The Dawn Throne

Book 3: The Dark Gods

by Tara Sim

Genres: Fantasy action & adventure; Dark Fantasy

Synopsis

In this thrilling new installment of the Dark Gods Saga, each of the heirs are left to put the pieces of their lives back together. But gods don't stay defeated for long, and soon an enemy arises to threaten the very existence of their realms.

In the aftermath of the chaos and tragedy of Godsnight, the heirs find themselves struggling to recover and determine their next moves. But when Phos, the god of light, stages an attack on their realms in a bid for cosmic control, the heirs decide to take the fight to Phos in Solara, the realm of light. 

But once in Solara, they discover a realm terrorized by the myth of the Sunslayer who has been targeting those in Phos's bloodline. In order to forge a delicate truce in an attempt to buy time, Nik, Rian, and Julian set off to capture the Sunslayer, while Angelica, Risha, and Dante remain in the city to search for a way to defeat Phos for good.

Release date: June 2, 2026

Publisher: Orbit

Print pages: 448

Sample

Nikolas Cyr stared at his reflection, and a stranger stared back.

It shouldn’t have come as a surprise. It was the same face he had seen for months, either in half-hearted glimpses or numb observance. The stark cheekbones, the pale eyebrows. The red muscle of the empty socket.

But it wasn’t his face. Not as he knew it—or had known it.

He touched the lower eyelid with its short blond lashes. Traced the arc of bone at his brow. The medic had told him this was good, the mirror and the touching—that the more he became accustomed to it, the more he would make peace with it. There had been discussions of an implant, a curved thing of glass with a lifeless blue iris.

“It helps not only in terms of healing, but mental recovery,” she had explained as she held it in her palm. Nikolas had felt wetness on his own hand, phantom blood and lymph. “It’s not necessary, but we find most patients fare better with one.”

The prosthetic lay on the surface of his dresser, beneath the mirror, gaze affixed to the ceiling. Beside it was a bowl of warm saline water, and beside that, an eyepatch.

For comfort, the medic had claimed, and Nikolas suspected she didn’t mean his own. He had already noticed glances and winces from the others, the thinning of mouths, the flicker of pity.

His fingertips hovered between his two choices. His nose burned, and though it made no sense and had no cause, he wanted nothing more than to hurl the prosthetic out the window. To hear the crash and revel in the broken glass, the lifeless eye lost in the gardens under loam and leaf.

Nikolas fisted his trembling hand and banged it on the dresser. After a moment to deepen his breathing—In through your nose and out through your mouth, Lord Cyr—he swallowed down the prickling in his throat and picked up the eyepatch.

It was black and plain. Fin had suggested painting something on it, and Nikolas had done his best to smile at the time. He slipped the eyepatch on with more familiarity than he used to, but it was still an awkward process that meant readjusting the strap so that it wouldn’t flatten his hair.

The face that looked back at him was even more unfamiliar, now. He felt as if he were standing before a portrait of someone he had never met. That this body was not even his body, this world not his world.

His throat seized up again. Nikolas held on to the dresser as he choked. The coughs were wet and thick, and came from deep in his chest. By the time he was done his lips were flecked with spittle.

The last thing he needed was to get sick. They were out of winter’s grip, crawling into spring, but the air still stung with cold. Unseasonable, some people muttered.

Nikolas knew better. Whenever he glanced up at the sun, all he saw was its diminished glow, its fading warmth.

We’re running out of time, Angelica had said weeks ago. The same words Nikolas had thought in the days before Godsnight when his father had pulled him from bed to acknowledge their dying sun.

Maybe their time was already up.

He breathed. In for five, out for seven. Nose, then mouth. The storm in his head gradually lessened until he felt—well, if not human again, then something within its proximity.

A knock on the door gave him a full-body start. “Yes?” he called once he was sure his voice wouldn’t waver.

The door opened, revealing a servant in white and gold. The villa was significantly short-staffed, but the few who desperately needed the employment—or rarer, who maintained a steadfast loyalty to the Cyrs—had stayed on.

Isobel, one of the latter, ducked her head in greeting. “Sorry to disturb you, my lord, but we have more correspondence from the acting high commissioner and first comandante regarding the redistribution of soldiers. It’s waiting for you in Lord—in your office.”

The slip was minimal, but a cut still bled no matter how small.

“Thank you,” he said as firmly as he could, and waited for her to leave before massaging his tight chest.

He didn’t go to the office. Instead, Sunbringer Spear slung across his back, he headed for the stairs. He kept one hand on the banister, not wanting a repeat of last time; he was still adjusting to his shift in depth perception. The lavish ornamentation of the Cyr villa was a familiar eyesore, but he couldn’t help but be grateful that the walls surrounding him were not made of bone and the echoes of a dead god.

On his way outside, Nikolas made a detour to the solar, a spacious room with folding doors opened wide. While the sun room upstairs was for the early morning, the solar was for the afternoon, when stripes of light slanted over the wide-leafed ferns his mother enjoyed.

She and Fin were sitting on one of the white couches. Madeia Cyr was a slip of a woman, dark hair falling loose down her back and her face sharing the same angles as Nikolas’s. He remembered a time when she had boasted a loud laugh and strong hands, when her eyes had been sharp instead of sullen.

They held a gleam now as she spoke, the words rattling off her tongue like she had been holding them back for years—which, in some sense, she had. Grief had not been kind to Madeia Cyr, even now during her attempts to climb out of its depths. There were still bad days, quiet days, heavy days, only now the good days were better.

She was knitting something while Fin obediently held a skein of yarn between his hands to keep it from tangling. He nodded at Madeia’s words, occasionally responding, until he said something that made Madeia laugh.

Nikolas’s heart soared. He hadn’t heard his mother laugh in… he didn’t even know how long.

He let their mirth draw him into the room, and Fin turned with a welcome smile. His gaze landed first on the eyepatch, quick as a hummingbird.

“There you are,” Fin said. “Done with work?”

Nikolas didn’t care to admit no work had been done today. “For now. What are you two making?”

“I’m just here as decoration. The lady’s doing all the work.”

Madeia smiled, deepening the lines of her face. Once again Nikolas wondered at how well she had taken to Fin. He had worried that it would complicate things, but the fact of the matter was that the young man had nowhere else to go. The palace was gone, his father dead, his title compromised. No one knew the prince of Vaega even existed.

The least Nikolas could have done was offer him a roof over his head, even one as gaudy as theirs.

His mother lifted the half-done project from her lap. “It’s supposed to be the start of a sweater, but I’m not sure if it’s right…”

“It looks just fine to me,” Fin declared. “And the color will suit Rian well.”

Madeia mumbled something about Fin being a flatterer. As she turned her project over, the sleeves of her dress slid up, revealing the still-vivid scars along her wrists.

Nikolas’s throat went tight again. He coughed into his elbow and swallowed hard against the tickle that was forming.

“I’m sure it’ll be lovely,” he said, somewhat strangled. “I—Where is he?”

“In the garden.” Fin, with his hands occupied, jerked his chin to the open doors. “Are you—?”

“Thanks.”

He hurried out of the solar, ignoring Fin’s plaintive call. The pinch of guilt was overshadowed by the growing pressure in his throat, and once he was far enough away, he had to lean against the wall and cough again, cough until he was gasping for air and blinking tears from his eyes.

“It’s not unusual for patients to fall ill more easily after a stressful experience,” the medic had told him when he’d been suffering insomnia and constant headaches. “Rest as much as you’re able.”

Nikolas had been doing nothing but rest. His body was a contradiction of exhaustion and restlessness. But until the next step he was stuck here, reading correspondence meant for his father and pretending to know what he was doing.

He had a guess where Rian would go, and after a few minutes of walking he was proven right. There was a small circular courtyard laid with smooth cobblestone, surrounded by pristinely cut hedges and pedestals with decorative ceramic vases. It was too frigid for the flowers to bloom, but the vases gave a hint of needed color, their russet lacquer a pleasing contrast to the faded greenery.

On the bench that overlooked the courtyard sat Rian. His gaze was aimed above the hedges, toward the structure of the indoor training ring.

Nikolas paused. Rian hadn’t noticed him yet; his face was blank, almost vacant. A rattle of disquiet went through him, and for an instant he expected Rian’s eyes to light up gold and his flat mouth to curl into a sneer.

Lux tightened around his wrist. Nikolas touched his familiar in reassurance, waiting for it to loosen its hold before he stepped into the courtyard.

Rian’s head whipped around. No matter how many days had passed since their journey from Noctus to Vitae, Nikolas couldn’t help but be stricken over and over at his brother’s transformation.

He remembered a cheerful boy with wind-ruffled hair and bright crystalline eyes. The constant motion of his body, snapping his fingers and bouncing on the balls of his feet. Wide grins and white teeth. Confident, exact movements practiced under their father’s instruction.

The person before him was a specter of that boy. A pale mimic, a house that had been haunted for so long it couldn’t remember a version of itself without its ghosts.

But he was still Rian. Still his brother.

And no matter how many times Nikolas had failed him, he still chose to be here.

The panic died in Rian’s expression. He sat back, gaze returning to the outer wall of the training ring. Not a dismissal, but not quite an invitation either. Nikolas sat on the opposite side of the bench, slinging the spear off his back and letting it lean against the iron arm.

Lux unspooled from Nikolas’s wrist while Lucent, Rian’s familiar, slithered out of his brother’s sleeve. The two balls of light hovered together in the air as if to share warmth. Rian was bundled in two separate coats—Nikolas was fairly sure their mother had insisted on the layering—and didn’t seem to feel the cold. Then again, compared to the chill of Noctus, this was nothing.

Finally, Rian sighed. “I haven’t slept in two days.”

Nikolas could tell. The bags under his brother’s eyes were vicious, the planes of his face stark.

“Take the medicine,” Nikolas said, stern as he could handle. “I know it makes you nauseous, but—”

“I’ve been taking it.” Rian swallowed. “It’s not working anymore.”

Nikolas sighed in sympathy. The same thing had happened to him during his worst bouts of insomnia.

“I think…” Rian gave a lengthy pause, testing the words in his head before speaking them aloud. “I think I want to try drills.”

It was the last thing Nikolas expected him to say, but this, too, he sympathized with. He’d learned that the best way to feel in control of your own body was to move it. Exhaust it. Strengthen it.

He had picked up training a month ago with mixed results. Maneuvers he could have done in his sleep were suddenly off-kilter. Where he moved his spear didn’t seem to line up with where he thought it was going.

He touched the edge of his eyepatch and traced its seam. When he remained silent, Rian glanced at him—at the eyepatch—and flinched away. Nikolas dropped his hand.

“It’s a good idea,” Nikolas said after swallowing another tickle in his throat. “I can… We can do them together. If you want.”

After all, they had no one left to teach them.

And they both knew who to blame for that.

The Sunbringer Spear shone beside him, its light source coming from the metallic wings that framed the blade. The same blade Nikolas had driven into Waren Cyr’s neck, cutting artery and muscle into useless meat. The gift of a god, returned.

Once Rian had been declared stable by the medics, Nikolas had knelt at his bedside and spoken his confession. His hand had laid open on the counterpane, and remained empty as the words took shape and effect. Explaining the madness of grief in their father’s eyes, and a rooftop on Godsnight, and the desperate urge to survive. To save their city.

“I’m not seeking forgiveness,” Nikolas had whispered to the sheets, to the play of shadow along the bed. “Just that you—If you could understand—”

“Nik.” The backs of Rian’s fingers had brushed his, there and gone, possibly an accident. “Don’t say any more.”

So he hadn’t. Days of silence passed. Rian had started taking turns around the garden with Madeia, and even smiling tremulously at Fin’s jokes. He started sitting in the same room as Nikolas, simply existing together. It was the most he could ask for.

Yet Rian had trouble looking at him. A problem, he supposed, if they were to pick up sparring again.

“Maybe,” Rian said. Then, “When’s the next meeting?”

“Tomorrow.” Provided that Dante Lastrider could get the answers he needed before then. If he couldn’t… Well. There wasn’t much time left until the spring equinox, when the barriers between their world and Phos’s weakened. The day that might be their one and only chance to get to Solara.

Rian curled his hand inward, then unfurled it. “I’m going with you.”

Nikolas pushed down his first instinct of giving him a flat no. “Why?”

“I… I want to do something. I want to help.”

Phos had been forcefully driven out of Rian’s mind by the combined efforts of Brailee and Julian, but that didn’t mean he was out of commission. Somewhere in Solara he was undoubtedly preparing his next strategy, setting up his next attack.

“It must be the summer solstice,” Dante had theorized weeks ago. “It’s when Solarian magic is at its strongest, and the barriers to Solara are at their thinnest. Phos will no doubt use the advantage to rain down everything in his arsenal.”

They had to find a way to make a portal before that happened. If Dante was to be believed, the spring equinox and the use of the stepwell in Phos’s basilica might be enough to get them there.

Nikolas carefully chose his words. “Do you want to help, or do you want revenge?”

His brother had been Phos’s puppet for years. Now that he was free, Nikolas wasn’t surprised Rian had a mind to make the god suffer for every injustice he’d inflicted.

But Rian’s expression was calm. Serene, even.

“I want what the rest of you want,” he said softly. “To put an end to this.”

In Nikolas’s nightmares Rian stood at his side facing down their god until his mind and body were taken hostage. In those nightmares, Nikolas died at his brother’s hand; or worse, he was the one to plunge his spear into Rian’s heart, in the same place Taesia had run him through.

Nikolas coughed into his sleeve and cleared his throat. “You can come to the meeting.”

But he wasn’t about to let Rian think he would be going to Solara. He wrapped his hand around the spear’s stock, hefting its familiar weight. Nikolas allowed himself a moment in its warmth before he pushed it toward Rian.

His brother leaned back, gaze sharpening. “What are you doing?”

“Father trained you to be heir. Not me.”

Rian turned his head away. “It doesn’t matter who he trained more.”

Nikolas wanted to argue that it did, though he admittedly had trouble understanding why. He shifted and knelt before Rian, holding out the spear in both hands.

“It’s yours,” he insisted. “I was only a temporary keeper.”

Rian kept staring into the distance, his face blank.

“You were always better with the spear than I was, anyway. Better with people, better at political games.”

His brother shook his head. “Giving me this—this weapon, this useless title. None of it matters.”

“It does matter. The city—”

“You know what I did with that spear in my hand,” Rian whispered.

The column of scorching light. The screams.

“That wasn’t you,” Nikolas asserted. “It was Phos.”

Rian turned his right hand over, the wind stirring his pale hair. “I still held it. He still spoke through me. Used me.”

“You didn’t have a choice. We were all doing what we had to in order to survive.”

“And what does that amount to?” Rian shot back. “What’s your plan, Nik? When you face him, what are you going to do? You were—we were raised to dedicate ourselves wholly to Phos. Can you forget his teachings so easily?”

“You seem to have.”

Rian looked away again. Nikolas tightened his grip on the spear even as he shoved it closer to Rian.

“You said you wanted to start training again,” Nikolas reminded him. “You said you want to help. The best way to do that is to take up your title while I—”

“While you what? Disappear to kill a god who almost killed you?”

Nikolas gritted his teeth.

“You’re just trying to throw your life away,” Rian went on, deadly quiet. “Trying to get rid of everything that no longer serves you. Your weapon, your position, your god. Yourself.”

“That’s not true.” He grabbed Rian’s hand, pressing it to the metal. “If you just—”

“I don’t want the fucking spear!”

In one fluid movement Rian knocked Nikolas back and grabbed the Sunbringer Spear. He flung it across the courtyard and it smashed through one of the decorative vases, spraying shards of red clay across the cobblestone like blood.

Nikolas braced himself with one arm and raised the other in the long-practiced motion of fending off a blow. Lux spun worriedly around him while Lucent hovered over Rian’s shoulder. Rian stared down at him, panting harshly, until the flame of his anger dimmed to regretful embers. He staggered back and covered his mouth, holding something back—a sob, a retch, an apology.

“Rian.”

His brother hurried away with his familiar at his heels, coat flaps snapping in a sudden gust of wind.

“Ri—”

His throat spasmed. Nikolas gagged, wondering if he, too, should cover his mouth to keep something inside that shouldn’t get out.

He suffocated around the pressure scratching up inside him, taking up space in the very back of his mouth. He braced his hands on the cold ground and heaved. His skin felt too tight, and his stomach writhed as he fought for air.

Nikolas sank down to one elbow and reached for his tear-streaked face, prodding at his trembling lips with equally shaking fingers before slipping them inside. He kept coughing, hacking, struggling with whatever sought to choke him.

His fingertips touched the edge of something damp. He slowly drew it out until it slid free from his mouth.

He blinked hard to clear his vision. Even then he had trouble comprehending what he held. It was thin yet curved, about the length of his hand, its downy barbs and outer vane wetly spiked.

A feather, white as alabaster, with the faintest hint of gold.

Dante Lastrider stood before the building that had been his prison with a grimoire under his arm and a demon at his back.

The latter was barely more than a cloud of black fog, a roiling reminder of his presence. It shifted until Azideh whispered directly into his ear, “Are you frightened?”

Dante did not respond. He was staring at the guards at the gate leading into the outer yard, remembering a time when seeing their uniforms had been a daily occurrence. When those who wore them shoved and grabbed him, sneered and cursed and spat at him, thinking him a heretic. A killer.

His wrists prickled. He resisted the urge to encircle the faint scars with his fingers, replacing the phantom chill of lightsbane shackles with the warmth of his own flesh and blood.

Instead, he strode purposefully toward the gate. Azideh chuckled.

“Stop,” said one of the guards upon noticing him. “We’re not allowing—”

“Let me in,” Dante said, his voice low and chiming with the demon’s influence.

The guards were all caught by its spell. Their eyes glazed over, and those who had reached instinctively for their batons let their arms grow slack. The one who had told Dante to halt motioned to someone on the other side of the gates, which opened with a creaking welcome.

And just like that, Dante swept onto the grounds of the Gravespire.

He was an omen of ill fate in his long black coat with its gleaming silver buttons and Lastrider crest pinned to the lapel. He’d forgotten to take the crest off when he had pulled the coat from his closet at the villa, but ultimately it didn’t matter; no one here would recognize him unless he wanted them to.

Again there was a flurry of perplexed outrage when the guards at the front doors spotted him. Another simple command and they were escorting him into the sandstone walls that had entombed him for months, turning him into little more than an insect trapped under glass. Dante stared at the guard ahead of him rather than observe his surroundings. It kept his breaths from snarling in his throat.

“Your heart is beating so loud,” Azideh crooned against his ear. The pinprick of talons rested against Dante’s chest, under his House crest. “You are frightened. Poor thing.”

Dante didn’t bother to respond as his ensorcelled escort brought him to one of the warders. Dante grabbed the bewildered man by his uniform jacket and shoved him into the wall. If the warder’s head hit the stone harder than he’d meant it to, he considered it a minor reparation.

“Take me to the topmost floor.”

The Gravespire was unique in its design, conch-like and spiraling, with its highest point reserved for the city’s greatest offenders. Dante had once been kept there, in isolation and darkness, until he’d flirted with madness. Being able to do little else than anticipate one’s execution had that effect.

He wondered if there had been another way out. If those fleeting thoughts of madness had urged him to draw that Conjuration circle with his own blood, spelling out Azideh’s name and all its wicked intent. If he would be here now, a free man who still bore a collar around his neck, a prisoner of a different kind.

Dante lost count of how many stairs they climbed. Higher, and higher, and higher, until the barred cells became metal-fused coffins, until the shouts and jeers of the prisoners became muffled sobbing and muttering. His thighs burned and his hairline was damp with sweat by the time the compelled warder stopped in front of a thick iron door studded with bolts.

“Open it.”

The dim torchlight of the hall cast a sheet of pale yellow across the dark cell. Dante’s fingers twitched and the shadows moved at his command, rippling into the corners and allowing the sheet to spread farther.

It first illuminated the flat, lumpen shape of the bed. Then his eyes settled on the figure seated against the far wall, shackled and squinting at the onslaught of light.

Without missing a beat, Camilla Lorenzo graced him with a wry smile. “And here I thought I’d never get any visitors.”

Dante’s hold on his aunt’s demon was the only way he’d been able to drag Camilla back to Nexus.

Weeks ago, in front of a judicial committee that had included the royal magistrate of Vaega, the Lastriders had put forth their claims of Dante’s innocence. After sufficient pleading (mostly on Brailee’s part), Houses Cyr, Vakara, and Mardova had offered themselves as witnesses attesting to Camilla’s guilt.

The whole trial felt like one long fever dream. Mostly he’d had trouble believing that Angelica was willing to sit in and give her word that he had done no wrong.

“I’m not doing this out of goodwill,” she’d said when he thanked her afterward. “Unfortunately, we need you. You’re best suited to decipher the grimoire.” That, he could believe.

But although the ruling had ultimately ended in his favor, it hadn’t gone smoothly. He had been under house arrest for its duration, unable to properly scour said grimoire without revealing that he was, in some sense, actually a heretic. At least the Lastriders had been allowed access to their villa again, trashed though it was by incensed citizens.

Dante had expected Camilla to be one of the hardest obstacles. His aunt had always had a way with words, able to charm paint off a wall, and she could have swayed the committee to her side if she’d really tried. But for some reason, she had admitted to Prelate Lezzaro’s murder and her use of Conjuration at Godsnight, albeit in terms that presented her as a tragic hero. She hadn’t mentioned the king, or the son she had made with him. Only that she had been attempting to undo the barriers around their realm and reverse its decline.

And then, of course, there had been Taesia.

“Even if Lord Dante is exonerated from the murder of Prelate Lezzaro,” the royal magistrate had said from her perch at the long table where the judicial committee had convened for five days in a row, “the Lastriders must still answer for the killings of Don Samuel Soler and of High Commissioner Cristoban Damari.”

Elena and Cormin Lastrider had sat on either side of Dante during the extent of the trial. At this, his father had breathed in sharply and his mother’s face had hardened.

“In both cases, there are witnesses who saw Taesia Lastrider engage in this wanton violence. In the matter of Cristoban Damari, this includes several officers under his command as well as citizens in the Noctus Quarter who were present.” The royal magistrate had peered over her spectacles at the court stands, empty save for the other Houses. “And in the matter of Samuel Soler, Lady Risha Vakara.”

Risha, sitting with her own parents, had grown ashen while the magistrate read the report the high commissioner had written after Risha had reanimated Don Soler for questioning. In it, he shared his suspicions that the Shade who had dismembered the king’s former spymaster was in fact Taesia.

“Do you believe this is correct, my lady?” the magistrate had asked in a tone indicating she already knew the answer.

Risha had stood with her father’s gaze boring into her. Thanks to the demon’s power, Dante had read her aura as a cloud of charcoal apprehension. After a long moment, she had breathed a quiet yes.

Dante’s heart had been pounding when Azideh hummed in the back of his skull.

You can change the course of this. You can change their minds.

He could have stared the royal magistrate in the eye and compelled her to grant Taesia clemency as well. He could have compelled everyone assembled in the court to forget all transgressions save for his aunt’s.

He’d nearly done it. The first words had been on his lips, ready to be given suggestion.

And then he’d glanced at Camilla’s solemn face. Remembered how they had taken on the baron of Seniza, a man who’d changed into a monstrous entity when fused with his demon. Dante had shuddered hard enough to rattle his chains.

Azideh had sighed. What good is my power if you do not use it when you should?

“Then I declare that the Lastriders—”

“Hold, please.” Elena had also stood. His mother’s words were curt yet bland, the same voice she used whenever he had gotten into trouble as a boy. “Before the honored committee makes their ruling, there is something the Lastriders must announce.”

Foreboding had sunk its claws into him. He’d searched for Brailee in the stands, who’d stared back at him in wide-eyed horror.

“The Lastriders have no association with the suspected murderer of Don Damari and Don Soler.” Elena had drawn a shallow breath, shrouded with the shade of mournful evergreen. “As Taesia is hereby banished from House Lastrider.”

The shocked murmurs that had followed were broken by Brailee’s dismayed cry. Saya had held her back, looking nearly as stunned as Risha, while Angelica’s jaw dropped and Nikolas glared at his own lap.

Dante had done nothing. Said nothing. He’d been numb from crown to toes, barely aware of Elena stiffly regaining her seat or what the magistrate had said next.

Only the ruling that he was free, free, and Taesia was not.

Dante reached into his pocket and drew out a hand torch affixed with a flare quartz, which he tapped on and set down. Then he turned to the compelled warder and ordered him to close the door.

“Reopen it in a quarter of an hour,” Dante added.

He braced himself against the familiar sound, the scrape and shriek of metal and the finality of the lock thunking into place. He stifled his breaths so Camilla wouldn’t catch on to the panic swimming under his skin. In the gloom of the cell, cut through with only the white luminescence of the hand torch and the uneasy cyan haloing Camilla’s head, aunt and nephew studied one another.

The last few weeks had not been kind to her. Her dark hair lay loose and unwashed, and the formless garb they had put her in hung large on her thinning frame. Compared to the woman he was used to, who wore fine fabrics and never hesitated to indulge, she seemed a stranger. Despite everything, regret washed over him.

Even though Camilla held no magic of her own, she bore the same lightsbane shackles that had once weighed down Dante’s arms. Around her shoulders was a glimmer of red mist, the only trace of her demon that could manifest in this condition.

Partially due to the shackles, partially due to Dante’s command. In speaking the demon Shanizeh’s true name, given to him by Azideh—a betrayal Shanizeh hadn’t been expecting, no matter how much they despised one another—Dante held her leash in a way Camilla couldn’t hold his.

Provided that Camilla herself never learned the demon’s true name, it would hopefully stay that way. And Dante didn’t expect Shanizeh to give that up so easily.