“Did you learn anything else?” Amalia asked.

“There was a lunar chart with this past full moon circled, and they’d counted out seven nights. There was a number written underneath the eighth night—6:57.”

“Sunrise, I’m betting.” She nodded to herself. “Astral arrays that require moonlight take longer to charge when there’s little to no moonlight. They started on the full moon to give it a boost, and it’ll be ready at dawn.”

“So they’ll be able to open the portal at dawn on the twenty-eighth.”

“Meaning we have five days to prevent them from opening a portal? Great.” She rubbed her forehead. “What else?”

“Xever had a map of the city with a bunch of locations marked out. Places where we’ve fought Nazhivēr, the vampires, the golems and stuff from last month … plus a bunch of guilds, including the Crow and Hammer.”

My gut prickled nervously as I remembered that red circle around our guild.

“And,” I added, my sense of foreboding deepening, “there was that case of blood.”

Zylas cracked his eyelids open to reveal dark scarlet eyes.

“Xever had eleven vials of blood, and he filled the twelfth one with Zylas’s blood. I think we can go ahead and assume he has blood from all twelve Houses in his collection.”

“But why?” Amalia combed her hair back from her face. “Our theory that he wanted Zylas’s blood to cheat-summon a Vh’alyir isn’t likely anymore. He wouldn’t need blood to summon any of the other Houses.”

“Then what?”

“Does he want to know which blood is most potent for his experiments?”

“He’d need way more blood for that.” I chewed on a tattered fingernail. “It must have something to do with the portal. That’s what he’s focused on right now.”

“Demon blood from all the Houses and a portal … what does that get him?”

Maybe the question wasn’t what he could get but what he most wanted. His ultimate goal.

“The Red Queen,” I whispered. I twisted around, my eyes meeting Zylas’s. “What House do payashē belong to?”

“They have no House.”

“But when they have male children, their sons join their father’s House, right?”

“Var.”

Which meant payashē had no House while still being connected to every House. “What if Xever needs blood from every House to summon a female demon?”

“He can’t,” Zylas replied instantly. “The summoning vīsh uses the King’s Vow. Payashē do not have dīn magic.”

“Or maybe the blood is for binding the female demon into a contract somehow.” Amalia’s face had paled. “The portal could be for getting at a female demon and the blood could be used to force a contract on her. He wants to make the cult’s Red Queen goddess a reality.”

“Then he is a fool,” Zylas snapped. “A payashē will bring death to his cult.”

I studied him. “You know more about payashē than you’ve let on. What did you mean when you said those wings were payashē magic?”

His eyes narrowed, then he turned his head away and settled into the mattress—a clear signal that he had no intention of sharing anything else. At least, not with me and Amalia.

Grimacing, I gave her a pleading look.

She rolled her eyes. “Okay, fine. There’s a restaurant next door that’s open late. Indian cuisine, decent reviews. I’ll go get some dinner.”

“Thanks.”

She shot me a “get answers out of him” look in reply, then headed for the door. The rattling, clanking washing machine drowned out the sounds of her preparing to leave, and a moment later, the apartment door banged shut.

“Zylas?” I asked softly, watching the back of his head.

He let out a long sigh. Pushing up, he tossed the blankets off the bed and settled down on his back, half propped against the headboard beside me.

“Payashē are masters of vīsh.” His expression was unreadable. “They know spells male demons don’t. They teach their daughters but never sons. They always send their sons away to their sires when their magic awakens.”

“But your father died.”

“He died,” Zylas agreed. “And I was alone in a place I had never been. A dangerous place. I knew I would die soon. Another male would kill me, or I would starve.”

“Starve?” I interrupted. “But you don’t need food.”

“Demon young need food. We need less as our magic gets stronger, but we do not stop eating until we are almost full grown.” He gazed at the ceiling, seeing another world. “After my sire died, I wandered and wandered, and then I found it.”

“Found what?”

“A secret place where payashē live. I found it because I was small and looking for places to hide.”

“What did you do?”

“I waited until morning, when the payashē were awake. Then I walked into their hidden pashir.” He stared unblinkingly upward. “I walked to the middle, where the largest … largest house was, and I waited.”

Fear zinged through me—fear for him, for his child self.

“The payashē gathered. Watched me. Laughed because I was small and weak and young. Twelfth House. I was not dangerous to them, and there were no young for them to protect at that time.

“Then she came out … the payapis.”

The matriarch.

“She asked why I had come.” He clenched and unclenched his jaw, the rest of his body eerily still. “I begged her to protect me.”

My breath caught.

“She laughed. I told her I would do anything. I begged. They all laughed.” He closed his eyes. “Payashē do not protect kanyin—young males. They will banish their own sons to die if a sire does not come.”

“Then … why did you go to them?”

He slitted his eyes open. “The payapis said yes.”

Incredulous disbelief rolled through me.

“She would have no more young. She was bored, maybe. She said to me, ‘I will protect you and you will obey every word I say. I will raise you to be strong, and when you become Dīnen, you will use what I taught you and change Ahlēavah.’”

His gaze slid to me. “I obeyed her. She taught me magic. She taught me how to fight. She taught me that it did not matter how I found victory—to find it always in any way.”

He went silent, and I struggled to gather my thoughts.

“So,” I began tentatively, “instead of learning from your father, you learned everything from a female demon? But you’re petrified of female demons.”

He scoffed in annoyance. “They are strong. Not their bodies. They are small like you, and I could push them down and hold them. You are much weaker, though,” he added.

I huffed.

“But their magic, vayanin. Many of their spells I could not learn, even though the payapis tried to teach me. The wings … that was as long as I can hold them. When payashē want to fly, they make wings and fly away. They do not fall to the ground in a short time like me.”

I tangled my fingers in the hem of my sweater. “What was it like growing up with a payapis teacher, surrounded by payashē?”