didn’t come all this way to lose. One way or the other, I’m going back home, and the people who killed my family are going to pay.”
The rumbling grew. Aira and Ekto stood. I wondered if they were preparing for battle, or to run.
In a blur, Ronan moved toward Mariela with the same speed he’d used to get Lucy and me out of the path of Ekto’s fireballs. Tis intercepted him and blocked his arm from pulling his sword from its sheath. “You will not draw a blade in this Court,” she snapped.
Ronan refused to relinquish his grip on the hilt of his sword. “What has she unleashed?”
The rumbling grew in both violence and volume. A crack split the stone floor of the tavern. Something was rising beneath us.
“She has invoked the Son of the Darkness,” Tis said.
“Who is the Son of the Darkness?” Lucy demanded.
No one answered her question. “They cannot fight here,” Aira told her sisters. “Our city would be destroyed.”
“We must send them elsewhere,” Ekto urged.
The crack in the floor widened. The entire building—maybe the entire city—shook violently. The bottles and jars on the shelves fell and smashed on the floor.
Ronan’s eyes turned silver-blue and sea-scented magic seared my skin. “Tisiphone, you cannot let this go unpunished. You know what she had to do to invoke the Son of the Darkness. She had to sacrifice a child.”
Mariela didn’t deny the accusation. Her expression hardened.
Any sympathy I’d had for her situation had long since evaporated, but now I could barely look at her. A child. Dark magic spiraled up my arms. I couldn’t stop it; my fury was too great. Daisy growled.
“Crimes committed in the human world are outside our jurisdiction,” Tis told Ronan.
“On whose authority?” he thundered.
Her expression didn’t change. “You know whose.”
“Michael,” he snarled. “That sanctimonious prick.”
The stone floor burst open. We stumbled back as the head of an enormous black serpent with golden eyes emerged from the hole, its tongue flicking out to taste the air. Quadruple shit.
Daisy lowered her head, fangs bared. Esme hissed. Ronan and Lucy reached for their swords as I spooled blood magic, house rules be damned.
The snake hissed and started to slide out of the hole it had made in the floor.
The sisters reacted as one, their arms extending as their eyes turned from blue to nearly white. Sea-scented silver-blue magic surged.
Behind me, I sensed a burst of power. Light so bright that I had to shade my eyes with my forearm flooded the tavern. I heard a heavy snap that sounded like a ship’s huge sails whipped by a sudden gust of wind. Lucy gasped.
I tried to look behind me, but the light seared my vision. I could just make out a silhouette spanning the entire width of the tavern—a silhouette in the shape of a man with enormous wings.
A wave of sea-scented magic swept across the room, picked me up, and carried me away.
Caught in a riptide made of power and magic, I tumbled head over feet through darkness as deep and vast as an ocean. I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t stop my careening journey away from the tavern, and couldn’t see or hear anything or anyone. If the others had been swept up by the wave of magic, I couldn’t tell.
Just when I thought my lungs would burst from lack of air, the wave of magic pulled me from the darkness and deposited me face down on a pile of ash.
Gasping and choking, I managed to roll onto my back and suck in a lungful of hot, sulfurous air. My stomach roiled from whatever form of transportation brought me here—wherever here was. My surroundings were nothing but a dark blur.
I thought I moaned, but I couldn’t hear anything over the ringing in my ears. The ground might be shaking, or maybe it was me. Damn it, I could barely muster a coherent thought, much less get up and figure out where the hell I’d ended up. Magical transportation could go fall in a well.
Something warm, soft, and furry pushed itself under my right hand and licked my forearm. Esme. A cold, wet snout prodded my left cheek. I reached up and found Daisy standing over me. I ran my hands over both of them as best I could and didn’t find any injuries—just a lot of dirt and grime. I probably didn’t look much better.
“First time in a while I’ve been thrown out of a bar,” I said aloud, or tried to say. It might have come out