I was somewhere between a dream and reality. I was running through the Valley of Screams, the gorge walls closing in on me, tall, dark, and menacing. Flashes of red eyes kept up with me. It didn’t matter how fast I was; the gorge seemed to go on for hundreds of feet, its end visible but somehow impossible to reach. The invisible beasts were getting closer. I could see Patrik at the end, standing with his arms outstretched, telling me that I was so close.

I was still so far away from him. Nevertheless, I persisted. My feet listened, my body tense against the basic laws of physics as I shot through the gorge.

Screams rippled behind me, but I couldn’t care less. Patrik was directly ahead of me, and I needed to get to him. I needed to touch him. I knew that once I could feel his skin on my fingertips, I’d be okay.

Bird trills tickled my ears, and fingers ran through my hair—so soft, so gentle. The sensation filled me with warmth I hadn’t felt since I’d been turned.

I peeled my eyes open, and felt a fine touch running down my cheek. My head rested against Patrik’s thigh, which was snug beneath the bedcover. I could see the entire length of his legs, the infirmary windows with the shutters down, and the medicine cabinets against the wall. The rest of my upper body rested on his bedside. I’d fallen asleep on one of the chairs and inadvertently sought the comfort of the one I’d been watching over.

It was his hand touching me. My cheeks caught fire, my throat constricted, and my heart thumped in an instant reaction to Patrik’s proximity. I sat up with a gasp, blinking fast as I turned my head to look at him.

He was gazing at me, his eyes half closed. Their arresting deep blue made me hold my breath for a second. What a dream I’d had! And what a way to wake up, feeling his touch…

“Are you okay?” I cleared my throat, doing my best to sound alert and professional.

The circumstances quickly came back to me. The attack last night. The Valley of Screams. His wounds, and my anguish at seeing him like that. The undeniable attraction I felt toward him, the inexplicable looks he gave me. His mourning of Kyana. The fact that he was my superior officer in GASP.

He gave me a weak smile, then rubbed his face and let out a long and heavy breath.

“Yes, the healing capsules and the Mara blood did a fine job of patching me up,” he said slowly. His gaze found mine again, those two pools of ocean blue forcing my heart to skip another beat. “Thank you for last night. You held it together, and you helped me get to safety, when I should’ve been the one looking out for you, since I’m supposed to be the more experienced officer on this team.”

There was a hint of remorse in his voice, and I didn’t like it. He had no business blaming himself for anything that had gone down in those gorges.

“That’s nonsense!” I put on my most confident smirk. “None of us knew exactly what was in the Valley of Screams. The hostiles were invisible and ridiculously fast, and you did your best to protect the team. Don’t beat yourself up. It’s cool! We’re teammates. We help each other out. You would’ve done the same for me and the others. Well, technically speaking, you did, until you got injured.”

I should stop talking now. I was babbling.

The Iman girl we’d rescued moaned behind me. We both looked at her. She was pale, covered in sweat, and frowning with her eyes closed. She was probably having a nightmare and trying to wake up.

One of the Exiled Mara nurses came in with a bowl of water and fresh clothes. She smiled at us, then proceeded to check on the girl. She felt her pulse and put a palm on her forehead, then wet one of the cloths and used it to wipe the sweat off her face.

“Thank you for helping us… and her,” I said, watching the nurse as she wiped the Iman girl’s neck and bare arms, then pulled the bedcovers aside.

“It’s what we do, milady,” the nurse replied gently, then checked the bandages on the girl’s chest, abdomen, and legs. Blood had seeped through them, but it had already dried up.

“What do you think? How is she faring?” I asked.

“I think she’ll pull through. She’s a strong Iman,” the nurse said.

“Do you think she needs more blood to heal?” I wondered if my blood could help her heal faster. “I can offer mine, if you’d like. Earth vampire blood has healing properties, too—”

“Don’t worry, milady.” The nurse smiled. “We’ll use ours if she needs more. There’s no point taking the risk that she’ll reject your blood—you being from a different universe and all. For now, I think she’ll be fine. We’ll monitor her state throughout the day and make further assessments in the evening.”

I nodded, then glanced at Patrik. He watched the Iman girl quietly, and I could see his brows pull into a mild frown.

“What are you thinking?” I asked him once the nurse had left the room, having finished her checkup.

“Nothing in particular,” he replied. “Just wondering what she was doing in the Valley of Screams last night. Is she one of the missing victims? Or did she just wander through the gorge, despite all the warnings she must have been given?”

“I think she’s the only one who can tell us,” I muttered.

The door opened and the rest of our team entered, while two nurses opened the shutters from the outside, then re-entered the infirmary through one of the side entrances that they used to give us privacy in that part of the building. The awnings had been pulled all the way to the edge of the terrace, shielding us from direct sunlight.

Hansa and Jax stopped at the other side of Patrik’s bed, wearing broad smiles. Heron, Blaze, Caia, Avril, Fiona, and Harper gathered at the foot of the bed.

“There he is!” Hansa let out a sigh of relief. “You gave us a scare last night!”

“I’m sorry,” Patrik replied.

“Nothing to be sorry about.” Jax winked. “You did a damn good job out there. We would’ve been dead without your magic. We all underestimated the strength of our enemy in a direct confrontation.”

“How are you feeling?” Hansa put her hand on his arm.

“Much better,” Patrik said. “Still a bit groggy, though…”

I wondered if it had been said grogginess that had made him touch me a few minutes earlier. Had he been fully conscious and aware of what he was doing? My stomach dropped as I thought he might have confused me with Kyana somehow, in some dreamy state or something.

-The Iman girl moaned and finally opened her eyes.

I turned to face her, and Avril, Caia, and Harper moved to the foot of her bed.

“Hey, hey, it’s okay,” I said, gently squeezing her shoulder.

The girl glanced at me, fear imprinted on her pale face.

“You’re safe now,” I tried to reassure her.

“We rescued you from the Valley of Screams,” Hansa added, coming up next to me. “How are you feeling?”

She blinked several times, still trying to make sense of her surroundings. Her breathing was slow and shallow, her caramel-colored eyes wide.

“I… I don’t know… Weak,” she croaked. “Thirsty…”

I poured her a glass of water from the pitcher on her side table, and held her head up as I helped her drink some.

“Thank you,” she said, relaxing.

“What is your name?” Hansa asked.

“Minah…”

“Do you remember what happened?”

“I think so,” she replied. “I was out in the field. I was going to look for my father… He’s been missing for days… Something hit me in the head, and…”

Tears glazed her eyes as she tried to speak. She was in pain, and she’d lost a parent. I could only imagine what she was going through.

“Go on, Minah,” Hansa said gently, taking the girl’s hand in hers.

“I… I was taken by something, but I couldn’t see it… I woke up in a cage, a big iron cage inside a stone cave. There are many hidden caves all over the Valley of Screams, so… I figured I had to be somewhere in those gorges, but there was nobody there…”

Another nurse came in, with fresh bandages and a cup of Mara blood. She pulled Minah’s covers aside, then checked her temperature again. We all kept our eyes on the Iman girl as she frowned and struggled to remember.

“One… One of the screws on a hinge was loose,” Minah continued. “I pushed it out, and… I managed to get out. I was trying to get out of the gorge when something cut my leg. It slashed my back… It growled, and I saw its red eyes… It was a daemon… More were coming… I was in so much pain. I started running and screaming… Then… Then I saw you…”

She looked at Hansa, tears streaming down her cheeks.

“‘Daemon’?” The succubus repeated the foreign name. “What is a daemon?”

“Were they the creatures we couldn’t see? Is that what you call them here?” I asked.

She started crying, her chest shuddering with each sob. The nurse gently touched her face.

“It’s okay, darling,” the Exiled Mara whispered. “You’re safe… It will be okay.”

Minah nodded once, then closed her eyes and went limp against her pillows.

“Minah.” Hansa raised her voice. “Minah!”

The nurse checked her pulse again, then looked up at us.

“She’s okay. She just passed out again,” she said.

“What are daemons?” Hansa didn’t have time or patience to spare. Neither did we, for that matter.

“I… I don’t know.” The nurse shrugged, genuinely confused. “I’ve never heard that name before.”

“So, none of you have ever seen these creatures before?” I asked incredulously.

“I swear, we have never laid eyes on a… daemon before,” the nurse insisted as she changed Minah’s bandages, dripping Mara blood over the still-open cuts on the girl’s legs before covering them with clean strips of white fabric. “This girl doesn’t look familiar either. Who knows what creatures exist in the Imen’s folklore? Maybe she referred to her attackers by some old wives’ tale name… We’ve never heard the term before, I’m sure of it.”

Hansa grunted, then walked over to one of the windows, one hand resting on her hip. She ran the other through her long, curly black hair.

“When do you think she’ll wake up again?” she asked, her gaze fixed on the view outside.

“I honestly don’t know… It could be within the hour or later tonight,” the nurse replied. “She’s lost a lot of blood, and her biology is inherently inferior to ours. It takes much longer for the Imen to recover, even if we pump them full of healing blood and potions. We’ll keep monitoring her, of course.”

The nurse then covered Minah with the bedclothes again, took the used bandages, and left the room. Hansa stared at the door as it closed behind her, her lips pursed.

“Does anybody else have this nagging feeling that Minah mentioned daemons as if the nurse might actually know what they were?” she murmured, then glanced at the Iman girl.

“What are you trying to say?” Harper asked.

“I can’t be the only one here.” Hansa raised an eyebrow.

“No, I got the same feeling,” Jax said.

“Me too.” Heron raised a hand. “I didn’t think to check out the nurse’s eyes while she was next to Minah. She might’ve mind-bent her back to sleep, but I won’t be able to tell until Minah wakes up again.”

“Whoa, that’s a bit extreme,” Hansa replied, then scoffed, as if fighting a battle between two sides in her mind. “Or maybe not. Maybe they are hiding something. Maybe they do know what the daemons are…”

“I wouldn’t put it past them, especially not with how ‘protective’ Caspian has been. His ominous warnings could also easily be interpreted as veiled threats,” Harper mused.

“But they called us here because they need our help.” I frowned, not sure what to believe at this point.

“Not denying that,” Harper said. “Not at all. I’m just thinking that they might know more about what’s going on than they’re telling us. Maybe it’s something they’re ashamed of, for example.”

“It’s easy to make assumptions,” Hansa interrupted. “But we need accurate assessments. We need to investigate this further.”

“Okay, so where do we start?” I asked.

“We could look into the Mara Lords,” Harper said, the corner of her mouth twitching. “I’d be happy to find out more about them. They bug me. House Kifo, in particular. Caspian. He’s hiding something. I’m willing to bet my motorcycle on it.”

That statement made me gasp. Harper’s cruiser was her baby. She’d spent a couple of months on the California coastline, and had come back with a custom-made motorcycle, a beautiful model she loved taking out for a ride once a week. If she was confident enough to put the bike up in a wager, it meant she was onto something.

“Fine,” Jax replied. “Then Harper can go to the city library and start digging through their family registries and archives.”

“Wait… That’s not what I meant.” Harper looked befuddled. “I wasn’t talking about research.”

“I know, you were talking about snooping on them, and that’s not a good idea,” Jax shot back. “You’re doing research. You’re not going to spy on Caspian and get yourself in trouble. I’m sure you’ll find all the information you need in those archives.”

Harper opened her mouth to protest the decision, but gave in and simply nodded instead. I stifled a grin, as I knew she wanted to be in the middle of the action. She’d always been like this. Inquisitive, active, persistent. It was what made her good at her job as a GASP agent. But I had to admit, Jax had a point. It was too early in the game to stalk the Lords and Ladies of Azure Heights. We needed to better understand their origins, their society, and their laws, while staying equally focused on the investigation and the Valley of Screams. We had our work cut out for us.

“Caia and Blaze can do more interviews today,” Jax added, looking at the fire fae and the dragon. “You can get Rewa to help you again, as many of these families aren’t too keen to talk to strangers like us.”

They both nodded, but I saw the slight frown on Caia’s face. She still didn’t like Rewa much. I could tell even from our night in the Druid Archives. To be fair, I couldn’t blame her, given the sweet eyes the young Exiled Mara had for Blaze. Caia could deny it all she wanted, but that look in her eyes whenever she stole a glance at him said it all.

“Avril, Fiona, and Heron can move ahead with Arrah tonight. Fiona will keep Vincent busy, while Avril and Heron will sneak back to the Roho mansion and try and speak to the Iman girl,” Hansa said. “We need more info on what’s going on in this city, especially where the Imen are concerned.”

“We’ll be on it tonight.” Heron nodded. “But what do you want us to do in the meantime?”

“You can help Harper with research in the library,” Jax replied. It hit me then that he wasn’t in the best of moods. It was often difficult to read him, but sometimes his irritability was obvious. I had a feeling it could be related to the tension between him and Hansa, but since neither of them ever talked about it, there was no point in asking questions and getting myself thrown into the library with Harper and the others.

“Why? I mean, why?” Heron rolled his eyes, clearly displeased. “I asked how we could help, not how to get bored while waiting for the Spring Ball.”

“You are helping. We need research.” Jax raised an eyebrow. “Still allergic to books, huh?”

“You suck,” Heron shot back.

“Maybe, but I’m in charge.” Jax smirked.

Avril and Fiona glanced at one another, trying hard not to laugh, while Heron crossed his arms over his chest. Hansa cleared her throat, then nodded at Patrik.

“Patrik, Jax and I need to talk to you,” she said. “We need that beautiful Druid brain of yours to give us some protection spell options for the entire city. Swamp witch magic, too, if anything comes to mind.”

“For the entire city?” Patrik scratched the faint stubble on his chin, and I couldn’t help but stare at his lips, until he saw me. I quickly looked down at my hands. “I can think of a few, but they’ll require some materials and some team effort.”

“That’s doable, I hope,” Hansa replied. “Whatever you need, we’ll help. I’m thinking we could first protect the city, then go into offense mode on these… daemons.”

“Makes sense,” Jax agreed, then looked at Blaze and Caia. “Based on the info you gather from the families today, and on what we already know, we’ll put some pins on a map of the city and its surrounding areas. Hopefully, we’ll identify an attack pattern and radius.”

“Uh, guys?” Fiona said, demanding our attention. “I think we need to get back to the inn. Vincent said he was sending his tailors to help us with our outfits for the Spring Ball tonight.”

Hansa groaned, obviously displeased with the concept of dressing up for a ball.

“Patrik,” Jax said, “we’ll go and get this fancy dress business out of the way first, and then we’ll come back and talk about those protective spells. Do you need us to bring you anything from your room?”

“Yes, my travel bag,” he replied. “There are things in there which I’ll need for the spells.”

Jax nodded, then headed for the door.

“Coming, Scarlett?” Hansa asked. “Bet you’re tired of this infirmary by now.”

“No, I’m good.” I smiled and shook my head. “I’ll keep an eye on Patrik and Minah.”

“There’s no need,” Patrik replied bluntly, deliberately not looking at me. “I’m fine. I’m conscious and able to move—I can watch over Minah. The team needs you more than I do right now.”

I couldn’t help but feel rejected, and I wasn’t sure I was good at hiding the stinging disappointment that he’d caused in me. I looked at Fiona and Avril, who were both smiling knowingly at me.

“Come on,” Avril said. “Time to get you all dressed up for tonight. We’ll need to blend in and observe the hell out of these Exiled Maras.”

“The more we understand, the less weird they might seem.” Fiona giggled.

I forced myself to smile back and got up without bothering to look at Patrik again. I was afraid he’d be able to see right through me if I got trapped in those intense blue eyes of his.

I followed the rest of my team outside and up the stairs leading back to the Broken Bow Inn. Whatever happened next, I had to be on my toes and ready to perform. My team needed me; my friends and my family depended on me. Most importantly, that fragile, wounded Iman girl in the infirmary needed me.

She’d lost her father to these invisible daemons, and she’d nearly died herself. I felt like I owed it to her to shed light on this mystery and stop those creatures from taking more innocent people.