Maeve’s hand trembled as she picked up the pen. The first lines she scrawled looked as jittery as the fluttering in her chest, but she kept writing, and her hand steadied as she went. She couldn’t stop. Had to get this down on paper before courage deserted her.

A last line drawn under her name at the end—done.

The pen clicked on the wooden desk, and her hand shook once more as she read the note she’d written to her sister, to her friends.

I know about the baby. I know you didn’t want me to find out, but I’m glad I did. Merle, maybe you don’t want to put me in this position, but it is where I need to be. This is my choice, my responsibility. I never wanted you in that position, never wanted you to have to make these tough decisions because of me. You’ve already done so much for me, risked so much, and I am so, so thankful. Which is why I can’t allow you to risk anything else—anyone else—on my behalf.

I’m surrendering myself to Arawn, so he will stop using your magic. Your baby will be safe.

Please, don’t come after me. By the time you read this, I’ll be well on my way to his lair. It’s long overdue, and it’s what I should have done weeks ago.

Merle, I love you. You deserve to be a mom, and I’m so happy for you.

Rhun, I would have enjoyed getting to know you.

Lil, I love you, too. Please hug Baz and Hazel for me when they get back. I haven’t known Alek long, but I’m so glad you found each other.

I’ll keep you all in my heart. Maybe one day I’ll get to see my niece.

— Maeve

The room resounded hollow with silence as she stared at the paper. The house was quiet, too. Alek and Lily were still asleep, had only gone to bed two hours ago, when the approach of morning turned the sky that special shade of indigo. Being pranagraha demons, Lily and her mate preferred to sleep during the day, since their kind was vulnerable to sunlight.

No one else was at home, Basil having gone off to Faerie to search for his lost adoptive sister Rose, his mother, Hazel, having gone right after him, and Merle and Rhun wouldn’t come over this early. It was the perfect moment to leave—in part also due to the fact that now, with the morning sun gilding the frost on the grass, the demon sentinel keeping watch over the mansion for Arawn would be replaced by a shifter whose powers weren’t bound during the day.

It shouldn’t matter, considering what she was about to do, where she was going, and yet…the thought of approaching a—with her luck, male—demon to take her to Arawn’s lair curdled her stomach with this cursed, instinctive fear she hadn’t been able to shake in all these months. She was okay around Alek after a rocky start, and even around Rhun, though it took her the better part of summer to be able to breathe freely in Rhun’s presence, that insidious panic clawing at her simply because he was a bluotezzer demon, same as the one who—

She blinked, shook herself. But a complete stranger? A male demon she didn’t know?

She’d rather try her luck with a shifter. Might help keep the panic down. And, who knew? Maybe the sentinel on duty today would be a female. She didn’t dare hope for that, but it would be the best option. Alek worked for the Demon Lord, and based on what he had said here and there, the enforcers keeping watch over Arawn’s “asset”—i.e. her—were a mix of males and females. Physical strength wasn’t quite as important a marker among otherworld creatures, what with magic being the true edge for most, and magic didn’t differentiate between sexes. The Demon Lord’s ranks thus featured males and females alike, as Arawn valued power above all else—and wasn’t so shortsighted as to exclude great power based on gender.

Time to go before doubts had a chance to creep in after all.

She laid the note on her four-poster bed, on top of the neatly arranged blue comforter, and straightened one of the pillows again. A duffel bag packed with a week’s supply of clothes, a few toiletries, her cell phone, and a framed picture, sat next to the door, waiting for her.

One last look at the room that had been her refuge for the past six months, had given her peace and comfort after she was freed from that place drenched in darkness and pain, and her heart hurt at the thought she’d never get to see this house again. Or the people who’d filled it with life and laughter for her, who’d never given up on her, even when she was little more than a broken shell hiding in her bed, staring at the wall for hours, for days.

Picking up the duffel bag, she went out the door, her breath hitching, her eyes burning.

A quiet voice inside her spoke up, a hopeful part of herself that not even blades dripping with her blood had been able to kill. Maybe she would get to see them all again. Maybe this was not the walk into darkness and more torture that she made it out to be. She didn’t know what awaited her. Maybe the Demon Lord wouldn’t—

A shudder whispered through her, and her stomach cramped. Insidiously, despite that part of her that clung to hope throughout a storm of nightmares, another voice grated across her nerves, slipped pervasively into the darkest corners of her mind, filled it with images of the worst that could happen to her—and it shook her to her foundations precisely because it had already happened.

You know what that feels like, the voice hissed. You know you’re powerless to stop it when it happens again. Don’t pretend you don’t know what you’re walking into. You know.

That voice…that voice… Spots of light danced in front of her, her breath so shallow she might as well have been choking. She barely made it to the bathroom down the hallway in time, heaved her breakfast into the toilet until her chest ached, her throat burned. Sniffling, she clutched the porcelain bowl for a moment before she got up, rinsed her mouth, gargled, and brushed her teeth with quick efficiency. Chucking the toothbrush and toothpaste back into her duffel bag, she crept out into the hallway again.

The fact she’d never hear that voice again in real life was too small a consolation. It was branded into her memory with the freshness of a bleeding cut, and she could still recall the sound of it after months, as if he’d just spoken, as if his breath still warmed her skin yet chilled her soul, making her tremble with impotent fear…

It wouldn’t fade. It just wouldn’t fade, no matter how hard she tried…because it had become the voice of every dark doubt inside her, whispered through her when she least expected it, froze her thoughts and dragged her back under, until she found herself emptying her stomach into the nearest bowl.

Rhun might have ripped him to shreds, but no one could slaughter the memory of his voice.

She quietly descended the large, curving, marble staircase leading down into the foyer. The morning sun shone through the huge window in the wall above the front door, glinted off the massive crystal chandelier dominating the room. She dropped her duffel bag at the entrance and headed to the kitchen, crossed to the French doors opening to the backyard, and walked all the way to the rear fence. To the spot where—according to Alek’s inside knowledge as a former sentinel—Arawn’s guards liked to keep watch over the property. Over her.

Nerves prickling, she stopped just a few feet from the fence. Cleared her throat. “I want to surrender myself to Arawn.” Her heartbeat thudded so loud in her ears, it drowned out the early-morning birdsong. For the rest of the world it would seem like she was talking to air. And even though nothing indicated anyone’s presence, she knew the sentinel was there, listening. “I’ll be waiting at the front gate for you to take me to him.”

And with that, she turned on her heel and marched back to the house, through the kitchen, the foyer, grabbed her duffel bag, and walked out the front door, making sure to close it quietly behind her. The last thing she needed was to wake up Alek or Lily now.

She came to a halt at the front gate, remaining within the perimeter of the magical wards protecting the property. Her pulse still raced as she dropped her bag on the gravel driveway, crossed her arms, and waited. Minutes ticked by. The sun rose higher. Where was that sentinel? She threw a nervous glance at the house looming behind her. Please let them keep sleeping…

Would she have to go back to the yard and tell the darned sentinel again? She bit her lip and suppressed a frustrated groan. I don’t know if I have the guts to say it a second time. The more time passed, the more her thoughts turned to the myriad ways why this was the most suicidal thing she’d ever done. Besides moving out of the protection of her witch community. Which had led to her being kidnapped and… Nope, not going there.

Merle’s image flashed before her inner eye, and just like that, her spine locked, her shoulders straightened, and she lifted her chin. No, she had to do this. For Merle, for her unborn baby, for all the ways her sister had protected her until she bled—literally—and restructured her life around Maeve’s needs. No more. Merle would have to suffer no more on Maeve’s account.

A scuffle at the front gate snagged her attention. Breath stalled in her lungs, she waited.

“I mean it,” she called out to the spot beyond the gate, where the tiniest flicker in the air hinted at a concealment spell of Arawn’s making. “Take me to him now.”

A second, a heartbeat, then—as if melting under heat like a desert mirage, the air shimmered, changed, and revealed the bulky form of the sentinel on duty. Maeve’s stomach turned. Her fingers curled into her palms.

Of course. Of course it had to be a male.

She closed her eyes briefly, willed the anxiety scratching under her skin to quiet down. You can do this. What’s a little terror compared to the safety of Merle’s baby?

The sentinel cleared his throat, brows drawn together over light brown eyes in a rugged face, his skin a dark tan. “Just to get this straight” he said. “You want me to take you to the Demon Lord?”

“To complete the bargain my sister made with him. Yes.”

“Are you sure? He hasn’t…called it in.”

“I know. But I am.”

Because if she didn’t, if she stayed in the protective bubble her sister had built for her with tears and blood and magic, if she kept living on stolen time, time Merle paid for by loaning out her powers to Arawn so he wouldn’t come claim Maeve…her sister’s baby would die the next time Merle had to uphold the balance of magic. As head of her family, as the oldest living witch of her line, Merle had to pay back to the Powers That Be for the magic she used, and with Arawn demanding she put her powers at his disposal, Merle had to pay back a lot. And the last time she did, she almost lost the baby.

Chest aching, Maeve picked up the duffel bag, opened the gate, and stepped through the wards onto the sidewalk, in front of this male she didn’t know, whom she now had to trust to deliver her to the Demon Lord in one piece. Breathe. He won’t hurt you. He’s not allowed to hurt you. She had to rely on the probability that he wouldn’t risk Arawn’s wrath by touching her, had to repeat to herself, over and over, that she was safe from this male—because the Demon Lord wanted her for himself. Presumably unspoiled.

Not that she wasn’t already the very definition of damaged goods. Heat flushed her neck, her cheeks. Her shoulders hunched forward, and she angled her head so the ginger strands of her hair would partially cover her face. That nasty scar running from one temple across her nose to the other side of her chin would still be visible, but…well.

The sentinel nodded to her and gestured down the street. “Car’s parked around the corner.”

Bag clutched tightly to her chest, she followed him, doing her best to ignore the fear snapping at her heels. Focused on the sound of his boots thudding on the sidewalk, the brilliant patterns of shadow and light on the ground from the sun shining through a dancing, lacy lattice of near-bare autumn trees.

At the car, he opened the passenger side door for her. She slipped in before her anxiety would root her to the spot. The slamming of the door made her jump, hug her bag even closer.

Too fast. She was breathing too fast.

It’s just a car ride, damn it. Pull yourself together.

She stared straight ahead as the driver side door opened, and the car dipped a little when he got in. Another flinch when he shut the door. Even with her dull human senses, his male scent—condensed in the tight space of his car—pressed in on her.

He fastened his seatbelt, and she felt his eyes on her. “Buckle up.”

“No.” Choked out between her teeth. “Just drive.”

To be in any way restrained in the presence of a man… A cold shiver rolled through her, iced her very bones. As ridiculous as it was, she couldn’t even strap herself in while riding in a car with a guy.

An assessing glance from the sentinel, then he started the engine. “Name’s Warrick, by the way.”

A nod. That was all she was capable of.

Her heartbeat wasn’t even thundering in her ears anymore. No, it had almost flattened out, the rhythm so rapid, so irregular, it could have been a hasty Morse code sent out during times of war. And what raged inside her was a battle after all. A struggle for control over her most basic functions, her body, her mind…control that had been wrenched from her during days of torture and humiliation, until the simplest tasks and situations would trigger an avalanche of panic, burying what was left of her.

The car’s vibrations as it rolled along the street sank into her, and the next second a flash of memory short-circuited her brain. Another car, another time, another male… Maeve panted, sitting in the front passenger seat, too weak to fight him even if he didn’t hold her immobile with his telekinesis. He’d taken so much blood—too much—and she was dizzy, her head lolling from side to side with the movements of the car, her eyelids drooping despite the fear burning like corrosive acid in her veins. Up ahead a warehouse loomed in the darkness, a single lightbulb illuminating the wide garage door as it opened, ready to swallow her whole.

She couldn’t breathe. Chills rattled her, made her tremble. The world spun, spun, spun, everything lost color, became lighter, yet a weight pressed down on her chest, and she couldn’t move, couldn’t move, couldn’t—

The car screeched to a halt. She rocked forward from the sudden stop, her duffel cushioning the impact as she hit the dashboard. She couldn’t see, the world leached of all color, whited-out. The sound of a door opening, but it was dulled, as if filtered through cotton, far away. Fresh air streamed in, cool on her sweat-coated skin. Choking, she clutched her bag. Her legs tingled. Like a fish on land, she gasped for breath, that weight on her chest pressing in.

Gradually, it lifted. Bit by bit she could haul in air again, forcing her lungs to expand and breathe. Plastered to the dashboard, she focused on her surroundings. The controls of the radio. The scent of the leather upholstery. The sunshine as it glinted off the metal knob of the stick shift.

The empty driver’s seat.

Feeling returned to her body, her limbs prickling like waking up after blood flow had been cut off. She blinked, looked around.

The car was parked next to the curb, the evergreen trees of a Pacific Northwest forest creating a backdrop of breathtaking beauty, misted by soft rain. The door on the driver’s side hung open. A few feet in front of the vehicle, the sentinel—Warrick—stood with his back turned, hands on his hips, head lowered. His heavy breaths flexed the muscles in his broad back and shoulders.

She slid out of the car, her bag still clutched to her chest, walked around the open door, and cleared her throat.

Warrick turned, his features tense. “Are you all right?” His nostrils flared.

She gave a shaky nod, swallowed past a thick throat. “It’s the scent, isn’t it?”

For a shifter, with his sensitive nose, she must have been reeking of fear in that car.

He rubbed a hand over his face. “It’s hard to…remain calm when we smell…”

It made perfect sense. The animal part of shifters, the aspect that wasn’t human, wasn’t controlled by millennia of civilized evolution, reacted to strong emotions based on instincts that warred with the human half. The smell of fear would send some animals fleeing, but in others—predators—it might incite a different impulse… She looked down, forced herself not to tremble.

“Tell me,” Warrick rasped, “he died a bloody death.”

She glanced back up at him.

“The one who made you this afraid.”

Her fingers curled into the bag clutched to her chest. “He was ripped to shreds.” Something deep inside her stirred in grim satisfaction, flexing talons in simmering darkness. She’d never get tired of saying that.

“Good.” A muscle feathered in Warrick’s jaw.

A moment passed while they looked at each other, and the tenuous bond that wove itself between them in those seconds made it possible for her to get back into the car, to breathe past the remnants of her panic and ride the rest of the way with him without another incident.

He parked the car close to a lake, and then led her down a dirt path toward the water. The surface glistened in the midmorning sunshine peeking through intermittent clouds, an eerie hush in the air. The lake…the sight of it jogged her memory, and she drew in a small, sharp breath as she realized—

“We’ll have to go through the lake,” she croaked.

Merle had said as much of course, when she recounted how she and Rhun had gone to Arawn to beg for his help in finding Maeve. But Merle told her about it during those first days spent in the MacKenna family’s old Victorian after Maeve was rescued, and those days were hazy, Maeve’s mind and body still numb from her prolonged torture. She’d forgotten this was the way to travel to Arawn’s lair.

Warrick nodded, face turned toward the still lake. “I hope you can swim.”

Swimming wasn’t the problem. Her nails scratched over her duffel bag as she grabbed it tighter. She’d have to leave it behind. No way the contents would survive being dunked.

Heart aching, she set the bag on the ground. Maybe…maybe she could ask to have it retrieved later. If she was allowed to make any requests at all.

Warrick squatted at the edge of the rocky shore that fell sharply down into the lake. No gently sloping beach here. Only rough-cut stones and pebbles crunching under her shoes as she stepped up next to the sentinel, who had his hand in the water, making tiny circles with his fingers.

A moment later, a head broke through the surface, and a beautiful naiad swam closer, her dark hair dancing in the waves stirred by her movements. Skin the color of moonlight, she peered at Warrick with eyes holding the depths of the lake she called her home, then glanced at Maeve.

“I remember your sister,” she purred. “She was an ember, but you…you’re flame.”

Maeve’s heart stumbled.

“Come.” The naiad waved an elegant hand. “Let my water cool your soul.”

Warrick cleared his throat. “Just take us to the other side, please. We need to see Lord Arawn.”

Regret flashed in the water nymph’s eyes, but she inclined her head, swam back to make room. And Warrick jumped right in without so much as a flinch. He popped up again, shook his head, and, treading water, raised his brows at Maeve.

Alrighty, then. Deep breath, and she dove into the lake. The near-freezing water closed in all around her, shocked her heart into stopping for agonizing seconds, pierced her skin with a thousand fine needles. She hauled herself up, broke the surface and sucked in air. Her hair hung in her face, clung to her skin. She brushed it away with a quick move.

And froze at the wide eyes of the water nymph, fixed on her scar. The heat rolling up from her stomach through her throat and into her cheeks dispelled the chill of the icy lake. Always, always, that hated reminder of how much her life had changed. Even if she had good moments, even if she managed to forget the horror for a little while, inevitably the reaction of others to the visible proof of how she’d been damaged would shatter whatever brittle shield of normalcy she’d tried to erect.

A second nymph appeared, and after exchanging a nod with Warrick, she pulled him under. Maeve was still staring at where the lake had swallowed the sentinel when the first naiad swam up to her.

“Ready?”

As I’ll ever be. “Let’s go.”

She glanced at the duffel bag sitting abandoned on the shore, and couldn’t manage to draw in enough air before the nymph grabbed her and yanked her down into the depths of the lake. Deeper, deeper they went, until her ears ached with the pressure, until the breath she was holding burned in her lungs, until there was nothing but darkness closing in on her. Panic beat along her nerves, not just for fear of drowning, but because of the dense, unrelenting black surrounding her.

And then…the direction changed.

The nymph pulled her up again, the pressure eased, light filtered through the murky water, and within seconds she broke the surface, gasping for breath with aching lungs. The nymph who had pulled her through inclined her head and swam away, leaving Maeve treading water in…a different lake. A sandy shore framed this one instead of jagged rocks, and the trees surrounding the water loomed much closer.

She’d known about this magic way of reaching the heart of Arawn’s dominion from Merle’s tales, but to see it actually work, to realize she’d just crossed over what had to be miles in the span of mere seconds rattled her nonetheless. Warrick already stood on the small beach, wringing water from his T-shirt. Used to this style of travel, no doubt.

Shivering from the cold clinging to her skin through her soaked clothes, she trudged out of the lake as well, joined Warrick as he took a trodden path through the undergrowth. The air was colder here, her breath almost fogging in front of her, and she barely kept her teeth from clattering.

“Warrick.” The female voice drifted out from between the trees shortly before a woman stepped onto the path. “Aren’t you supposed to be on watch duty?”

“I was,” Warrick drawled.

The woman’s pale green eyes—striking against her brown skin—tracked to Maeve, who stood half behind Warrick. Taking a step to the side, the female angled her head, frowned as she gave her a once-over—and then those mesmerizing eyes widened.

“Is that…?”

“Yes.” Warrick shifted on his feet.

“How…?”

“She’s surrendering herself.”

“And I do have a voice,” Maeve said quietly. That voice was scratchy, hoarse, her vocal cords permanently damaged by her screaming marathon while shackled to a dirty bed for days. But it was steady. Firm.

The female blinked, and a small smile tugged at the corners of her mouth. “Yes. Yes, you do.” She turned to Warrick. “I’ll run ahead and let him know.” She walked backward a few feet, still looking at Maeve. “And maybe I’ll make some popcorn. This promises to be interesting.” With a flash of a smile, she whirled around and jogged off.

“Wait!” Warrick shouted. “Where’s he at?”

“In the Grove,” came back the answer, the female almost out of sight. “Playing.”

Maeve barely held back her flinch. She didn’t even want to imagine what “play” meant for the Demon Lord. She trudged behind Warrick as he followed the woman’s path, winding along a bubbling creek, between copses of trees that seemed to pulse with power—discernible even to Maeve’s dull human senses. Witchborn as she was, she should have a keen awareness of everything magical, but since her powers were bound inside her at the age of eight, she had no access to her witch heritage, nothing but a weak, unreliable inkling in the presence of strong magic.

And this territory here, this land, the earth itself breathed such magic that even Maeve could perceive it. No way to tell if this was Arawn’s influence—a sample of whatever strange, otherworldly power he commanded—or if it was a result of all the magical creatures he “collected” and kept close through favors and cunning. She’d spotted swarms of fairies flitting past, several kobolds peeking out from the undergrowth, dryads—tree nymphs—watching her with forest-green eyes from their perch atop branches, and even the light itself seemed different, as if dancing, iridescent…alive.

Even though this was a forest, she couldn’t shake the feeling of walking through a city instead, a bustling hub of otherworldly activity teeming with inhabitants. She couldn’t see most of them, and yet their presence was so palpable it buzzed over her skin.

She’d once been to New York City, and the feeling…it had been so similar. Only now, instead of walking among a jungle of steel and glass and concrete, she was a tiny speck amid an enormous maze of wood and stone and shadow and light, woven with magic that raised the hair on her arms and neck, feeling a thousand pairs of eyes on her, tracking her every move.

Up ahead, a tighter grouping of trees loomed at the end of the path, set apart from the rest of the forest, like a building within the woods. The branches formed an intricate, interlocked pattern reminiscent of the elaborate grillwork found in windows and doors of faraway palaces, stretching down to the moss-covered ground, giving the impression of walls.

Scattered leaves fallen from the few trees shedding their autumn foliage rustled and crunched beneath their shoes as Maeve and Warrick approached the grove. A high double door of branches and vines opened on a silent wind before them, and they stepped into the…well, the best way to describe it was cathedral of trees.

“Grove” seemed indeed too small and humble a word for it. There was nothing humble about this building of living wood and green. Towering trees rose on all four sides, stretching up so high that Maeve had to crane her neck to make out the lofty, vaulted ceiling of twining branches above her. Moss covered those branches all over, some hanging down in gossamer threads and casting the light pouring in through the tracery in glowing green.

Its haunting beauty rivaled the cathedrals of old, the ancient mosques and temples decked out in carvings and glittering stones.

Power such as she’d only felt once before brushed her senses, snagged her attention away from the glory of this natural architecture, to the source of that force. Her heartbeat pounded in every cell of her body as she looked over the plush carpet of moss covering the floor toward a dais at the end of the vaulted hall, to the set of black chaise lounges facing each another, a table with some sort of board game in between, to the hulking form of the Demon Lord.

Sprawled on one of the chaise lounges, opposite another male who was about to make a move on the board game, Arawn was…a challenge to her vocabulary. She’d seen him before, when he came to claim her after her rescue and Merle made that ill-fated deal with him, and then—as now—he pooled darkness around him even without a change in lighting. The very fabric of the world appeared dipped in ink around the contours of his shape, and instead of glinting off his onyx hair, the sunshine seemed to be absorbed by it, as if sucked away. As huge as this cathedral-like space was, his presence alone filled it.

Black dress pants molded to his long, muscled legs, and a burgundy button-down shirt hugged his massive frame, the sleeves rolled up to his elbows, exposing forearms corded with more muscles. There probably wasn’t an inch of him that was soft, wasn’t forged in brutal strength and unforgiving harshness, the epitome of hard masculinity. That thought alone should have catapulted her into dizzying panic.

She waited for it.

And waited.

But when he turned that face of dark bronze and bored arrogance toward her, when those eyes the color of shadowed woods swept up her body in a languid perusal with a whisper of sensuality underneath, she didn’t cower in fear. She didn’t wince. The part of her that recoiled in instinctive terror in the presence of males—the more powerful, the more she shrank away—now lay silent…and watched, in deference, as another, long-forgotten part of her stretched its talons in welcome…in appreciation.

There you are, it seemed to say. I’ve been waiting for you.