Inhaling slowly, Clio tasted the air.

She hadn’t thought she would ever return. After her disastrous first visit, she’d been utterly content with the idea that it had also been her last visit. How wrong she’d been.

Back again. In the Underworld.

Tilting her head, she squinted at the overcast sky. Heavy clouds blocked any glimpse of the suns or the massive planet, and the earth beneath was dim and gloomy, almost like twilight—though, according to Ash, it was midmorning.

As if summoned by the thought, the draconian joined her on the boardwalk where she waited. He was in full warrior gear—all black, armored vest, protective bracers, heavy belts holding weapons and gear, the hilt of his giant sword jutting above his shoulder, and a wrap covering the lower half of his face. Zwi clung to his other shoulder, head swiveling on her graceful neck.

Behind him, Lyre was adjusting his own gear and Clio couldn’t help but stare even though she’d already gotten a good look at his new attire—several extended good looks, if she was honest.

His black, sleeveless shirt was a heavy, leather-like texture that offered some protection against attacks. Throwing knives were strapped to his upper arms, and his quiver, restocked and bristling with arrows, was belted over his shoulder. His restrung bow hung from a clip on the quiver, and an armguard covered his left arm, an archery glove on his right hand. Sets of knives were belted at his waist and around one thigh.

His deep hood was pulled up, and a black scarf was slung around his neck, one end trailing behind him. As he stopped beside her and Ash, he tugged it over his mouth and nose, loosely hiding his face. His amber eyes gleamed from the shadows of the hood.

It took effort to tear her gaze away from him and focus on Ash. “Are you sure we want to walk in there dressed like this?”

She plucked at her shirt in emphasis. Her outfit was similar to Lyre’s, but her fitted top ran down her arms and cinched tight at her throat, leaving only her face and hands bare. Tight black pants, boots that were uncomfortable and heavy, and belted around her waist was the pair of daggers given to her by Rouvin’s bodyguard in Aldrendahar. Her hair was braided into a tight bun and a scarf hung around her neck, but no one here would recognize her face.

Under her left sleeve, strapped to her forearm, was one more weapon: a small throwing knife Lyre had given her, hidden out of sight. “Just in case,” he had said.

“Yes,” Ash answered shortly.

“But—”

“You’ll see why.” He started along the rickety boardwalk.

She followed with a doubtful frown, Lyre trailing after her. The ground was a muddy tangle of marshland, with patches of tall plants interspersing still pools, their surfaces covered in green scum. Insects buzzed across the foul water, and the reek of rotting vegetation hung in the air, a palpable cloud.

If not for the boardwalk, they would have come out of the ley line right into the mud, but she had to wonder how much longer the planks would last. They creaked alarmingly, the wood crumbling underfoot. Ash didn’t seem to notice as he led them up dilapidated stairs that climbed a small, steep hill.

Puffing, she reached the crest and stopped, squinting across the landscape before her.

The boardwalk continued down again, stretching another two hundred yards across marshes that grew increasingly waterlogged before the river absorbed them. The wide band of water was the largest she’d ever seen, stretching almost two miles across.

The dull gray expanse of liquid was broken only by a series of jutting rock formations—and built upon them was a city.

“Kokytos.” Lyre sighed. “I still can’t decide if this is better or worse than Asphodel.”

Clio suppressed a shiver. When Ash had finally returned from his reconnaissance in the Underworld, she’d already known what he would say—where Lyceus had disappeared with the secret shadow weave.

The city was built vertically, its horizontal sprawl limited by the size of the rocky islands. From this distance, she could see no rhyme or reason to the shapes and structures—no common theme, no matching architecture, not even visible streets or pathways. The only consistency was that most of the city seemed to be constructed of wood—probably gathered from the forest barely visible beyond the river’s far bank.

Rising from the centermost island were three stone towers. They were completely different: one was black and ponderous, with aggressive bulwarks; one was narrow and elegant, constructed of shimmery gray stone, and one was deceptively simple, a featureless white cylinder broken only by narrow windows evenly spaced along its levels.

The Ivory Tower. The haphazard wooden structures of the surrounding city looked dirty and pathetic around it.

Ash lifted Zwi off his shoulder and threw her into the air. Her small wings snapped open and she sped toward the river, a speck of black that shrank as she drew ahead.

“Let’s move,” he said, leading them down a ramp. “We don’t want to hang around near—”

The power of the ley line, flowing serenely behind them, stuttered. Ash glanced back, eyes narrowing.

With a clatter of talons, the new arrival from the ley line appeared on the hilltop. The daemon paused at the sight of them, then continued down. Clio didn’t even breathe as he stalked past her.

His steps slowed. He stopped and looked back.

Forcing herself to inhale, she lifted her chin in a silent challenge—anything to deny the fear shivering through her. He wore a bone-white skull with a protruding beak over his face, the empty eye sockets full of shadows, and a collection of bizarre, frightening skulls hung from his belt. His fingers flexed—each one ending in a long talon.

Silent on the rotting boardwalk, Lyre stepped to her side, the deep hood pulled forward to hide his face.

“Problem?” he crooned at the daemon.

A shift of movement on her other side, and Ash appeared. He said nothing, but the threat was obvious.

The daemon glanced between them, his bird-skull mask bobbing, then he shrugged and resumed his odd, clattering walk—his gait warped by the shape of his legs. His feet looked like a hawk’s instead of a human’s.

“I was afraid of this,” Ash muttered irritably. He glanced over her head at Lyre. “She has ‘prey’ written all over her.”

“We could give her more weapons?” Lyre suggested dubiously.

“Won’t help. The problem is her body language.”

When they both frowned at her, she scowled back self-consciously. “What do you want me to do, strut around spitting like an angry cat?”

“That might help,” Ash said seriously.

“You can look tough when you want to,” Lyre added. “You’re actually kind of scary when you shade.”

Her scowl deepened. “I can’t just shade on command.”

Lyre and Ash exchanged another look.

“What?” she demanded.

With a slight shake of his head, Ash continued onward and Lyre fell into step behind her. A little ways ahead, the beak-mask daemon was bobbing toward the river. The boardwalk ended abruptly at the edge of the marsh, where a small, rectangular barge was moored to a post.

Beak-face hopped onto the barge and strode to the far end, and Ash jumped from the boardwalk to the grimy barge deck with equal ease. Clio hesitated, then leaped. The barge shifted in the current and she stumbled on landing, but Ash casually caught her elbow, the movement smooth enough that Beak-face didn’t notice.

Lyre jumped on last. As they all stood there, doing nothing, Clio looked around in confusion. Kokytos was almost a mile away across murky, rippling water, and the barge had no guide ropes, poles, or paddles. In fact, she realized, it wasn’t even moored to the dock. It was just … floating in place despite the current, tied to nothing.

Just as she was about to whisper a question to Lyre, a splash broke the quiet.

Something surged out of the river. Black, webbed hands grabbed the edge of the barge, and a humanoid torso rose out of the water, leaning on the edge. The daemon smiled at them, his dark hair dripping wet. His hands were black and shiny, with the darkness fading to gleaming scarlet farther up his arms. A pointed dorsal fin with red spines rose off his back.

“Welcome aboard,” he drawled in a wet, slurring voice. His eyes were red and black to match his scales—black pupils, everything else cherry red. “Show your payment before you put it in the box.”

Beak-face had already pulled out a handful of silver coins. He held them out to the water daemon, then dropped them through a slot in the top of a small steel box bolted to the deck. Ash stepped forward, a coin pouch in his hands. He counted out some plats, displayed them for the daemon, then added them to the box.

“Good, good,” the daemon slurred. “Anyone else coming?”

“No,” Ash answered.

“Where to?”

“Main island.”

Without a word, the daemon pushed off the edge and dove back into the river. As he went under, a black-scaled body ending in a broad fish tail flipped out of the water before vanishing after him.

The barge lurched away from the boardwalk. Clio grabbed Lyre’s arm for balance, staring at the spot where the black- and red-scaled barge master had vanished.

As the boat drifted mysteriously across the river, she craned her neck back to take in the three towers. From a distance, she hadn’t realized how tall the city was—tangles of structures on top of structures, linked with rope bridges and crooked, zigzagging catwalks. They drew even closer until the city blotted out half the sky, the island piled with buildings.

The barge slid past a small island into a channel between rocky outcroppings. The river current, deceptively sluggish, revealed its true power as the ripples grew more pronounced and the heavy barge rocked sickeningly. But it held to its course, running beneath a multitude of rope bridges stretching between islands.

The largest island reared out of the water ahead, the current pushing them toward it. It didn’t stretch as high as the Iridian capital, but it was so densely packed with wooden buildings that she couldn’t see the stone beneath.

Gliding to a low dock, the barge bumped into the thick posts. No sooner did it make contact than Beak-face jumped off. Ash followed, and Lyre nudged her forward. She tried to look confident and graceful as she sprang onto the dock. Her nymph form would have helped, but dropping glamour was not something she wanted to do in this city.

With a faint splash, the finned daemon popped his head out of the water, checking the dock for any returning passengers. Seeing her watching him, he grinned to reveal lines of pointed teeth.

Shivering, she started to turn around.

“Hey!”

Lyre’s snarl came out of nowhere, and his bow snapped down, the wood cracking against Beak-face’s hand. She sprang back, shocked to find the daemon right there, reaching for her.

Clutching his taloned fingers, Beak-face hopped away, hissing. His head swung toward her and a long, thin tongue snaked out of his mouth from beneath the bone mask. She jerked back another step—and her heel slipped on the dock’s edge. She pitched backward.

A hand thumped on her butt and shoved her forward again.

“Careful, careful,” the water daemon slurred as she stumbled onto solid footing. His red eyes fixed on Beak-face. “No trouble on the dock, yes?”

Beak-face hissed again and his skull mask turned to Lyre. He said something in a sibilant language she’d never heard before, then he turned and clattered along the dock and up a steep flight of stairs, the skulls on his belt clacking together.

“What did he say?” she whispered faintly. She expected Lyre or Ash to answer, but a different voice spoke first.

“Ahhhh,” the water daemon drawled. “Not for lady ears, those words. But a good warning, yes? Tasty morsels are eaten swiftly in hungry places like this.”

Cackling with what could have been amusement or malice, he pushed away from the dock and vanished beneath the surface.

Pulling Clio toward the stairs, Lyre shot an irritated glare at the water. “I bet he’d make a ‘tasty morsel.’”

“Grilled on an open fire,” Ash agreed, taking the lead again.

“Served over lemon rice.” Noticing her horrified stare, Lyre snickered. “Kidding, Clio. We don’t eat daemons.”

“Some daemons eat other daemons,” Ash pointed out tonelessly as he climbed the steps.

“Let’s not get into that.”

“The water daemon wasn’t as freaky as Beak-face,” she mumbled.

“The ekek was just curious,” Ash said. “The water daemon is the one who’d eat you without a second thought, if he didn’t have his barge to worry about.”

She resisted the urge to look back at the water. “I see.”

At the top of the stairs, Ash stopped and looked down at her. “I can smell your fear. That means other daemons can smell it too. Toughen up, or I’m taking you back to the ley line.”

Alarm shot through her. “No. I’m not going back.”

“If you smell like fear, every predator who crosses your path will hunt you.”

And that would put Lyre and Ash at risk protecting her. Her shoulders wilted, but she forced them straight again. “I won’t be afraid.”

Ash’s forehead crinkled skeptically.

“She’ll be fine,” Lyre said. “She’ll be too busy tripping everywhere to be afraid.”

She bristled. “Excuse me?”

“Don’t play dumb.” He rolled his eyes. “We all know you can’t walk twenty steps through a new location without falling down.”

“What? That’s not—”

“How many times have you almost fallen since we got here?” He prodded her up the steps again. “You’re graceful as a cat in the night out of glamour, but in glamour, you flop around like a fish out of water.”

“I what?” She tried to turn on him but he pushed her to the top of the stairs. Growling angrily, she stomped after Ash. The towering wooden structures closed over them, buildings and walkways stacked on top of each other as high as she could see. Some paths were alarmingly narrow, but Ash seemed to be following a main route.

They moved through the twisting catwalks and across bridges that made her stomach plunge. Though the dock area had been mostly empty, Ash was leading them deeper into Kokytos. And it was no longer deserted.

Daemons moved through the streets, and glamour—which most daemons used in Asphodel—was a rarity. The walkways and bridges were so narrow that avoiding the other residents was impossible.

A painfully thin, boyish daemon with skin so white it had the bluish tinge of ice drifted past them without issue, not even glancing their way as his huge, solid blue eyes stared without blinking. But halfway across a bridge, they met a seven-foot-tall beast with a thick mane and gray-blue fur, walking on two stocky legs and massive paws.

The beast couldn’t fit past Ash, and the draconian faced off with the creature, the wooden planks creaking under their weight. Clio clutched the rope railing.

“Out of the way,” the beast growled, the words mangled by his bear-like muzzle.

Instead of answering, Ash settled his hand on the hilt of his sword.

Her hand tightened on the rope. Wouldn’t it be better to yield to the huge furred monstrosity?

“You know, this bridge reminds me of Irida,” Lyre whispered in her ear, leaning in from behind her. “Have you ever fallen off a boardwalk there?”

“Shut up!” she hissed under her breath.

“I was just wondering,” he replied, all innocence. “Don’t you think it’d be fun to keep a tally of your wipeouts?”

She gritted her teeth and focused on Ash’s confrontation, but she must have missed something, because the furred beast was awkwardly backing down the bridge as Ash advanced, menace oozing from him with each step.

With the beast out of their way, they continued on. She kept her eyes on Ash’s back as much as possible, but that didn’t stop her from spotting creatures that would haunt her nightmares. Thankfully, they soon came out on a wider street, the wooden planks thunking hollowly underfoot, and Ash didn’t have to challenge anyone else for the right of way.

Flimsy doors and tarnished windows lined the thoroughfare, nothing labeled with a sign or address, but daemons were coming in and out as though the buildings were open businesses. A humid miasma that smelled vaguely of rotting fish hung over the island.

Just as she wondered how Ash could possibly navigate this maze, he came to an intersection and stopped, glancing one way then the other. Was he lost?

The thud of hooves interrupted her anxious wondering. A daemon strode past, his naked upper body human, but his lower body that of a horse—four legs and all. Except it wasn’t quite a horse body, because it was plated with shining black scales the size of her outstretched hand.

Deciding on a direction, Ash swung left and headed down a narrower street. Once again, he ended up challenging various daemons to get out of his way, winning every time without having to draw a weapon. Only once did he give ground, suddenly stepping to the side of the street. Clio hastily followed his lead, Lyre shadowing her.

A woman glided sedately down the center of the wooden path—and every daemon cleared the way for her. She didn’t look at anyone, her pale eyes gazing straight ahead. Sprouting from the sides of her skull was a pair of magnificent antlers, woven with living vines that hung almost to the ground. Her long green hair and flowing dress trailed after her, and she seemed to float more than walk.

After she had passed, Ash cut back onto a wider street and Clio breathed a sigh of relief. She again focused on his back, ignoring the intermittent flow of daemons.

A shadow moved in her peripheral vision, and she glanced around Ash. Ahead on the street, a dark figure moved toward them. The creature drifted with a sort of directionless languor, cloaked in black with ragged strips of ghostly fabric hanging from his body. Curved horns adorned his forehead and a shaggy mess of dark hair was tangled across his face, hiding his eyes.

Her nerves prickled as the dark daemon drew closer. He came level with Ash—and stopped.

“Son of dragons.” The singsong voice was soft and light, at complete odds with his nightmarish mien. “Blood of the blood.”

“Keep walking, wraith,” Ash said, his voice quiet but edged with steel.

“Seek your fate in my shadows.” The daemon lifted his arms, his flesh black as night. Then the tatters of his cloak shifted—except it wasn’t a cloak. Ragged feathers fluttered as he spread dark wings. “I will lay your future bare, Ashtaroth.”

“Not interested.”

The wraith smiled—a maniacal upturning of his lips, his eyes still hidden. “Perhaps another time, then.”

His wings pulled in again, resuming their camouflage as a tattered cloak, and he drifted into motion. Clio didn’t move as his pale face, the only break in his dark form, turned to her. Three short black horns protruded from his forehead between the larger two, almost invisible in his tangled hair. That same deranged smile pulled at his mouth, but he said nothing to her as he glided past.

Ash waited until the wraith was a safe distance away before speaking. “I can smell her fear again.”

“Yeah, well,” Lyre muttered. “Riling her up is more difficult when I’m freaked out too. What the hell was that thing?”

“A wraith,” Ash said with an unhelpful shrug. “We’re almost there. Come on.”

“What about what he said to you?” Lyre asked, taking Clio’s arm as he hurried after Ash. “What he called you?”

“Everything a wraith says is nonsensical garbage.”

Lyre pressed his lips together, and when he glanced at Clio, she saw her own questions reflected in his eyes.

She didn’t have time to wonder about the encounter, because Ash finally selected a building from among the endless blank doors and swept inside. Gulping down her nerves, she followed him in. This was it.