He marched forward until he was an inch from my face, then growled. “We did. Now stop trying to shift.”

I flinched. “How did you know?” I whispered.

“I felt it.” He tapped one finger on my chest, right between my collarbones. “Your King felt it too.”

“I didn’t mean to . . . I didn’t know how to . . . It’d never happened before⁠—”

“We know.” He growled through his teeth again. Brown scales popped up across his arms like he was losing control of his shift. “If not for Tegan, you would have.”

I gasped. I knew it. I KNEW IT. I’d realized belatedly what had almost happened to me and what Tegan had done to protect me. I’d been afraid to ask.

“And Tegan got Witch’s Shock doing it,” he said.

“NO—”

“YES.” He leaned back so he wasn’t in my face, which was a relief. “It is not only your life you endanger if you shift.”

“I understand⁠—”

“Do you?” He cocked his head to the side, then shook it. “‘Tis not a power you want her to know. You won’t be warned again.”

I opened my mouth to speak, but he spun away from me. He stepped into the shadows of the trees and out of sight. A split second later, his brown dragon sliced a dark silhouette in the night sky as he flew off.

My jaw dropped.

Had Koth sent him here to watch for me? Did he know I’d return here? I glanced back over my shoulder, then did a double take. They were gone. All of them. The house was completely empty. I raced back to the window I’d looked through before and found nothing but a cold, dark, empty house. It looked exactly the way it did the night I was kidnapped. That had been my orange hoodie draped over the couch in the spot I liked to sit in. My stomach turned.

And then they were back.

Just like I’d first seen . . . all of them watching a movie. I frowned and leaned closer to the window. It looked so real. My mind didn’t know which of these visions to believe. It could be either. Or neither. I bit my lip and pressed my forehead to the glass—the rainbow mist spilled out around me again.

I gasped and leaned back. Then it clicked. Rainbow was Tegan’s magic. Tegan had been here minutes before Everest showed up to kill everyone and kidnap me. Bentley, their psychic, had been with her. When Everest had finally answered my questions about my friends, he’d told me to think about who’d been here before him. I’d known he meant the Bishop siblings. He’d told me they were alive. I had no idea why I assumed they would’ve just returned to life as normal here in the safe house. That would’ve been stupid and reckless.