it.

I felt every drop of life within the land I claimed. It was enough to make you go mad.

The storm rolled across the land, swallowing the distance in hungry gulps. A hundred yards.

Eighty.

Sixty.

A sound like the roar of a distant waterfall rolled through the land.

Forty.

Take . . .

Twenty.