“Lēvh! Kir tūiredh’nā nul id?”

Before I could ask what was wrong, he’d twisted the other way and grabbed the Vh’alyir Amulet off the coffee table. He held the two items side by side in front of us, and I blinked down at them, trapped in the circle of his arms.

“The marking for spirit.” His words came fast, his accent thick. “It is on both. They are both places where demon spirit and human spirit meet.”

Dropping the infernus shard, he caught my wrist and pressed the Vh’alyir Amulet against my palm. His hand pressed against the medallion’s other side, fingers curling over mine, locking our hands together.

“Do you remember the words, amavrah?”

My heart drummed in a completely different way than a minute ago. I could never forget those alien words. They had saved my life. Changed my life. Once I’d spoken those words, I’d never been the same.

At my nod, his fingers tightened—then we spoke together, the phrase whispering across our lips in perfect unison, words last shared on that terrible, transformative day when we had bound our souls and our fates to each other.

“Enpedēra vīsh nā.”

The amulet burned hot beneath my palm, and the world turned to bright, bloody crimson.

A sheen of red light covered everything.

An endless, cloudless sky shone with a pale pink glow. Scarlet sand stretched away in every direction, rolling in gentle, windswept dunes. Huge clusters of tetragonal crystals jutted from the sand like gargantuan spears attempting to pierce the unreachable sky. In the bizarre red haze, they were a shade of soft rose.

It took me a long moment to realize I was still on Zylas’s lap, the blanket under us and our hands entwined around the amulet. I could feel them, feel him, but I couldn’t see them.

“Ahlēvīsh,” Zylas whispered, his voice soft and close in my ear as he named the crystal formations. “I know this place. I have been here.”

Hand trembling, I reached for the nearest crystal, a narrow spike seven feet tall. My fingers passed through it. An illusion.

The vision shimmered, the sand and sky rippling. It solidified again—and I gasped.

A demon was crouched beside us.

He stared into the distance, seemingly unaware of us. He could’ve been Zylas’s older brother—his face leaner and harder, his muscles tough and sinewy. Instead of armor, he wore a simple wrap around his hips, tied with braided rope, and more fabric was bound around his lower legs.

His dark hair was sheared unevenly, short and pragmatic, but I scarcely noticed, too focused on the eight-inch horns, dark and ridged, curving elegantly from his tangled hair.

The demon gazed straight ahead, eyes glowing brightly, then crept forward. He kept low to the ground like a prowling tiger, hands lightly touching the sand, bare feet moving with slow, smooth grace. As he drew ahead of us, his tail hovered behind him, ending in two sharp barbs that curved back toward his body.

His prowl stilled.

Movement among the Ahlēvīsh. A woman walked from between two towering crystals, one hand trailing across the glossy surface. Her eyes were wide, her human face slack with awe.

Her tiered skirt fell to her ankles, each layer of fabric vivid and patterned, though the red haze of the vision erased their colors. A wide fabric belt circled her waist, and her top featured short, fitted sleeves and a V-neck that dropped all the way to her navel, exposing a bare triangle of her skin. Elaborate necklaces covered her upper chest, the dangling ends hanging between her half-covered breasts. Long, dark hair fell down her back, twisted with fabric ties.

I couldn’t guess her skin tone in the red tint—she could’ve been olive-skinned, bronze-skinned, or deeply tanned—but for anyone who’d studied Ancient Greece, that outfit was unmistakable.

It was Minoan—a Bronze Age civilization from the island of Crete, and Europe’s first truly advanced culture.

As the woman moved through the towering crystals, the demon slunk forward another step, his movements so slow that grace should’ve been impossible, yet he flowed across the sand.

But as stealthily as he moved, he didn’t escape the woman’s notice.

She whirled to face him, her hand jumping to her wide fabric belt. Gone was the soft wonder in her face, replaced with fearless steel as she whipped out a sturdy string from which hung wooden charms, each carved with a spell. Artifacts.

Demon and human stared each other down, thirty feet between them.

The Vh’alyir’s tail twitched. “Kar eshathē?”

His mouth moved, but the sound of his words didn’t come from him. They filled my ears, surrounding me like the crimson illusion.

Zylas’s arm tightened around my middle. “He asked, ‘What are you?’”

Holding the demon’s gaze, the woman spoke—a language I’d never heard before. A language that had been lost to history over three thousand years ago when the Mycenean Greeks had overtaken Crete and absorbed the crumbling remnants of Minoan society.

Though I couldn’t understand a word she spoke, the thought that she was asking if this strange place was the Underworld popped into my head.

The Vh’alyir demon, who couldn’t understand her, hesitated for a long moment, then rose slowly from his crouch. The woman tensed, her hand clenched around her collection of artifacts. Did she have any idea how unprepared she was to battle a demon?

Cautiously raising his arm, the Vh’alyir pointed at her. “Payashē?”

She frowned, then pressed a hand to her chest. “Anthea.”

Her voice, too, came from everywhere and nowhere, hollow in my ears in the same way this vision was washed of all color but red.

Eyes narrowing, the demon repeated, “Anthea.”

She tapped her chest again. “Anthea.”

“Anthea,” he echoed flawlessly.

She pointed at him and waited.

He patted his bare chest. “Zh’rēil.”

“Zh … reel,” she repeated with difficulty.

“Zh’rēil,” he corrected.

“Zh-ree-il.”

He considered her, then warily drew closer.

Zh’rēil stopped ten paces away from Anthea, scrutinized her from her hairband down to her sandaled feet, then moved again—circling her. She turned with him, her grip tight on her artifacts.

He returned to his starting point, then stepped closer.

She called out a word, and her sharp, defiant rebuff sent him skittering sideways in a defensive retreat.

Sinking into a crouch, he slunk forward again, maybe thinking he would seem less intimidating at half her height. Anthea’s eyes were wide, but she held her ground.

Zh’rēil crept close enough to stretch out a hand and touch the edge of her linen skirt. He rubbed the fabric between his finger and thumb, his tail flicking side to side. His head tilted back, eyes moving across her face as his nostrils flared.

His tail went still.

He sprang with lightning speed, knocking the rope of artifacts from her hand as he bowled her over. She slammed down on the sand and he flipped her onto her stomach and pinned her down.

I gasped at the sudden violence, clutching Zylas’s wrist.

Anthea made no sound as she squirmed violently under Zh’rēil’s hands and knees. Maybe she feared drawing in more enemies if she made too much noise.

He pushed on the back of her neck to hold her still, then leaned down and smelled her hair. Pulling and patting at her clothes, he seemed to be trying to get a sense of what this strange female was. Still on top of her, he flipped her onto her back and pinned her upper arms with his knees. She stretched her hand out, reaching for her artifacts in the sand, just out of reach.