“They were right.”

Zylas whispered the words, and I looked up at him, cradling my sore hand.

He stared down at the amulet. “Vh’alyir are karkis. We are traitors. We caused summoning.”

My throat tightened with sympathy—and guilt of my own. “What one Vh’alyir demon did thousands of years ago … it’s not your fault.”

I slid off his lap and sat beside him as the burning ache in my palm diminished. Cautiously, I touched the amulet. The metal was cool, and I picked it up.

“Anthea and Zh’rēil created summoning to help each other—to punish the other Houses and save Minoan civilization. But Minoan civilization fell.” I pressed my fingers to my forehead, dredging up my studies of Greek history. “Around 1600 BC—that’s thirty-six hundred years ago—a volcano erupted in the Sea of Crete, causing tsunamis that destroyed Crete’s entire coastline. Based on that town Anthea showed Zh’rēil, I think that had already happened by Anthea’s time.”

The Minoans had been a mercantile people, reliant on their ships for both trade and defense. Historians theorized that tsunamis had obliterated the Minoans’ port cities and fleets, crashing their economy and leaving them destitute—and vulnerable.

“Invaders from the mainland,” I murmured. “The Mycenean Greeks. Anthea wanted to protect Crete from the Myceneans, but her island was overrun less than two centuries after the volcanic eruption. Enslaving demons to help fight off the invaders didn’t work.”

“It did not help Vh’alyir either.” Bitterness infused Zylas’s husky voice. “We are hunted without mercy. We are almost all gone.”

I ran my thumb across the Vh’alyir symbol on the amulet. “Zh’rēil wanted to punish the other Houses for hunting his House.”

“He wanted to remove the powerful Dīnen.” Zylas twisted his mouth. “He could not kill them. He wanted them to disappear so different Dīnen would become powerful—Dīnen who would decide differently about killing Vh’alyir for fun.”

Instead, Zh’rēil’s attempt to save his House had doomed it. The First and Second Houses had figured out enough to blame Vh’alyir for the strange new curse upon demonkind.

“They made their pact to last one hundred years,” I murmured, my gaze turning toward the grimoire. “After one hundred years, they planned to … to end it.”

My pulse drummed in my ears as I said the words.

“Anthea never intended for summoning to be permanent.” I pressed my hand to my forehead. “It was never supposed to spread to hundreds or thousands of sorcerers, or cause hundreds of Dīnen to be summoned every year, destabilizing demon society.”

“But they did not end it.”

“Why not? Anthea couldn’t have done it herself. She wouldn’t have lived that long. She must have entrusted the job to her offspring … to her daughter or her granddaughter.”

“Maybe Zh’rēil died. And the First House stole the amulet.”

“Maybe …” I continued to stare at the grimoire, cold suspicion blooming through me. “But I don’t think it was his fault.”

I reached for my notebook of translations, pulled it onto my lap, and flipped to Myrrine Athanas’s very first journal entry.

“‘Why would Anthea forbid summoning of the Twelfth House?’” I read aloud. “‘Why warn us of the retribution of their descendants, but fear not the vengeance of any other House? Why is the Twelfth House different? And thus I wonder: Could it be a false warning with a deceitful purpose?’”

I looked up at Zylas. “A false warning. Anthea didn’t forbid summoning of the Twelfth House. She intended the Twelfth House to be summoned after one hundred years so her descendant and his successor could perform whatever magic was necessary to end summoning.”

Zylas’s eyes narrowed. “Not his successor. Zh’rēil could survive that long.”

My mouth hung open. “He … how old do you think he was?”

“I do not know. I have never seen a Vh’alyir that old.” He waved the topic away as unimportant. “Zh’rēil waited to be summoned so he and a hh’ainun could end the vīsh.”

“But no one summoned him.” I flipped pages to my translation of Melitta’s only entry in the grimoire. “Here Myrrine’s younger sister said, ‘Without the lost amulet, without the secrets or the truth Anthea deemed too dangerous for the written word, we will never know why she cursed us so.’”

I tapped the page. “What if Anthea didn’t purposely leave information out of the grimoire? What if, when the one hundred years was up, her daughter or granddaughter decided to wait longer to end summoning? Minoan civilization was even worse off by that time, and the Myceneans continued to invade.”

“They wanted to keep the power.”

I nodded. “And they waited too long. Maybe by the time they tried to summon him, Zh’rēil had died. They ended up summoning a new Vh’alyir Dīnen who had no clue about the origins of summoning magic—or if he did, he couldn’t perform the magic to end it because he didn’t have the amulet.”

“He could not be bound to a contract,” Zylas murmured.

“If they let him out of the summoning circle … it probably didn’t go well. And whatever happened caused one of my ancestors to add that warning to never summon the Twelfth House.”

I touched the edge of the grimoire. I would never know why so much was missing from it—whether pages had been lost, damaged, or deliberately altered. The Minoans had possessed their own language and alphabet, meaning one of Anthea’s descendants had translated it into Ancient Greek after leaving Crete. No translation was perfect. Every time the book was copied, a little more was lost.

But there were clues still. Melitta had written, But I ask you this, daughter of my daughter, honorable scribe, survivor, sorceress: When will it end? Had she suspected summoning was supposed to end? Had she and Myrrine found clues hidden in the text—bits of experimentation, little messages in demonic like the one about souls in the infernus?

But those clues hadn’t been enough. Something, somewhere, had gone terribly wrong with Anthea and Zh’rēil’s plan, and then it’d been too late to fix.

I imagined Zh’rēil, still carrying the amulet, waiting as endless years passed. Watching more and more Dīnen be summoned away and chaos engulf demon society. Watching the other Houses turn on his when it became clear Vh’alyir were exempt from this new, terrible magic no demon could fight.

How long had he waited for Anthea’s descendants to summon him?

“What did he say?” I asked abruptly. “At the end of the vision?”

“‘Dakevh’il Ahlēa nā?’” Zylas’s lips pressed into a thin line. “‘Will Ahlēa punish me?’”

Punish him? Zh’rēil must have known the summoning magic was dangerous … that it was wrong. And his worst fears had come true. A pact intended to last one hundred years had become a slow genocide spanning three and a half millennia.

“Zylas.” I held the amulet toward him. “Try it. See what happens.”

He reached out, his fingers hovering inches from the swinging medallion. Then he closed his hand around it and rose to his feet. I scrambled to join him as he faced the open side of the living room, the coffee table behind us.