Gulping back my panic, I concentrated on the heat of Zylas’s magic—and called it forth. Crimson lit my fingertips and spread across my hands and wrists, the glow bright to my eyes after so much time spent in darkness.

And a radiant beacon for the watching demons.

Eleven pairs of red eyes raked across the trees where I hid, searching for the source of the telltale magic.

The second demon—Nazhivēr—gestured toward the demons at the end. He said something in the guttural demonic language, and the last three demons started forward.

My hands still glowing, I spun on my heel and raced deeper into the trees. A shallow, narrow gully opened up, and I ran into it, following a dry creek bed. At a dense clump of bushes with dead leaves clinging to the branches, I ducked behind them and extinguished the glow on my hands.

The crunching footsteps of the demons turned to thuds as they reached the creek bed. As silently as possible, I stretched my head up to peer through the thinner top of the bush.

The first demon—nearly identical to Uncle Jack’s eight-foot-tall demon with scaled patches on its limbs and an apelike face—passed the thick trunk of a spruce that leaned over the gully. The second demon—almost as tall with short tusks and a thin line of hair running all the way down its back to a lion-like tail—followed, its footfalls notably quieter than the first. The third demon—only six feet tall but twice the weight of the others, with an armored head as though it were wearing a bony helmet—stepped beneath the tree.

Now.

I summoned Zylas’s magic again, created a small cantrip above my palm, and whispered, “Igniaris.”

A foot-tall flare of orange fire surged upward, the light bursting across the dark forest. The attention of all three demons shot straight for me.

And in that moment of distraction, Zylas dropped out of the tree above the third demon. He landed on the demon’s broad back, grabbed his horns from behind, and swung over the demon’s left side, feet braced against the demon’s shoulder as he wrenched hard.

Bone crunched as the demon’s neck broke.

As the demon fell, the other two whipped around to face Zylas—and that’s when Zora leaped out from behind a boulder on one side of the gully. On the other side, crimson light erupted as Uncle Jack summoned his demon.

Against a faster, smarter, more loosely contracted demon like Nazhivēr, things might have gone differently. But these demons weren’t smart enough to react to the ambush in time to save their lives.

One fell, bowled over by Uncle Jack’s demon, and Zylas pounced, his claws tearing through the demon’s throat. The other demon dropped to his knees, Zora’s sword through his chest. Zylas ripped that one’s throat out too.

Our quick and dirty ambush was done—but we had no time to set up another.

Zylas sprang away from the dead demons and landed beside me. Panic thudded in my chest as I looked at Zora, who’d just wrenched her sword free from the demon corpse.

“Are you ready?” I whispered.

Smiling tersely, she reached over her shoulder and grasped the hilt of her new sword. The crystalline pommel gleamed faintly as she drew the blade, revealing a jagged pattern of light and dark Damascus steel sweeping from hilt to point.

“Ready,” she answered, a sword in each hand.

Zylas grabbed me around the waist and launched toward the plateau, but a moment before breaking through the tree line, he sprang at the enormous trunk of a spruce tree. I held on tightly as he climbed with agile leaps until we were a hundred feet above the ground.

Crimson flared over his arms and raced up to his shoulders. His power sizzled the air, tingling over my skin, and his eyes burned as he chanted in the demonic language.

Below, Zora appeared at the edge of the clearing. She stuck the points of her two swords into the ground, pulled something off her belt, and tipped her head back. A potion.

Strength enhancement, she’d said, so she could wield two weapons. It would last three minutes.

The power gathering at Zylas’s shoulders flared brighter.

Zora grabbed her two swords and slid down a rough dirt bank to the granite plateau below. She charged toward the line of waiting demons—and four of them set out to meet her.

Four demons against one sorceress.

Zylas snarled the final words of his incantation, and the burning crimson flashed even brighter. Huge phantom wings spread wide on either side of him, magic writhing across them in webs of light. His arms clamped around me—and he leaped from the tree.

This time, he didn’t merely glide. The wings swept down, propelling us out over the plateau.

Beneath us, Zora sprinted toward the demons. As they closed in on her, she launched into a spinning skid and swung her swords in a full arc around her.

“Ori inimicos glacie ferio hiemis!”

Her incantation rang out, and a wave of white exploded outward in a violent ring. The blast swept into the oncoming demons, and she and her opponents vanished in a pale cloud.

His phantom wings beating, Zylas flew past them as the white swirled away, revealing a ring of jagged ice, six feet high, encircling a bare patch of rocky ground with Zora at its center. The four demons were frozen in the ice up to their chests.

Then we were past them, sweeping toward our waiting enemies.

The first rank. The four most powerful Houses.

And all of them had wings.

Lūsh’vēr, the First House—like Tahēsh, he was broad-shouldered, with a heavy, hairless head and a thick tail that ended in a bone-crushing plate. His horns were the longest, arching high above his head. An old, experienced demon.

Dh’irath, the Second House—beside the First House demon, Nazhivēr’s six and a half feet seemed average, his build lighter and more agile.

Gh’reshēr, the Third House—taller even than the Lūsh’vēr demon, his chest was thick and his wings broader. His tail was extra long and heavy, maybe to compensate for his greater weight, and a messy mane of black hair framed his bony face.

Ash’amadē, the Fourth House—the demon I’d barely glimpsed before he’d thrown me into a wall with so much force he’d shattered my ribs and cracked my skull. He was closest in build to Nazhivēr, a bit shorter and leaner, with narrow wings for swift flight and a thin tail with barbs edging the entire bottom third.

All four demons—the Third and Fourth House in front, Nazhivēr and the First House demon behind—spread their wings, ready to leap skyward and intercept us.

Terror raced through me as Zylas folded his phantom wings and dove for the waiting demons.

They raised their arms, glowing talons forming as they prepared to rip Zylas apart. One small Twelfth House demon was no match for them. He was an ambush hunter attacking straight-on. He didn’t stand a chance.

He hadn’t even begun a spell. Holding the phantom wings was all he could manage. He was racing heedlessly into the claws of death, and I choked on a scream.

As we plunged toward our enemies, Nazhivēr drew his arm back to deliver the first strike—

—and drove his eight-inch talons into the back of the Gh’reshēr’s skull.

Chapter Thirty-One

The monstrous Third House demon pitched forward, dead before he hit the ground.

Zylas snapped his wings out, a pained breath rasping through his clenched teeth, and dropped down beside Nazhivēr.