Chapter One
“I can feel it planning something.”
Helena lifted her head from the crook of Aleksi’s arm. She had just been on the verge of falling asleep, even though sleep wasn’t entirely welcome, not these last three nights. Ever since she had seen the fragment of the Black Emperor thrashing through the swamp, her sleep had been fragmented by dark, chaotic dreams. She’d wake from them shivering in bed.
“What do you mean?” She turned to Aleksi—to the demon Byleth, since he still hadn’t gathered up the strength to redo the glamour spell that made him look human. His fiery red eyes peered up at her in the dark, and although they were the red of Infernal fires, she still sensed the fear in him.
“The fragment. It’s planning something.” Aleksi shifted his gaze up to the ceiling of the living room of Corina’s trailer in the middle of the Louisiana swamp. Helena had been sleeping on the pullout couch there, since Juniper was still recovering in the guest bedroom. She had been nearly killed in those moments that the fragment was pulled through from the Infernal realm, and her recovery was slow—but it was happening, much to Helena’s relief.
Helena ran a finger along the sharp planes of Aleksi’s demonic face, and he tilted his head back to her, those red eyes searing. “I don’t know what. But I can feel its intention. It’s going to act soon.”
Helena shivered, and Aleksi immediately pulled her close to his strong, muscular chest. She could hear the erratic churn of his heart. Its strange inhuman rhythm never changed, whether he was glamoured or not. “We’ll have to do something,” she whispered.
“You’re all still too weak.” Aleksi’s long, clawed fingers stroked Helena’s hair, and she closed her eyes against the tenderness of it. How easily she had adjusted to his demonic form, the silky black scales of his skin, the leathery wings, the spiraling horns. But she did sometimes miss his human form, too, with its sharp cheekbones and long glossy black hair and endless loops of tattooed sigils. She knew it would be back soon enough. When he was stronger.
It wasn’t just the humans who had been weakened by the near catastrophe three nights ago.
“We’re too weak,” she said pointedly. Then she brushed her lips against his mouth. He deepened the kiss without hesitation, his mouth hungry and eager. All of his kisses these last three days had been the kisses of a starving man.
“I know,” he murmured against her mouth, his hands still tangled up in her hair. “But I can feel it, the way its mind is turning around—if I could get closer, I might be able to get a sense of what it’s thinking—”
“No.” Helena sat up and cupped Aleksi’s new face in her hands. She stared at him, strange and beautiful and utterly
terrifying. “You know damn well you can’t leave the trailer without a glamour.”
His mouth quirked up in a smile. “You just miss my old look.”
She smacked his shoulder. “Maybe a little.”
Aleksi laughed: in this form, it was a low, grumbly sound, sharp-edged like the Infernal language they sometimes spoke together, now that Helena could speak it, even when she wasn’t working magic. Then he sighed and pulled her back to him, the moment of levity gone. “We can’t wait much longer.”
“Of course not.” Helena sighed. “But what choice do we have?”
Before Aleksi could respond, the front door of the trailer slammed open, and a trio of bickering voices filled up the living room.
“For the last time, I haven’t called the goddamn Lineage!” Juniper stomped into the trailer carting a trio of plastic grocery bags.
“You sound just like your sister.” Dominic Regen came in after her, more bags swinging from his arms.
“Yeah, and she was telling the truth.” Finally, Corina Vincent ducked inside, empty-handed except for the keys to her pickup truck. “So quit bitching.”
“Thank you!” Juniper glanced over at Helena and Aleksi as she passed, and her expression darkened into a frown—although she didn’t say anything. For that, Helena was grateful.
Aleksi had saved Juniper’s life, but Helena knew that for her sister, seeing Helena wrapped up in the arms of a demon was still going to be a hard sell.
“I was able to get us stocked up on rue and feverfew,” Corina said, sliding into the armchair set up beside the sofa bed. She looked tired, Helena thought. They all did. “I’ll be able to whip up a healing ointment this afternoon. Hopefully it’ll expedite the process a bit. Get us stronger faster.”
“That’s good.” Aleksi pulled away from the couch and stood up, crouching slightly so his horns wouldn’t scrape the trailer’s low ceiling. “Because we’re going to need to take action sooner rather than later. I can feel it.”
Corina frowned.
“Seriously, man?” Dom stuck his head out of the kitchen, scowling. “You were nearly slaughtered by Gavin Vargo three days ago. So was she!” He gestured wildly at Juniper.
“I’m not ready to do shit,” she said matter-of-factly.
Aleksi sighed, his massive shoulders slumping. “We don’t have a choice,” he murmured. “The fragment’s on the move. It’s getting closer to the edge of the swamp. Heading west.” He looked up, his eyes flicking around the room. Helena stood up and pressed one hand softly against his arm, ignoring the dark shadow that passed over her sister’s face.
Corina and Dom looked at each other with defeated expressions. Juniper crossed her arms over her chest. Helena turned her face to Aleksi.
“What do you want to do?” she asked softly.
“Yes, please enlighten us,” Dom grumbled.
“Do I need to remind you that you were in Mississippi when the three of us were being tortured by Gavin?” Aleksi snapped.
Heat flushed into Helena’s cheeks. What she went through with Gavin was nothing compared to what happened to Aleksi and Juniper.
Or her parents.
Corina narrowed her eyes. “We were doing spell after spell in Mississippi trying to get you back. Maybe you should show some—”
“Enough!” Aleksi’s voice erupted from somewhere deep in his chest, and it wasn’t until Helena saw the stricken looks on the others’ faces that she realized Aleksi had spoken Infernal, not English. Juniper trembled, her eyes wide and glassy with fear.
“He’s right,” Helena said quickly, stepping in front of Aleksi. “And you all know it. He’s more connected to the fragment than any of us, and if he feels it moving, if he feels it planning something, then we should listen. He’s not asking us to go fight it right this moment.” She hesitated. “Right?”
Aleksi nodded, wings rippling softly. “All I want to do is see what it’s doing,” he said. “I just—this sense I have, that it’s planning something—I can’t shake it.” He sat down on the couch, barely fitting in his new form, and looked up with his red eyes. “Yes, Dom, I’m exhausted. Just like all of you. Existing in this body in this world is exhausting. Look at me!” He swept his arms out. “I barely fit in this trailer. But this fragment is a threat to this entire world. We can’t let it go too long.” His eyes flashed like twin fires. “And you know it.”
Helena looked over at the others. At Juniper. “He’s right,” she said.
Juniper looked away.
Dom sighed. “Fine,” he said. “We need to check it out. But how do you suggest we do that without getting our asses kicked?”
“Or murdered?” Juniper added. “Or driven insane?”
“The Inner Liminal,” Corina said.
Everyone went quiet. Helena felt a warm coiling in her heart. The Inner Liminal was a space between places, and when she had helped Aleksi pull Corina out of it two weeks ago, it had been the first piece of magic she’d ever successfully done. Two weeks ago, but it felt like years. Like a lifetime.
“We can go through the Inner Liminal,” Corina said.
“Uh, you sure that’s the best idea?” Dominic said. “You were being hunted down last I checked—”
Corina waved her hand dismissively. “If I’m in there with a fucking king of Hell, no one’s going to come close to me.”
Helena flinched at king of Hell. Even with Aleksi still in full demonic form, with the wings and the horns and the glowing red eyes, it still drove in that spike of betrayal she sometimes felt when she thought about who she used to be—who her sister still was.
A daughter of the Lineage, bred to kill demons.
She glanced over to where Juniper had been standing—only to find the place empty. Juniper had slipped into the kitchen.
“—work perfectly,” Aleksi was saying. “It’ll allow us to get close enough without risking coming face-to-face with it.”
“I’ll cross us over,” Corina said. “Dom, Helena—you help carry the burden. That way Aleksi can go through with minimal damage. If we are going to have to start chasing this thing across the countryside, he needs his glamour back—”
“I’m going, too.” Juniper reappeared in the living room. Everyone turned toward her.
“No way in hell,” Dominic said. “We are not taking one of the fucking Lineage into the Inner Liminal.”
Juniper strode up to him, her ashy face fierce, almost like she was back to her usual self. “If I was working for the Lineage right now,” she said in a low, dangerous voice, “all of you would be in your own personal holding cell, waiting for your turn to be sliced, diced, and interrogated.”
Dominic went pale. He’d been there before. Helena didn’t want to think about it, the Lineage torturing him. She didn’t want to think about her family torturing anyone.
“All of you except for Byleth,” Juniper continued. “They’d have found a way to murder him as soon as they laid eyes on him. Cut off his head, drained all his blood, I don’t fucking know.”
“Junie, please stop.” Helena’s eyes stung with tears. Juniper ripped her gaze around from Dom, over to Helena, and the rage in Juniper’s eyes, the betrayal, made her take a step back.
“He saved our lives,” Juniper said, her voice cold and cruel. “That’s the only reason I haven’t handed him over.”
Helena’s heart would not stop racing. She knew what Juniper wasn’t saying. She saw it in Juniper’s eyes. The furious accusation that Helena was sleeping with her family’s mortal enemy.
Juniper stepped away from Dominic and straightened her spine, lifted her chin. She looked straight at Aleksi. “I’m going with you,” she said.
“Don’t do it,” Dominic said.
But Aleksi only nodded his agreement.
****
The five of them stood at the edge of the marsh that ringed around Corina’s trailer. Helena stood close to Aleksi, the back of her hand brushing the back of his. Feeling him there, so close to her, made her braver.
Corina knelt down in the soft reedy mud and scooped up a handful of swamp water and poured it over her head. As it streaked down her face, matting down her hair, she began to sing from somewhere deep in her throat, a low, reverberatory hum that made the hair on the back of Helena’s neck stand up straight. She recognized the singing technique from Black God Forest, her favorite of Corina’s albums, but this was the first time she heard the magic in it, as thick and murky as the swamp itself.
Helena glanced over at Juniper, who stood a few paces away, her arms crossed over her chest, her expression unreadable. In the thick shadows she looked wan and faded, as if she’d been left out in the sunlight too long. Not at all the fierce demon hunter she was before Gavin.
“Show us the way to the Inner Liminal!” Corina screamed, her voice slicing through Helena’s thoughts. She jerked her gaze back as Corina lifted her hands over her head, her eyes as dark as swamp water. The air above the marsh glimmered like an oil slick.
“Be ready,” Aleksi said, his voice tense. Instinctively, Helena grabbed at his hand, let it envelop her own.
The shimmer brightened and grew and Corina’s singing boomed out across the water. The trees around them bent and thrashed, and the insects in the swamp sang out in a rackety chorus. For a moment all the molecules in the air seemed to expand and split, and then—
A doorway split open above the marsh.
“How the hell are we going to walk through that?” Juniper’s voice was right in Helena’s ear. She jumped.
“We don’t.” Dom twisted around to glare at her. “Our souls make the trip.”
Juniper’s gaze flicked over to Aleksi, and Helena knew what she was thinking:
He has a soul?
“Link hands,” Dom said, grabbing Aleksi’s other hand. Helena took hold of Juniper’s. For a moment, their eyes met, and Helena saw Juniper’s fear there, the raging terror of the unknown.
“Helena—” she started.
But then the magic hit like a blast of hot air from an oven. Except it wasn’t hot, or cold. It was some sensation that Helena had no words for. And then she was drifting, disconnected, tethered to Aleksi on one side and Juniper on the other. She felt as transparent as sunlight.
When she looked down, she saw her body sprawled on the grass. She saw all their bodies.
“What the fuck?” Juniper said, her voice distorted. Distant. It took all of Helena’s strength to turn to look at her as she floated out above the marsh.
“Soul travel,” Corina called. “Do not let go. Not until we’ve passed through the gate.”
Corina led them, a linked chain, through the doorway shimmering above the water. It was a simple wooden frame hanging in midair, and on the other side was a starry darkness. Helena tightened her grip on Aleksi’s hand, wishing she could pull herself into him, to feel the solidity of his body against hers. But something told her, in this form, there was nothing solid to grasp onto.
Corina slipped through the doorway, then Dom. As Aleksi moved into the threshold, he turned toward Helena, his eyes blazing red-hot. “Something’s wrong,” he said.
“What—” But she was cut off by a rush of cold, damp wind. The sunlight winked out. For a moment all Helena could feel was the rough press of Aleksi’s palm. Then she felt her sister’s hand in hers, smooth and cool.
And then her feet were coming to rest on thick, moist ground. The marsh? Her eyes were adjusting to the light of this place, dark and green. It was the marsh. And somehow, she was standing on it. They all were.
“Something’s wrong,” Aleksi said again, this time to Corina. “Tell me you feel it.”
Corina didn’t answer. She was staring off at the horizon, at a swirl of shadows and what looked to Helena like tiny flickering lanterns. Or fireflies. Or stars.
“Corina?” Dom’s voice was low with worry. He moved toward her, letting go of Aleksi’s hand.
“Don’t let go of each other!” Corina whipped around and grabbed Aleksi’s hand, relinking the chain. Her eyes were wide with fear, her cheeks wet. With tears, Helena realized with a jolt.
“What’s going on?” Juniper said, moving closer into the group. “Is this not the way it’s supposed to be?” Her eyes flicked around. “Because this shit is terrifying.”
“There’s nothing here,” Corina said roughly. “It’s gone.”
Aleksi’s hand tightened around Helena’s.
“The trees,” Corina whispered. “The little spirit huts. The marshes—it’s all gone.”
Her voice caught, and Dom wrapped his arms around her.
And then a roar rang out in the distance.
Helena choked back a scream—she recognized that roar. She’d heard it three days ago in the moment before she saw the fragment emerge out of the swamp, jagged and terrifying.
“What the fuck was that?” Juniper pulled closer to Helena, her eyes wild.
“It’s the fragment,” Aleksi said.
Juniper gasped in terror, and Helena realized Aleksi was speaking Infernal. She always heard it as English, the Infernal magic she’d unlocked inside herself translating it for her.
“We shouldn’t be able to hear the fragment in the Inner Liminal,” Corina said. “Because it’s not in the Inner Liminal.”
“It’s a fragment of the Black Emperor,” Aleksi said, in English this time, although his voice was rough and distorted. “It doesn’t follow our rules.”
And then he pulled forward, still holding on to Corina’s and Helena’s hands. Both of them stumbled after him, in turn pulling Dom and Juniper.
“Slow down, you dick.” Corina planted her feet into the Inner Liminal marsh. Dark vegetation grew up around her feet as she yanked Aleksi back toward her. He turned on her, his chest heaving. Helena stumbled to keep from falling. She didn’t dare let go of his hand.
“We have to know what we’re dealing with!” he roared. “Because if we don’t stop the fragment, our world is going to look like the Inner Liminal does now.”
Helena felt a pang in her chest. Our world.
As if it was his, too.
“I understand that.” Corina glared at up at him. “But we have to be careful. Not all of us are demon kings from the Infernal realm.”
Aleksi’s shoulders slumped. Corina slipped her hand out of his, testingly. Then she let go of Dom’s. When nothing happened, she let out a long sigh of relief.
“It seems safe enough for us to disconnect,” she said. “At least for now.”
Aleksi peered down at Helena. She nodded once, and he slipped his hand out of hers. Juniper, though, didn’t let go.
“We came here to monitor the fragment,” Aleksi said. “I can track it myself. The rest of you go back to the swamp.”
“No way!” Helena cried just as Corina said, “Absolutely not.”
Aleksi’s eyes narrowed. “I’m not putting any of you at risk.”
“And I’m not letting you put yourself at risk,” Corina said. “We’re safer in a group, especially if we stay linked. Strengthens our soul’s energy.” She stepped up to Aleksi, craning her neck back to look him in the eye. “I’m not letting that thing destroy my swamp.”
“It’ll destroy worse than the swamp,” Juniper snapped. “That’s what By—” She swallowed. “What he said.”
Aleksi nodded. “I’m not letting the fragment destroy the Earthly realm. But we can’t do anything until we understand what it’s planning. And the only way we’re going to learn—” He turned to gaze over the empty expanse of the Inner marsh, in the direction that they had heard the fragment roaring.
There was only silence now.
“Then let’s go,” Corina said. “But I’m leading the way.” She fixed Aleksi with a pointed look.
He nodded.
“Link hands,” she said. “Stay close.” Aleksi took Helena’s hand, wrapping around it, squeezing tight. He pulled her close to him, his wings drawing around her. Helena felt the ghost of what they’d feel like if she were in her...
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