But, try as she might, Wynter can’t speak. She draws her wings in painfully tight, struggling to scream out the vital message as a wave of nausea rises. Unable to fight it, she lurches forward, mouth forced open. Vomit bursts from her in a splatter of dark filth and spreads over the tiled plaza, sounds of alarm surging to life as Shadow rises from it.

The soldiers surrounding Wynter, save Freyja, draw weapons, arrows nocked, eyes fierce on Wynter’s crumpled form. She peers helplessly up at Queen Alkaia’s horrified face and struggles for breath. Struggles for her voice.

“Don’t shoot!” Freyja pleads, throwing herself in front of Wynter’s prone form. She casts her a fraught look. “Wynter...what did you see—?”

Freyja’s words are cut off by a silver flash from the Amaz dome’s crimson runes, the valley momentarily brightening.

Everyone looks up in confusion.

And then, like stars blotting out, every scarlet rune on the dome blinks out of sight.

Wynter’s gut clenches. “He’s here,” she manages before an ear-punching blast detonates and the protective dome over Cyme explodes in a spray of Shadow.

CHAPTER FOUR

DEMON HIVE

Lukas Grey

Shadow hive cell
Location unknown

Lukas Grey roars back to consciousness, gasping for breath.

He finds himself bound by dark vines on a cavern floor in some type of prison, his cell’s bars made of dark smoke, a much larger cavern just beyond. Every affinity line in his body is painfully taut, his magic stretched by overwhelming force. His gaze darts wildly around, haze spitting across his vision as he’s caught up in one desperate thought.

Elloren!

There’s no trace of her anywhere.

He remembers that final, agonizing glimpse of her through the portal’s golden interior, screaming his name. His right fist clenches, yearning for a wand as he’s seized by desperation.

Scanning the cavern, he takes in every last detail—the young Level Five guard just outside the wavering bars. The bizarre stacked catacombs rising up the sides of the colossal vaulted cavern. They seem to go on forever, like a huge wasp nest. Mage soldiers with glowing gray eyes are emerging from the waspish cells and climbing down with unnatural agility, more gray-eyed Mages striding industriously through the cavern. A few of them lead multi-eyed dragons marked with Shadow runes, the dragons’ powerful bodies rendered to shades of steel.

He spots a soldier he knows, Curren Dell. He remembers Curren as a talented, idealistic Level Four soldier-apprentice back in Verpacia, well-liked and eager to defend the Magedom. Horror tightens Lukas’s gut as he takes in the blank, feral look on the young man’s face.