“Whoa, shit! Are you hurt?”

“Who’s the woman? Is she from the SeaDevils?”

“Where were you guys?”

“Do you need a healer? Sanjana is here.”

“Did you come from the SeaDevils guild?”

Kai was saying something, his voice drowned out by others, then he swept into the crowd. Ezra followed right behind him with Makiko in his arms. Aaron started after them, waving at me and Zak to join him. Guild members hurriedly cleared a path for our rumpled, sooty group.

We traipsed upstairs to the large workroom, where we found the apprentice healer Sanjana, exactly where I’d last seen her: poring over medical textbooks for an upcoming test. On top of training in healing Arcana, she was a third-year med student. She instantly abandoned her work and had Kai lay Makiko across an empty table.

As Sanjana began her examination, her long, dark brown hair threatening to fall out of its loose bun, Sin stuck her head around the corner by the stairs.

“Hey,” she called hesitantly. “Do you need help, Sanjana?”

The healer glanced up. “Do you have a burn salve? Can you apply it to Kai’s arm? I’ll get to him next, but it’ll be a while.” She squinted at us. “I assume there are no injuries beyond what I can see.”

“Nope,” Aaron confirmed. “We made it out relatively unscathed. Except for Makiko.”

Sin heaved her alchemy case onto a free corner of the table, her curious gaze darting between Makiko and Zak. Kai turned away from his fiancée, and Sin blanched at the sight of the blood all over his face.

She recovered quickly. “Take off your shirt and I’ll clean—”

“Cut it off him,” Sanjana said without looking up. “You don’t want to rupture any blisters. Aaron, can you get a healing kit from downstairs?”

“You got it.”

Sin fetched scissors from the supply cupboard and snipped through Kai’s shirt, revealing soot stains and pink burns all over his arm. Aaron returned a minute later with a huge medical kit. The guild always had supplies on hand for our healers so they didn’t have to haul their personal kits around every day. Sanjana opened it and dug around.

Sitting Kai on a chair, Sin poured clear liquid on a white cloth and gently wiped the soot off his arm. “I was wondering where you’d all rushed off to earlier. How did you find out about the SeaDevils so fast?”

Me, Kai, Aaron, and Ezra gave her blank looks.

She frowned. “You weren’t at the SeaDevils?”

“Why,” I huffed, “does everyone keep bringing up the SeaDevils?”

“Because their guild was attacked an hour ago?”

We all stiffened.

“What?” Aaron demanded. “You mean like the Pandora Knights attack?”

Sin nodded as she uncapped a jar of white cream. “The SeaDevils’ headquarters were destroyed. Lyndon said an Odin’s Eye friend of his is claiming the building was completely leveled.”

“Was anyone hurt?”

Her gaze dropped. “There were two mythics there and they … they were killed.” She slathered cream over Kai’s arm. “Some of our guys planned to go help, but the MPD issued a notice asking mythics to keep away for now because there were TV crews filming the fire.”

I slumped in my chair. Another attack. Two mythics killed. Varvara wasn’t messing around.

Silence fell over the room. As Sin wrapped gauze over Kai’s arm, he watched his fiancée with a worried crease between his brows. Sanjana, biting her lip in concentration, was drawing directly on the table while Makiko lay prone on it like a beautiful, slightly scorched mannequin.

My gaze shifted to Zak. He sat on the edge of a nearby table, watching the healer with a “professional assessment” sort of air. His Arcana specialty was alchemy, but he dabbled in sorcery and healing, as I’d seen when he’d whipped up rattlesnake antivenin in thirty minutes. As a dedicated black-magic-wielding rogue with no social life, he probably had lots of free time to advance his skills.

My attention slid past Zak to a table even farther from the rest of us. Ezra leaned against it, his arms folded as he gazed absently at nothing. I remembered Kai’s words on our flight to LA. He’s been quiet lately.

Ezra had been quiet. Withdrawn. His deadpan humor had been noticeably absent, his smiles reserved, the sparkle in his eyes half-hearted at best. I couldn’t imagine how he’d gone so long pretending everything was fine, but the future was weighing on him too heavily now for him to hide it—or maybe I was only now noticing the true weight he carried. Either way, his time was running out.

Pushing to my feet, I announced, “I need a shower. Later.”

I felt my friends’ attention on me, but I strode determinedly to the stairs. Rushing down them, I paused at the bottom to take in the number of guildeds filling the pub, drawn here by the attack on the SeaDevils. Over half our combat mythics, already in their gear, waited for the MPD’s permission to get out there and start tracking down the culprits, and the rest were here because the company of their guildmates eased their disquiet over the attack.

How I wanted to slip in among them and let the conversation and camaraderie ease my discomfort too.

Instead, I wheeled around the corner to the door, hidden behind the upper staircase, that led into the basement. The lower level was abandoned, the exercise equipment waiting patiently for tomorrow’s morning workout. Movie posters covered the walls, a glaring mishmash of colors that brightened the space.

I took a long shower, the falling water echoing off the tiled walls. As I massaged conditioner into my curls, my thoughts spun and anxiety poured into my poor stressed stomach. Kai and Makiko and his family. Zak and Lallakai and his stolen grimoire. Ezra and Eterran and the full moon only a few days away.

Then there was Varvara and her schemes. Two attacks in one night. Those terrifying golems. An unknown number of rogues. What exactly was her goal? A city-wide takeover? Did she want to run the guilds out so she could reign unopposed?

I splashed water over my face, eyes squeezed shut. A vision flashed in my head: the Death card, its dark reaper holding a bloody scythe, and Sabrina’s quiet voice, her warning.

I think you need to tell him soon.

Shivering under the hot spray, I hurriedly finished my shower. I dried off and dressed in yoga pants and a sweatshirt from my locker, then dealt with my hair—back into a bun. Just before shutting my locker door, I touched the buckle of my combat belt. Hoshi’s pouch was empty; she must’ve been off in fae land.

I’d come so far from the girl whose first weapon had been an umbrella, but I still wasn’t strong enough. At this rate, I would lose all of them—Ezra, Kai, Zak. It’d just be me and Aaron left, and we’d both be miserable.

Rubbing a hand over my eyes, I shut my locker and wrinkled my nose at my smoky clothing, lying in a heap on the bench in front of the lockers. Yuck. I kicked them down to the end of the bench to deal with later. My pants fell onto the floor, and something colorful peeked out of the pocket.

Stooping, I picked up the small folded square. The deep purple fabric was soft, supple, and strangely heavy. The Carapace of Valdurna. Even at the cost of its user’s magic, it seemed like a tool that could solve any problem. Invincibility! What mythic couldn’t use that from time to time?

But I got why Zak didn’t care for the Carapace. Invincible, but magic-less. Invincible, but useless. Invincibility couldn’t save Ezra, Kai, or Zak. Keeping them alive wasn’t strictly the problem. I needed to save Ezra’s mind and soul, Kai’s freedom, and Zak’s … I wasn’t sure what Zak needed, but he definitely needed some kind of help.

Sighing, I stuffed the Carapace in my pocket to return to Zak and pushed through the door into the workout room. The muffled clatter of a locker brought me up short. I paused, squinting at the door to the men’s showers.

Another clatter, then Ezra appeared, his damp curls brushed back from his face as though he’d combed his fingers through them. He’d changed into a t-shirt and sweats, his baldric gone—which made sense, seeing as he no longer had a weapon for it to hold.

My stomach flip-flopped strangely. “Hey. Showered too?”

“Yeah.” He smiled but it didn’t reach his eyes. “Without you to babysit them, Aaron and Zak started a new glaring contest. It was getting on my nerves.”

Since I wasn’t all that eager to go give them shit for acting like twelve-year-olds, I dropped onto a weight-lifting bench, the leather giving off the faint smell of sanitizer.

“I don’t know what to do about Zak,” I muttered. “He’s not a bad guy, but …”

Ezra sank onto the bench beside me. “That’s an ominous ‘but.’”

I bit my lip. I hadn’t told anyone what I’d witnessed on that rooftop, and I didn’t know why. It wasn’t that I was protecting Zak. I just couldn’t seem to bring it up—but maybe I needed to.

“When we got back in town last night, he ran a rogue onto a rooftop, questioned the guy, then …” I swallowed back my stomach, hearing the sound all over again. “Then dropped him off the building.”

Ezra sucked in a sharp breath.

“I didn’t think he’d do it.” I wrung my hands together. “I mean, it crossed my mind, but I didn’t believe he’d go that far. If I’d thought … maybe I could’ve stopped him.”

“It isn’t your fault, Tori.”

“But I was right there. I should’ve … I should’ve realized …”

He slid his warm arm around my waist and drew me against his side. “You couldn’t have guessed what he was planning, and I don’t think you could have stopped him even if you had.”

My gut swooped in a sickening way. What would Zak have done if I had tried to save that man’s life?

“He was annoyed …” The words came slowly, the realization blossoming as I spoke. “When he realized I’d seen the whole thing, he was annoyed … and when he noticed I was upset, he got angry at me.”