At least ten minutes went by. We sat there, hidden behind the half-wall of a terrace, lost in a maze of narrow streets, waiting to hear a dragon roaring and thousands of daemons screaming as they burned to a crisp in the city square. But those sounds never came.

“Something’s wrong,” I whispered, my entire body trembling. “Where’s Blaze? Why hasn’t he transformed yet?”

Caspian didn’t answer, but I felt his fingers digging into my shoulder. It was too late, though. For the first time in my life, I was experiencing real panic. Shortness of breath, a rapid heartbeat, and a dizzying succession of hot and cold waves crashed into me as I began to fear the worst.

“What if they got to them?” I gasped, then used my True Sight to look around, until I found the city square, east of our position. “Oh, no…”

“What?” Caspian’s voice echoed somewhere in the back of my head as I fell to my knees.

They’d caught them. Daemons had gathered back in the square, two bodies being carried up the stairs toward King Shaytan. They’d been covered in dirt and blood, and they were unconscious—Caia and Blaze, from their now-visible general features.

My heart sank and broke into thousands of little pieces. I gripped the edge of the half-wall so tight that pieces of it crumbled beneath my fingers.

“Harper,” Caspian said, “what do you see?”

“They… They got them,” I cried out, no longer able to hold it together. My eyes burned with tears, but I kept watching. The daemons tied Caia and Blaze with rope, and carried them inside the palace. King Shaytan gave more orders, his soldiers once again spreading out. They were going to look for us, probably turn the entire city upside down if they had to. “They got Blaze and Caia…”

Several seconds went by. Caspian’s arms came around me, pulling me close to his chest. I caved in, crying uncontrollably as my mind came to terms with what I’d just witnessed. I wanted to scream and go after them, but I also knew I didn’t stand a chance at this point. The rest of my team and an entire city of innocent Maras and Imen relied on me.

“Harper.” His voice was low and comforting as he held me tight, his lips moving against the top of my head. “Shaytan’s not going to kill them. You heard him. He wants them alive. He probably wants information before he does anything else with them…”

“Anything else?” I managed, sniffing and wiping at the stream of tears pouring out of my eyes.

“Don’t think about that for now,” he replied gently. “They’ve got time. Which means we’ve got time to make this right. They know we’re here, so chances are they won’t go into the city tonight. Let’s just focus on what we have to do next. The city is under a protection spell, anyway, so if daemons do go there tonight, they won’t be able to do anything.”

I sobbed against his chest for another minute, before my logic stepped in. It wasn’t in my nature to get emotional, and, as it turned out, my body had a defense mechanism against a potential complete meltdown.

“Okay,” I sighed, working my way back to my good old self, “we need to focus… I… We need to prioritize.”

“What are you thinking?” Caspian asked. His support and patience had not gone unnoticed. I knew I would reward him for his incredible support at some point. He held me up in ways I’d never even imagined until five minutes earlier.

“We need to find Hansa and Jax, ideally,” I replied, then gave the palace another glance with my True Sight. Caia and Blaze had been carried inside, but I couldn’t see where, exactly. Whether it was the distance or some invisibility spell at work, I wasn’t sure yet. But at least I knew where they were keeping my friends. I knew where to go. “We need a safe spot to work out a plan, and get Blaze and Caia out of there.”

“Shaytan will probably have a way of containing the dragon,” Caspian said.

“We’ll cross that bridge when we get to it.” I shook my head. “You’ve been in this city before. Where is it safe for us to be, at least for a couple of hours?”

“Mose’s hut is a good bet,” he murmured. “Nobody will think to look for us there because nobody knows about our connection to Mose. It’s also close to the safest route out of the city, so we might see Hansa and Jax around there, if we can’t find them in this area.”

As my head cleared, more questions popped up. The most burning one rolled off my tongue.

“Did they follow us all the way from the city? Did they know we were coming, Lord Kifo?”

“I wouldn’t exclude the possibility,” he muttered. Anger vibrated in his voice.

“GASP was betrayed, then… somehow…” I sighed, then rubbed my face. “Ugh! I don’t get it! Was the whole army parade from earlier just for show? Did he already know we’d be here? How… How did it get to this?”

“I don’t know, but we’ll get out of here. All of us.”

I wished I could see his face as he spoke those words of encouragement. I wanted to see his resolve, and draw strength from it. I couldn’t suspect Caspian of anything at this point—not anymore, as he was stuck with me, struggling by my side, while thousands of daemons lurked around, looking for us.

“I’ll get them out,” I whispered, as he held me tight.

“I have no doubt that you will, Harper…”

Hearing him call me by my first name felt strangely comforting. His encouragement coaxed my mind into overdrive, and I gathered the resolve I needed to stand up, taking his hand in mine.

“Let’s go to Mose’s hut,” I said, my heart filled with determination and anger. “We’ve got a dragon and a fae to rescue.”

And that was just at the top of my list, I realized as we snuck through the maze of stone buildings. We didn’t have just Caia and Blaze to release from Shaytan’s palace. We needed to find out how we’d been given away in the first place. Had someone betrayed us, or had they simply sent hunter daemons to follow us?

Our initial mission had been to gather intel—well, that had sunk to the bottom of my list of priorities, at least for the time being. Our presence here had already been given away, so, provided we managed to get Caia and Blaze out safely, we needed to get out of the daemon city and one of us would need to head back to Azure Heights to update our other team members. And then maybe we ought to head out to the western plains…

We’d been hitting our heads against a wall within the Mara city. But the Imen tribes living out in the plains could be instrumental in our investigation of everything that had been ailing Neraka. If we couldn’t get GASP to come in and help, we could try to rally the rogue Imen.

But the capture of Caia and Blaze had hit a soft spot in me, and it was all I could focus on in this moment. I’d already nearly lost Fiona to these fiends; I sure as heck wasn’t going to let them have our dragon and fire fae.