Page 350 of Commanding Blood And Bonds

Except this one wouldn’t stay locked.

Every inhale was fire. Every twitch, blinding.

Whatever intel Nix had, he clearly didn’t want me fit to lift a blade.

A loud clang split the air.

I forced my eyelids open. Fought the vertigo and focused on the creak of Nix’s boots as he straightened and stalked toward the gate.

“What?” he barked.

I strained to hear past the ringing in my ears.

“All Wings have orders to respond,” someone called.

I wanted to believe she was too smart to fall for it. That she wouldn’t fling herself into something so obviously rigged.

But I knew better.

Freya was a living, breathing vendetta. I didn’t need to understand her to know exactly what she was capable of.

If I hadn’t been in so much pain, I might’ve laughed.

Rattle the cage, chérie.

Freya

Disable.

Dismantle.

Those were the orders—whenever possible.

Within the hour, assuming I survived, these souls would be mine. And Aren would need every last one of us on the right side of the line.

All except those who’d laid hands on Cyrus.

Them, we would kill.

The sun was rising as we descended on Luminark Manor. Between two hierarchies of shadows, this would become a bloodbath fought between worlds—unless we forced them into the light.

I was waiting for phase two.

More power than I could contain thrummed in my veins, the remnants of four of Reagan’s Guardians pulsing beneath my skin after I’d drained them and—let’s call it what it was—tucked them away for leverage.

Their fate would depend on Cyrus’.

The fifth one got away.

A bridge I’d burn when I reached it.

But it wasn’t the first phase of the siege I was watching now—not the blood, not Reyna and her pyro flyers spiraling through the sky in graceful arcs, hurling fireballs before vanishing again in smoke and soot.

Not even the familiars tearing through them above the spires of the manor I fully intended to raze.

It was Ally’s hourglass.

I’d returned to beg Bellaton for backup and suit up. But when I entered my quarters to grab my weapons, the hairs on my neck rose.