Amara awoke to the sight of Evander’s bearded face hovering above her. He carried her in his arms, and the movement she could feel him making seemed to indicate that they were walking. Over his head a familiar ceiling scrolled by, and the muggy dampness in the air all but confirmed their location.

  We’re in the undercroft.

  She shifted a bit in his arms to take a look around, which Evander quickly noticed.

  “She’s awake,” he said with relief.

  “Thank goodness,” a familiar feminine voice added.

  Amara sat up a bit in Evander’s arms. Jezebel walked beside him, her hair and clothing both a bit worse for wear.

  “Put me down,” Amara said drowsily. “I feel fine.”

  Evander looked a bit reluctant, but soon complied, carefully letting her down onto her feet. She took a moment to straighten out her clothing before turning her gaze back to him.

  “What the hell happened?”

  To her surprise, Jezebel and Evander instantly shared a look of concern.

  “You just collapsed,” Evander said. “When all that bright light disappeared Shabboleth was gone, and you crumpled like a sack of potatoes. ”

  “I gave Evander some of the elixir to heal his broken ribs. I also showed him the way back to the secret stairs,” Jezebel said. She paused, and a mixture of apprehension and sadness filled her expression before she continued.

  “Um...is he gone?”

  It was obvious who she meant, and the truth left Amara’s lips before she could even consider what to say.

  “I honestly don’t know,” she said. “I’m sorry.”

  Jezebel studied her for a long moment before her gaze shot to the floor by her feet.

  If I were her I would want the truth, Amara thought. Or at least, I hope I would.

  “The way Shabboleth lit up was just like when Mattias would transform,” Evander said. “You did that to him. Right?”

  Amara shook her head with uncertainty. “...Maybe? What I experienced was so strange. The black sphere wanted me to—”

  “Black sphere?” Jezebel asked.

  The confusion on Evander’s face told Amara he hadn’t seen it, either. After thinking it over for a moment, she shrugged.

  “...Dunno. It looked a lot like the Maw, but….”

  “We saw you touch him,” Evander said. “And then it got really windy somehow and he was completely covered in light. Then he just disappeared and you fell over.”

  Amara went silent, and a quiet, frustrated sigh suddenly left her. What had happened with Shabboleth was incredibly troubling, and the only person with any answers was gone.

  “Mattias knew,” Evander said. “He knew you would do that to Shabboleth.”

  “Do what?”

  He frowned at her. “Come on. Shabboleth’s gone, Mara. Whatever you did killed him. Mattias had to know that’s what would happen.”

  Amara instantly remembered what Mattias had said to her in Raven’s Roost after meeting him in his human form for the first time.

  You have a second power. And it’s immense.

  “How could he have possibly known that?” she asked.

  Evander shrugged, then shot a glance at Amara loaded with suspicion, and an abrupt silence suddenly fell between them. Jezebel looked uncomfortable standing beside him, which he soon took notice of.

  “Jezebel asked if she could come with us,” he said. “I told her she could.”

  “Did you,” Amara said with a frown.

  A guarded look came over Jezebel. “I don’t have anywhere else to go.”

  Amara stared hard at her, thinking.

  “...Are the city guards going to be looking for you?”

  “I don’t know. They might.”

  Meaning yes.

  A complicated mix of emotions flooded through Amara. On one hand, Jezebel had been the reason they’d been able to defeat Shabboleth in the first place. And she’d even directly saved Amara’s life by halting Shabboleth’s charge. But on the other hand, the guards were already alerted to their presence, and having Jezebel in tow as they tried to get out of Lucyra would only make the guards work harder to stop them.

  The best way for them to get out of the city would be to avoid fighting and find a way to sneak out, somehow. And the chances of Jezebel going unnoticed in the city she’d lived in for her entire life seemed extremely doubtful.

  Sunjata’s portal should be opening in just a few hours, Amara thought. Even if I had the inclination to risk everything we’ve accomplished by trying to sneak her out of the city, we’re already almost out of time. And if we end up fighting the guards because she’s with us….

  “I know the best way out of the city,” Jezebel suddenly said. “The path I think we should take won’t be so heavily guarded.”

  Amara was stunned for a moment, before remembering the obvious.

  I really don’t like that she can see what I’m feeling, she thought. How am I supposed to have any privacy when she’s around?

  “...Which way out do you mean?”

  “The harbor. We can take one of my father’s ships.”

  “Uh….”

  “We don’t know how to sail a ship,” Evander said.

  “I don’t either,” Jezebel said anxiously. “But I’ve seen enough to know how to cast off, at least. Once we’re out of the harbor all we have to do is figure out how to turn the ship enough to beach it on the coast.”

  “That’s not a good idea on multiple levels—”

  “It’s that or the Portal of Mammon.”

  Confusion caused another frown to cross Amara’s face. “Mammon? What?”

  Jezebel looked frustrated. “The coast gate! The only land route into the city. There’s an entire battalion of the city watch stationed there. You can only enter or exit the city in two ways—via the Portal, or via the harbor.”

  “Even if I believed that, wouldn’t taking one of Shabboleth’s ships be one of the worst things we could do if we’re trying to sneak out of here?”

  “His ships are the fastest,” Jezebel said, trying to hide desperation from her voice.”

  “There has to be another way out of the city,” Evander said. “Maybe we can just try to scale the walls and swim across the bay to the coast. Carrying you on my back while I climb wouldn’t be hard for me, Mara.”

  Amara shook her head, and guilt began to bubble up through her at how they were treating Jezebel. They’d trusted her enough to help them kill her own father, but now it felt like they were trying to find reasons to shake her loose.

  Mattias would probably ask why I’m even hesitating to ditch her.

  “We’ll go to the harbor,” she suddenly said. “You can stick with us until we’re out of the city.”

  Relief poured into Jezebel’s expression, and she nodded. Evander looked surprised, but soon signaled his acceptance with a casual shrug.

  “We’ve got the elixir, and Shabboleth is gone,” he told Amara. “Your instincts have been right so far.”

  Amara saw Jezebel’s gaze dart between them, but beyond the look itself she betrayed no emotion, protecting her thoughts behind a mask of royal poise.

  Would I be as collected if I were in her situation?

  “We can’t waste any more time,” Amara said. “Sunjata made it sound like the portal won’t be waiting there for us forever.”

  “Sunjata?” Jezebel asked.

  “Long story,” Evander said. “Trust me, it’s hard to explain.”

  “I do trust you,” she said quickly. “Both of you. Amara and Evander.”

  Another silence fell, and Amara shared a look with Evander. There was too much to unpack in that statement, and not nearly enough time to do it.

  She gave Jezebel a short nod, for lack of a proper response, and turned to move deeper into the undercroft. Evander and Jezebel followed after her, and for a little while the only sound was their quiet footsteps echoing off the halls of the undercroft and the occasional tiny splash of water droplets falling from the ceiling.

  Evander’s memory and innate sense of direction was good enough for them to eventually come across the intersection where they’d first run into Hippolytus. A faint smell of smoke still lingered in the air, but the hallways were empty, as was the hidden room containing the burned contraption. The absence of any guards in the undercroft and sewer had been worrisome, bordering on alarming, but Amara felt more than a little happy to not have to do any more fighting.

  I think I’ve reached my limit on near-death experiences for one day, she thought wearily.

  The iron grates which had barred their way in the trap had been put back in their hiding places overhead, presumably by Shabboleth’s men, but the rest of the ceiling remained where it’d been. Evander had to crouch down as he walked through the defunct trap, but he abruptly halted on the far side in order to turn on Amara with an odd look of resolve.

  “I didn’t like him,” he said. “He was careless and annoying. But I could tell that Mattias cared about you, Mara. I’m sorry he’s gone.”

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  Amara was stunned into a surprised silence, staring at him.

  “I saw it, too,” Jezebel offered. “There was warmth in his feelings when he looked at you.”

  Grief threatened to force its way out of Amara, and she tried to suppress it by tearing her gaze away from them. She stepped past them both with her head hung low, walking quickly in order to hide the sadness she couldn’t keep from showing on her face.

  I want to see mom, she thought, squeezing her hands into tight fists. I want to tell her all about this.

  Evander and Jezebel remained silent for the rest of the short trip to the sewer’s exit, clearly trying to respect Amara’s feelings. But somehow their silence made everything worse. She wanted what had happened to Mattias to be undone, or at the very least to feel distracted enough to not have to think about it. The silence only worked to emphasize her loss, and a need to leave it behind caused her to accelerate her pace. They hurried to keep up with her, which only served to make her more irritated.

  The sewer grate was closed when they finally reached it, but as Amara approached an odd noise sounded from the surface above, something that might’ve been a person calling out.

  “What is that?” Evander asked.

  “Screaming?” Jezebel added.

  Amara quickly decided to investigate, and hurried over to climb the ladder. After reaching the top she heaved the heavy grate aside, only to pause after getting a strong whiff of something burning in the outside air.

  A tremendous column of black smoke towered in the air above the nearby buildings, roiling and billowing menacingly beneath the cloudless blue sky. From somewhere nearby, a woman let out a long series of mournful wails, interrupted on occasion by loud sobbing. Beneath it, the faint crackle of a fire sounded from somewhere closeby, and after closing her eyes Amara located it in one of the buildings towards the street. It was a tremendous inferno, wildly consuming everything it could reach both inside and outside the building, so excited and eager to consume everything within reach that she nearly lost herself in it.

  Many more fires raged in other buildings nearby, so many that Amara soon became confused about their positions, and lost track of her own. It was only when Evander’s exasperated voice sounded below her that she managed to find her way back to herself.

  “What’s happening up there?”

  She looked down at him, blinking several times as she reoriented herself.

  “It’s chaos, or something. There’s tons of fire everywhere.”

  “You did something?” Jezebel asked.

  Amara instantly shook her head. “No, this definitely wasn’t me.”

  “Let us up,” Evander said impatiently.

  She hauled herself up to the surface, and Evander followed close behind. He offered his hand to Jezebel as she reached the surface, and she responded with overly polite gratitude.

  When she was ready, Amara moved off into the narrow alleyway towards the street. But before long she spotted what was clearly a crumpled body laying still in the street ahead, and came to a halt.

  “Oh,” Evander said behind her, and she knew he’d seen it too.

  “What is that?”

  “A dead soldier, looks like.”

  “I can’t see,” Jezebel said.

  Amara continued on, and they spilled out onto the street. The corpse had indeed belonged to one of the city watch, and after getting a bit closer she spotted three large evenly shaped holes in the man’s chestplate. In the street beyond the corpse, uncontained fires burned on multiple buildings, and the same bustling food vendors Amara had seen before entering the sewer had become alarmingly devoid of people. A few of the carts had been overturned, their contents spilled across the street’s cobble.

  “What the hell is—” she began before something appeared in the sky above which caught her tongue. A formation of five vaguely humanoid winged creatures sped over the nearby building tops, low enough to be seen clearly from the street. They were clothesless but covered from head to toe in brownish fur and had vaguely catlike faces, with two enormous white bird wings on their backs. In their humanlike hands they each carried a black, metallic trident.

  Jezebel let out a loud gasp. “...Oh, god! I recognize them! Children of Livia.”

  “Livia?” Amara asked, startled.

  “My father managed to capture one once,” Jezebel said, shaking her head with worry. “She sent them to probe the city’s defenses on occasion. How could they possibly be here already?”

  The winged creatures abruptly halted in midair, hovering in place, and for a moment Amara worried they’d been spotted. But the creatures soon dove in unison at something on the next street over, swiftly disappearing from view behind the building tops.

  After giving it a moment, Evander stepped over to the corpse and crouched over it, pointing at the holes in the man’s chestplate.

  “They’re targeting the city watch,” he said.

  “If they’re fighting that might explain all the fire,” Jezebel added.

  For some reason, Amara began to think of what Mattias had said about the other Seraphim back in the inn.

  They’d make open war on each other if they weren’t so terrified of provoking a divine reprisal.

  “They’re carrion birds,” she said. “Here to pick at the corpse of Shabboleth’s kingdom.”

  Jezebel’s gaze instantly darted to Amara, and before long another gasp suddenly erupted from her. She then turned and ran off down the street towards the harbor, and Evander briefly shared a look of alarm with Amara before they rushed after her.

  The streets remained vacant as they ran, and after sprinting through a few empty intersections the harbor finally came into view. At least three dozen ships sat at anchor in the water, and all of them were burning, each belching tremendous columns of smoke into the air. The inferno covering the ships had already spread to the harbor’s pier, a long, elevated wooden structure spread out across the water like a brown spider web. Not all of the pier had joined the inferno, but enough of it had to cause it to collapse into the water in multiple places.

  Many of the ships had already begun the process of sinking, slowly slipping beneath the harbor’s relatively calm waters even as fires still raged across their decks.

  “No!” Jezebel shouted, coming to an abrupt halt.

  Amara immediately took a step forward past her, and closed her eyes to focus. One by one she willed the flames on each of the still-floating ships to diminish, but there were so many that she couldn’t extinguish them all fast enough, and by the time she had finished putting it all out it was clear that the damage had been done. She could do nothing for the ships that had already begun to sink, and those that still happened to be seaworthy enough to remain floating were obviously in no condition for sailing.

  “Shit,” she muttered.

  “What do we do now?” Evander asked.

  Jezebel let out a frustrated sigh, then turned to them. “...I don’t suppose you're both strong swimmers?”

  They shook their heads in unison.

  “Then our only option now is the coast gate. If we hurry we might be able to reach it within the hour.”

  “That’s on the other side of the city,” Evander warned. “A city which is currently under attack by flying cat abominations.”

  “There’s nothing else we can—”

  Jezebel stopped mid sentence, and her eyes widened with fear as her hand lifted to point at something in the sky above and behind him. When Amara turned to look, another formation of the carrion birds had appeared in the harbor’s sky, perhaps even the same one from before. This time they had clearly spotted Amara and the rest, and she watched as they suddenly shot higher into the air before entering into a sharp dive directly towards them.

  Beside her, Evander pulled out his last javelin from the bag on his back. Amara instantly saw the problem, and shut her eyes once more to seek out the closest fire.

  Almost immediately, she discovered one raging on the exterior of a building further into the city, but it was several streets over and well behind the creatures. With no other choice but to try, Amara willed the flames into motion. They responded by gathering themselves up and leaping to the next house, and she put all her focus into making them move as fast as they possibly could.

  They leapt across the first street in a blindingly fast web of thin arcs, traveling at unnatural speed up the walls of the closest building and onto the rooftop. She then sent them across the next street, and threw them into the air as high as she possibly could.

  She’d just barely been fast enough—or at least, almost. When she opened her eyes, four of the five creatures had been consumed by the flames, plucked out of the air by red-yellow streamers of fire that almost resembled the claws of a predator. But the last creature, the closest one, managed to just barely escape the flames as it dove straight towards Amara.

  It held the trident in its hands well ahead of it as it flew towards her. She might’ve been able to avoid it if she’d given herself a running start, but she’d had to hold still in order to manage the flames. Nevertheless, she started to dive out of the way, but it was far too late.

  The creature aimed its trident at her midsection, and something strange happened when it made contact. Amara watched as the tips of the trident easily punctured her blouse, but instead of running her through the trident somehow bounced harmlessly off the skin beneath. She felt them more as a few poking fingers rather than a trio of razor sharp metal points skewering her.

  Surprise registered in the creature’s face before Evander’s javelin shot through its head. A pointed crown of blood instantly exploded into the air from both sides of the wound, and the creature collapsed at Amara’s feet, its trident clattering loudly against the cobble. Evander’s javelin eventually landed deep into the front end of a building off in the distance, bending completely out of shape.

  “Amara!” Jezebel and Evander shouted in unison.

  As they rushed over to check on her, Amara sent shaking fingers down to the holes in her blouse. No blood met them, and she saw only her own unblemished skin through the trio of holes after craning her head down to look.

  “I’m fine,” she said with relief as Evander rushed to crouch down next to her. “It didn’t hurt me.”

  “Did it miss somehow?” Jezebel asked, astonished.

  “No, look at these holes! It definitely hit. But it didn’t hurt, somehow. Just felt like someone gave me a light poke in the stomach.”

  “At how fast that thing was going it should’ve been able to haul you straight up into the air!” Evander said.

  “Yeah, I know!”

  A realization then crossed Jezebel’s expression, and she lifted a hand to cover her mouth, which had fallen open with shock.

  “...That has to be it! When my father disappeared, you took his powers!”

  Evander’s mouth also fell open with shock, and he quickly rose back to his feet in order to take a few cautious steps backwards.

  “I did what?!” Amara shouted.

  “His powers! His invulnerable skin! You’re invincible, Amara!”

  Amara stared at Jezebel with growing alarm for a long moment before returning her attention to the holes in her blouse. Her instinct was to refute it, because it sounded so insane, but at that moment it was the only thing that made any sort of sense.

  “He knew,” Evander said quietly. “I told you, Mara. He knew all along.”

  Awe entered his expression as he stared at her, and beside him Jezebel did the same. Amara’s anxious gaze darted between them, and a black dread began to settle over her.

  “I’m not going to suddenly transform into a shrimp monster or something, am I?” she said nervously.

  Jezebel shrugged. “Well…you might?”

  “To be honest that would be pretty useful right about now,” Evander added.

  “I’m not doing that!” Amara shouted back. “Even if I knew how to do it, I wouldn’t!”

  “Okay, okay! I’m just relieved, Mara. I thought you were about to die.”

  An exasperated sigh exploded from her. “...Look! I don’t know what’s happening, but we still have to get the hell out of here! If we miss Sunjata’s portal we’re going to have to figure out another way to get back to Shiloh as fast as humanly possible.”

  She pushed past Evander, avoiding his gaze while doing so, and marched back down the street they’d just come from. After a few seconds of hesitation Jezebel and Evander followed.

  Is that really my second power, Amara thought bitterly. Stealing abilities from other people?

  Red-hot rage began to blossom inside her, and anger caused her teeth to grind.

  Mattias. You knew. You had to have known. Why didn’t you tell me?

  “We’re gonna make it, Mara,” Evander said behind her. “I think you should see this as a good thing.”

  She responded with the barest of nods, not even bothering to look back at him, but in truth the ramifications had made her feel afraid beyond words.

  What else did he know? she asked herself. And how much of all this was part of his plan? Was dying part of it?

  If there were any answers to her questions, they belonged entirely to a person who had gone far beyond the ability to give them. Uncontained fury caused her pace to quicken, and she hardly noticed the burning buildings she began to pass while marching down the street.

  Mattias, she raged silently. Mattias. You knew, Mattias. You knew!