“Single file,” Derek said. “Once we’re through, we may have to run. Nia, how’s the stomach?”

“Could be better,” the injured shapeshifter said.

“Krish,” Derek said to the man next to her, “if she slows down, pick her up and carry her.”

Krish nodded.

The shapeshifters formed a column behind Derek, and I had a vision of a wolf pack padding one after another through the wilderness.

I blinked my sensate vision on. A ward surrounded the gap, a narrow column of tense magic. No surprise there.

I stepped forward into the magic field. Pressure clamped me, piercing my eyes with painful needles. The spell crunched me, trying to break my defenses. I concentrated, pushing outward. Using a power word would crack it like a hammer hitting a walnut, but I had no idea what the day would bring and my magic barely had four hours to recover.

“Do you need help?” Derek asked.

“No.”

The ward chewed on me. Thin veins of dim green light formed in the empty air—the spell trying to expel me. I held my magic shield. Defensive wards came in different flavors. Some were walls, barriers you had to break through with sheer force. Some, like this one, were designed to cause pain and squeeze the intruder until they retreated. This wall type had to be shattered. Most people thought that the squeezing type couldn’t be broken. Most people were wrong.

“What are we waiting for?” someone asked behind me.

“Quiet,” Derek ordered.

The ward squeezed and squeezed, the pressure grinding on me. It would keep squeezing until it broke me or ran out of power. Pain was temporary. It would pass like the water of a moving river.

The green veins flashed with white. With a sharp clap, the ward crumbled around me, its magic exhausted. The pain vanished.

“I just broke his ward. If he didn’t know we were here before, he knows now.”

Derek nodded.

I jumped through the gap and landed in the grass. The soft stalks reached just above my knees. Sunshine spilled from an impossibly high sky. The air carried scents of herbs and grass. A bee flew by me.

I waited to see if the ground under my feet would open up and swallow me whole. It didn’t.

Ten seconds. Fifteen. Long enough.

I jogged toward the house. Behind me, Derek leaped through the gap. In a few breaths, his wolves overtook me, fanning out in front of me. Nia caught up to me, her face flushed.

“Do you need me to slow down?”

“I need you to speed up,” she said. “At this rate, I’ll be old by the time we get there.”

I picked up the pace. We ran through the plain unhindered.

We were a hundred and fifty yards from the house when my sensate vision picked up another ward, a translucent dome of green, sheathing the structure and the hill it sat on. Dense currents of magic swirled on its surface like colors on a soap bubble. This one wouldn’t be that easy to break. Letting it chew on me this close to the house would also make me an excellent target.

I pulled Dakkan out and sliced across my left forearm. A few drops of blood coated the spear’s tip. The Shinar wasn’t the only family who used blood as a catalyst, so I wouldn’t be giving myself away.

Ahead of me, Derek halted. The ward should have been invisible to him, so he must’ve sensed its magic. The two werewolves on his left and right missed their cue and ran headfirst into the spell. Green pulsed from the impacts. I ran past Derek without altering my pace and stabbed Dakkan into the ward. My blood sliced through the magic like a knife through warm butter. The ward shattered. I kept running.

A hundred yards to the house.

The grasses in front of me rippled.

Derek sprinted. One second he was behind me, the next he picked me up and charged ahead.

“What…”

Derek leaped. Below us an emerald green serpent the size of a fire hose reared from the grass.

“I’m sensing a theme here,” I told him.

“Mhm. He likes green.”

Behind us, wolves howled. Derek ran so fast, it felt like we were flying. I wanted out of his arms. Out.

“Should we help?”

“No. They’re having fun.”

His definition of fun needed some work.

He leapt left, right, dashed up the hill in a dizzying sprint, and set me down in front of the enormous double doors. A stone hall rose in front of us, its grey walls thick and towering.

Derek pounded his fist on the wood.

Below, Derek’s wolves, all in warrior forms, attacked the serpents. As I watched, a huge reddish beast jerked a coiling green body into the air and tore it in two.

“I know you’re in there,” Derek bellowed, “Open these damn doors or I’ll break them.”

The doors swung open with a soft creak. A man stepped forward. He was perfectly average; average height, average build, neither pale nor tan, with non-descript features and a bald head. Only his eyes were remarkable, filled with intelligence and slight contempt, as if he were the only genius in a world full of idiots and he had come to terms with his fate.

“Well,” Saiman said. “I suppose it had to happen sooner or later.”

*

I sat on an oversized ergonomic couch that curved around a glass coffee table. The glass was thick and cut in a sinuous curve. The base of the table was an S of black steel set on its side. Saiman sat on an identical white couch across the coffee table. Derek parked himself behind me with his arms crossed. His crew had taken positions throughout the cavernous stone hall, some by the front doors, some by the two hallways leading deeper into the keep, and a couple by the floor-to-ceiling windows rising to the high ceilings. Above us, a circular chandelier of plain white metal paid homage to its medieval origins.