were angered. The magicians believed they could simply lock the messengers away. The messengers, of course, had no desire to be confined for eternity.”
“So what happened?”
“We had not spoken in many moons, but he came to me one night. We shared our bodies and he asked for a boon. He did not trust the magic makers, and he feared he and the others weren’t strong enough to avoid their magic.”
“He wanted you to keep him out. To protect him from being sent into the Maleficium.”
She nodded. “This I would do for him, although he was not fae.”
I was so close; I could feel it. “How did you help him?”
“I offered him the only boon I had to give. We cannot make magic; it is part of us. We are beings of magic that connects us to this world and the next. You know he is a twin?”
I nodded. “Seth and Dominic. The messenger of peace and the messenger of justice.”
“In your parlance, yes. They were conceived into this world as one but split apart from each other at birth. He believed, he hoped, that he might make use of that bond again. That magic, if powerful enough, could reconnect him to the brother of his birth and bind him to this world instead of the Maleficium.”
A memory sharpened into focus—a memory of Celina and Ethan in a park beside the lake, Celina insisting things were changing in Chicago. That was before Mallory had begun her quest to reunite good and evil magic. She’d said the bonds were breaking between angels and demons.
She’d been ahead of her time, but she’d been right.
“And you offered to help him rebond to Seth?”
“I offered, and I helped. There was a mage who believed in his cause. His name was Endayel. The only magic I could barter was that which connected me to the green land, but Endayel took it and used it to save Dominic, to rebind him to his brother so that he might have a chance to live again. And so I was relegated to my tower, apart from time, apart from green meadows, apart from the immeasurable sky.”
“A prison,” I muttered. “Did other messengers try the same method?”
“I know not, but messengers were powerful things; I doubt they went willingly into confinement.”
“Why are you telling me this now?”
“At the break of day, I summoned him to the tower. Centuries have passed since last I have seen his face, or him mine. He is so handsome. So powerful. Even his wings—defiled as they are—sway me not. I offered my body to him.” She looked back at me, her expression fierce, and magic lifted. “I gave him everything. And now, finally, he has escaped his bondage, and how has he repaid my boon? He has rejected my sacrifice. He has rejected me.”
She may have been a centuries-old fairy queen, but the despondence on her face was the same as that of any other woman who’d been rejected. No matter the species, human or supernatural, we all had emotions in common.
“How do we stop him?”
Her expression went fierce, and I imagined her a modern-day Boadicea, leading her troops into war. “You control the terms of the battle. It is the only way to fight his ilk.”
“How do I do that?”
“Summon him. Each demon has a sigil—a symbol—a secret name assigned to him. If you draw his sigil correctly, Dominic must appear.” She reached into the pocket of her cape and pulled something out, then handed it to me.
It was a circular disk of wood about two inches across. A symbol had been burned into it—a triangle containing smaller figures. “This is his sigil?”
She nodded. “His brother will know how to use it for the summoning. When he appears, you’ll only need a sword.”
I definitely had one of those. I tucked the sigil into my pocket. “Thank you, Claudia.”
She nodded and took a step forward but nearly stumbled. I reached out to grab her arm before she could fall and caught a whisper of her flowery perfume. But beneath it, a subtle smell, cloyingly sweet. Decay, I thought. She was dying even as she stood here because she’d left her lair.
That’s why she wanted to meet me here. She wanted me to know—to understand—what she’d given up for him. The entire world outside, all for the chance that he might survive the making of the Maleficium and escape his bonds.
He had, and although that victory could be laid entirely at Claudia’s feet, he’d rejected her.
“I