I entered my room, closed the door, and turned to face the bed. Zylas sat on it, back against the headboard, a book across his lap.

My heart ached as I crawled onto the bed and sat beside him. The glossy page showing the mountain in Oregon stared back at me, the corner folded down.

I pressed against his side, his smoky scent filling my nose, and rested my head on his shoulder. His warmth soaked into me, his body solid against mine. The thought that in a few hours he would be gone … it didn’t compute. It didn’t make sense. How could I lose this?

How could I lose him?

“I wish we could’ve traveled together,” I whispered, “and seen all the places in your book, even if it took a lifetime.”

Especially if it took a lifetime.

“Hnn.” His head turned and I looked up. Our foreheads touched. “Would you have spent your lifetime with me, amavrah?”

His question sank through me, embedding itself in my crumbling heart. “Yes.”

“Even though I am not hh’ainun and could not do all the hh’ainun things?”

Tears stung my eyes. “Yes.”

“Even though it is more dangerous for you to be a contractor?”

“That doesn’t matter.” I touched his cheek, then slid my hand up into his hair and pressed my fingertips to his small horns. “Would you have spent my lifetime with me, even though I’m not a payashē and you don’t belong in my world?”

His crimson eyes moved across my face.

“Robin!”

I jolted at Amalia’s shout, my hand pulling from his hair.

The bedroom door flew open and Amalia rushed in, Uncle Jack following right behind her. Her face was pale, a glowing cell phone clutched in her hand.

Instantly alarmed, I swung my legs off the bed. “What’s wrong?”

“Dad and I were talking about the bounties on us, and he went to pull up my profile on the MPD site to see the charges, and look!”

She thrust the phone under my nose. A white webpage filled the screen with a mythic identification code across the top. Beneath that should’ve been her name, photo, and personal information. Instead, there was a single line of text:

Damnatio Memoriae

I stared at the two words. “What … what does that mean?”

“I don’t know, but it’s on your profile too, see?” She tapped on the screen, then held it up again. “Same thing! What the hell?”

Like Amalia’s page, “Damnatio Memoriae” had replaced my name and information on the MPD archive page. I looked questioningly at Uncle Jack, but he shook his head.

“I’ve never seen anything like that before. It could be a website error.”

“No,” I said with chilling certainty. “A website error wouldn’t be in Latin. And damnatio means damnation, an adverse judgment.”

Amalia recoiled. “You mean, like … we’ve already been condemned?”

“Damnatio memoriae,” I muttered. “Damnation of … memory. As in … erasing our memories?”

“Or erasing us from all memory? Removing us from the database is like telling the rest of the mythic world we don’t exist.”

A shiver ran through me. “Try searching for Ezra.”

She typed on her phone for a moment. “All his info is gone too. Even the bounty and warnings about a demon mage.”

“What about Tori, Aaron, and Kai?”

More tapping. “Same.”

The cold in my veins deepened. “Look up the Crow and Hammer.”

She shot me a frightened look, then typed the guild name into the search.

“Damnatio Memoriae,” she whispered.

“Erased.” I pressed my fingertips to my temples. “Someone erased us … and not just you and me. The whole Crow and Hammer. Why would the MPD do that? They can disband guilds, but they don’t erase them, not unless …”

Unless a guild or group threatened the secrecy of magic. That was the MPD’s ultimate mandate: to protect magic. But the Crow and Hammer hadn’t tried to expose the existence of magic.

But they had tried to expose the existence of Xever’s cult.

I closed my eyes, bringing up the image of the city map from the tower. The red circle around the Crow and Hammer, the paper creased from the pen being dragged forcefully across it. The other markings in different colors … surrounding the guild.

Erasing the guild’s listing from the MPD’s database was a pointless move unless Xever also intended to erase the guild itself—and all its members.

I shot to my feet. “Xever is planning to destroy the Crow and Hammer.”

Amalia and Uncle Jack started. Zylas, crouched on the bed, merely blinked at me.

“Where are you getting that from?” she asked dubiously.

“This is him!” I jabbed my finger at the phone. “He’s behind it. I don’t know how, but pulling strings from the shadows is his MO. He’ll lose everything if the cult is exposed, and the only way to keep the cult a secret is to destroy the guild trying to expose it.”

Amalia looked from her phone to me and back. “How do you just destroy a guild? It’s not like he can drop a bomb on the building.”

“He doesn’t need a bomb. The vampires, Amalia, remember? He was trying to build up a force of demon-blood-addicted vampires. That wasn’t just for fun.”

“And the golems.” Her throat moved with a swallow. “He traded them to that dark sorceress, but why did he have an army of golems in the first place?”

I nodded. “And demon mages. The cult worships demons, and stuffing them inside human bodies isn’t what I’d call reverent. He wasn’t making demon mages for the cult.”

“He made them to protect the cult.” She gripped the phone tightly. “We need to warn the guild.”

I dove to the bedside table and grabbed the burner phone. I’d turned it off since we were all together, and I fidgeted anxiously as it powered up.

The screen flashed to life. No new messages from Zora. I tapped her number and started a call.

It clicked straight to voicemail.

“I mean, it’s the middle of the night,” Amalia mumbled.

“She answered in the middle of the night last time.” I handed the phone to her. “Try Ezra and Tori and the others.”

She dialed number after number. No one answered.

Taking the useless phone back, I dropped it on the bed. “If you were about to attempt rare, dangerous magic that you’d spent years preparing, and there was a guild poised to ruin everything for you, would you eliminate them before or after your all-important spell?”

“Before,” Amalia and Uncle Jack answered in unison.

“He’s going to destroy them tonight. Now. Before the portal spell is ready.”

A long silence stretched between the four of us.

“We need to go to Admiralty Point,” Amalia said. “We need time to figure out what Xever’s protections are and how to get at the portal.”

“If he’s waging war on your guild,” Uncle Jack added gruffly, “then he won’t be at the portal. All the better for us to gain control of it before he arrives.”

Their logic was solid, and I bit my lip as I turned toward Zylas. He gazed back at me, considering our options.