As crimson light washed over the steel beams, the man dropped to the ground. He landed with a near soundless thud, air swirling out from his feet, and straightened, his attention locked on Zylas.

I stared at the man, my body cold. “Ezra?”

His eyes, one dark and one pale, focused on me. He was dressed for combat, with a pair of long, fingerless gloves running from his hands to upper arms, the knuckles and elbows studded with shiny steel. “Robin.”

“You …” I swallowed hard. “What are you doing here?”

“Waiting for you.”

I’d been afraid of that. “Is this actually the crime scene?”

“Yes.” He began to move—his steps slow, prowling, graceful. His attention returned to Zylas, unflinching despite the power crawling up the demon’s arms. “Well? Is the sorcerer’s scent here or not?”

“Smell for it yourself,” Zylas growled as frost spread in a ring around his feet.

Pacing wide, Ezra circled me and my demon, forcing us to turn with him. “Human noses aren’t sensitive enough for tracking.”

“Eshathē nul hh’ainun.”

Ezra’s smile was bitter ice. “You’re right and wrong. I’m not quite human … and he’s not quite demon.”

Fear cut through me, colder than the chill tainting the air around Zylas.

Ezra stopped and faced us. Crimson light reflected off his pale eye—or … no …

His pale eye wasn’t reflecting Zylas’s demonic power. It was glowing with its own, the crimson gleam brightening. Ezra’s breath puffed white as the temperature dropped. Ice formed on the ground around him, creeping outward in a frosty ring.

Red magic lit his fingertips, then shot up his arms in tangled lines. It snaked up over his shoulders, up his neck, and across his cheeks. As power bled from his glowing left eye, two pairs of phantom horns formed above his temples.

“Kin adairilnus, Zylas et Vh’alyir?” he rumbled.

Zylas’s tail lashed to the side—and he lunged. Ezra caught his wrist, halting his slashing crimson claws before they made contact. It shouldn’t have been possible. Ezra’s human body and human muscles shouldn’t have been capable of stopping a demon’s strike.

Except Ezra had admitted it moments ago: I’m not quite human.

Zylas twisted free with a snarl. He and Ezra faced each other, then in unison, began to circle. Ezra’s pale eye glowed like magma, those phantom horns rising from his head.

Since my and Tori’s visit to Odin’s Eye, the possibility had lurked in the back of my mind, but Amalia had agreed with me: despite the demon magic scent Zylas could detect, there was no way one of the three mages could be a demon mage.

We’d been so wrong.

Panting fearfully, I backed away. Trapped inside Ezra’s body was a demon. A Second House demon, like Nazhivēr, who was far more powerful than Zylas.

“Silisērathē?” Zylas spat.

“I know you,” the demon mage answered, switching back to English—but this time, his words carried a guttural accent Ezra didn’t possess. “I remember very well. The Naventis ten years ago—my last before I was summoned. Your first. Do you remember, Zylas?”

Zylas continued to circle, the demon mage matching his steps.

“When the spell struck, obliterating the Kahh’rūa Dīnen with an attack I’d never seen, we thought a female in a rage had come to challenge us. Instead, you walked in. A third rank Dīnen at the Naventis when none had attended in centuries—and a Vh’alyir, no less, who hadn’t dared show their faces for a thousand years.”

As though a signal had passed between them, they stopped. Ezra’s left eye glowed even brighter.

“You strutted to the remains of your enemy and claimed a horn as your prize—the largest piece of him that remained. Then you told us, Dīnen far above you, ‘Raistilthē nā nulla, ait ah shālin, raistilnā thē.’”

The demon mage turned his eerie gaze on me. “‘You will never find me, but from the shadows, I will find you.’ And that year, he killed all four Dīnen of the second rank.”

I have taught them to fear Vh’alyir. Zylas’s savage declaration when he’d first told me how the Twelfth House was relentlessly hunted.

“You are Eterran et Dh’irath,” Zylas said abruptly.

The demon inside Ezra smiled viciously. “Well met, Dīnen.”

“We are not Dīnen anymore.”

“But we may yet become Ivaknen.”

Ivaknen—a word Zylas had mentioned that meant “the Summoned.”

I scanned the demon mage’s face. We were talking to the demon, but what had happened to Ezra? Was he still there?

Zylas bared his teeth. “Tell me what you want or I will see how many holes I can rip in that soft hh’ainun body before you die.”

Unfazed, he slid his gaze to me. “We want to trade.”

Those words … they had no accent.

“‘We’?” I whispered.

“Eterran and I want to trade with you and Zylas.”

Ezra. This was Ezra speaking.

I swallowed hard. “You and your demon … you can … uh …”

“Cooperate?” His mouth thinned with something like disgust. “Obviously we can. We want to live, and neither of us will survive much longer sharing a body.”

The red glow in his left eye flared. “Which is exactly why we are here,” Eterran added in his harsh accent.

My head spun. From the little I knew about demon mages, I was pretty sure “cooperation” wasn’t usually an option for the demon and its host.

“No demon would ask for a prize without offering an equal payment,” Eterran continued, “but I have learned many things in my time here. Sometimes prize and payment don’t align.”

“Say your meaning,” Zylas snapped.

“I want something from you, and I want it now.”

“You have nothing to exchange.”

“Not now.” A cold smile. “But what if you want something from me later?”

Zylas’s eyes narrowed.

The demon mage’s gaze shifted to me. “Maybe Robin will need something,” Ezra said, “that we can help with.”

“Or maybe you will need help protecting her,” Eterran added silkily, “against an enemy stronger than you.”