Ash held perfectly still, his senses straining. Giggling laughter echoed through the corridor.

His head turned, nostrils flaring as he inhaled the scents permeating the air. Blood—his, mostly—and the unpleasantly sweet odor of his opponent. His hand tightened on his sword hilt. He could sense the emptiness of the corridor.

Then something shifted.

He pivoted, wings flaring as he thrust his sword into nothing. With a flutter of feathers, the wraith appeared, slipping away from his blade like a fish gliding through river currents. The daemon cackled insanely, flashing pointed teeth, and his hair shifted to reveal his eyes—no pupils, just red and silver light swirling like a bizarre galaxy contained in his skull.

The daemon’s ragged black wings spread wide, filling half the corridor. “Ashtaroth,” he chanted. “I will tell your fortunes if you would but listen.”

“‘Death awaits,’” Ash mocked. “How could I forget?”

He lunged, swinging his blade. The wraith melted away as though gravity had no hold on him, then disappeared. Ash went still again, trying to sense his location.

“How indeed,” the wraith chimed delightedly, his high voice echoing off the marble. “You will forget that which should never be forgotten. A moment to come, lost in the next.”

Unable to sense the daemon unless he moved, Ash had already wasted too much time going in circles while the wraith taunted him. Ash snarled silently. He was done with this bullshit.

The wraith giggled. “A summons in the nothing, a whisper beyond the light. When the ever-night comes, will you fall upon its blade, dragon lord?”

Flipping his sword in his hand, Ash drove the point into the marble. Ebony flames shot down the blade, met the floor, and exploded in a spiral. The corridor turned to searing black fire, charring the polished stone walls.

The flames died, and hovering above the floor in a spherical shield of rippling red and silver power was the wraith, unharmed. He laughed, his tattered wings spread but not flapping. How the daemon was floating like that, Ash didn’t know. And he didn’t care.

He snapped his wings down as he sprang for the shield. His flame-coated sword cut right through it, and this time, when the wraith slid clear of his blade, he slammed the bony top of his wing into the daemon’s face.

Head snapping back, the wraith dropped like a rock. Ash landed and thrust his sword at the fallen daemon. As the wraith evaded with uncanny agility, Ash flicked his wrist. The blade hidden in a sheath under his forearm sprang into his hand, and he slashed it across the wraith’s belly.

The steel passed through the darkness of the daemon’s torso, but whether it had connected with flesh, Ash had no idea.

Gliding backward, the wraith lifted a dark hand, his strange eyes swirling. “Our time is up, Ashtaroth.”

Not knowing what attack was coming, Ash grabbed the gem around his neck and activated the third spell Lyre had made for him.

The golden barrier formed around him an instant before the wraith’s cast struck. A tornado of red and silver blades ripped across the barrier. Teeth gritted, Ash waited for the shield to fail and the blades to tear into him, but the weaving held.

The daemon’s spell died away, revealing the empty corridor. Ash disabled the barrier like Lyre had taught him and focused on his senses—the usual ones and his preternatural ones.

The wraith was gone for good.

He sheathed his sword, giving his arm a break. Exhaustion shivered in his muscles and feverish pain throbbed in his bones from the snake venom, but he ignored both as he tapped into the lodestones hidden in his bracers. Power flooded through him, replenishing his reserves.

He’d taken too long. He had to get to the next level—and he didn’t give a shit about going unnoticed anymore.

He pointed his fist at the ceiling. Magic sizzled through him, building in his arm, then he snapped his fingers open. The blast struck the marble and the ceiling collapsed into the corridor in a wave of shattered marble and white dust.

Launching into the haze, Ash sprang upward with a beat of his wings. He didn’t need to see—he could sense the opening. Just as he could sense the electric vibrations of lethal magic building in the air.

He shot through the hole into the twenty-fourth-level corridor and half leaped, half flew toward the intensifying power. A broad door beckoned, and he hoped the wards were disabled. Hitting it full force, he slammed the door open and wheeled into the room beyond. In a single glance, he took in everything.

Clio, straddling an incubus’s chest with a dagger at his throat, both of them encased in a dome shield.

In the next room, framed by the archway, Lyre. On his knees, a hand pressed to the floor, a tangled gold weaving wrapped over and through his body. The Rysalis patriarch stood a few feet away, an identical weaving coiled around him.

Crimson light flared over their hands and raced up their arms in perfect unison. Surging across their shoulders, the blood magic spread over the golden webbing on their chests. The red light consumed the entire weave—

—and the antechamber exploded.

The detonation ripped the walls apart. Ash leaped for the nearest shelter—Clio and Madrigal’s dome shield. He ducked behind it as chunks of granite hurled past, followed by a wall of fire that disintegrated the dome.

The antechamber walls were gone. The library was in flames. Only the vault, with its granite front and circular door, remained intact, scorched but otherwise undamaged.

In the center of the room, Lyre and Lyceus lay unmoving. The blood-red weave that had covered their bodies was gone, and fires burned across the floor as though the room had been splashed in oil.

Golden light blazed and Clio flew backward. She hit the floor with a yelp, crumpling in a heap. Not noticing Ash at all, Madrigal sprinted into the demolished antechamber.

Ash followed more slowly, unconcerned by the fire as he scanned the downed incubi. Crouching beside his father, Madrigal pressed a hand to Lyceus’s chest, checking for signs of life.

“How,” the incubus snarled. “How could Lyre have …”

Ash crossed to Lyre and dropped onto his haunches. The incubus’s half-open eyes stared, empty. Dead. Ash touched Lyre’s throat, waiting for a pulse. Nothing.

Madrigal turned around, then startled backward at the sight of Ash. Fear bloomed in his scent, pupils dilating from adrenaline. “You! Where did you come from?”

Ash lifted his fingers from Lyre’s lifeless neck and gestured. “Hunting Samael’s contract.” He rose to his feet. “Dead is dead, even if I didn’t get to kill him myself.”

Hissing, Madrigal stormed over and roughly grabbed Lyre by the throat. Ash felt the thrum of magic as Madrigal checked that his brother was properly dead. He let the body fall back to the floor.

“Crazy bastard. I thought Dulcet was the insane one.” Covering his mouth and nose with his arm as smoke hazed the air, Madrigal looked at Lyceus. “I can’t believe he killed himself just to kill our father. How the hell did he do it?”

“Who cares?” Ash intoned. He canted his head. “I need to report back. Are you coming?”

“Am I—what?”

“You probably can’t hear it, but daemons are approaching—half the tower is about to pile onto this level.” He snapped his wings open and closed. “I’m leaving the fast way.”

As Madrigal frowned, Ash headed across the room. He didn’t look for Clio—didn’t risk drawing attention to her. With the shock of his father’s death, Madrigal had forgotten about everything else. Ash could smell her nearby, but smoke was rapidly overwhelming all other scents. It billowed from the library and half the main room was on fire too, the bookshelves consumed by flames and the shelves collapsing.

Ash stopped before the sitting area, the narrow windows reflecting the firelight. He extended his hand, summoned another wave of power, and unleashed the blast. The windows exploded into a gaping hole.

He stepped up to the new exit.

“Wait,” Madrigal snapped. “I’m coming. The faster I can get my brothers back here …”

Trailing off into mutters, he darted into the vestibule and slammed the door shut. Magic sizzled as he engaged the wards, then he joined Ash.

Ash pulled the incubus in front of him. “If you squirm, I’ll drop you.”

Madrigal grumbled something under his breath. As Ash pushed the incubus up to the hole, he glanced back once, but the smoke was too thick to see anything more than the dark shadows where Lyre and his father had fallen. Magic-fueled flames spread implacably across the floor, and in a few hours, when Madrigal returned with his brothers, there would be nothing left but ashes.

But that didn’t matter, because Madrigal had witnessed the two daemons’ deaths first. And Ash would ensure he reported both deaths to the Rysalis family—and to Samael.

Taking hold of the incubus, he sprang into the cool night air and swept away from the burning tower.