“Well, this is a surprise,” Ahlvie muttered.

“You come to my city and are surprised to find me in it?” Ceis’f asked. His golden eyes roamed over the faces of their party before landing hungrily on Avoca’s face.

“We had no idea where you went,” Cyrene said when Avoca remained silent.

“Perhaps I didn’t want to be found.”

Everyone shifted on their feet, except Cal, whose eyes were darting between Ceis’f and Cyrene. “What’s going on?”

Avoca breathed softly. “Just an old friend we weren’t expecting to see.”

Cyrene sighed. “Look, we’re not here for any trouble.”

Her eyes darted to Dean, who was still lying unconscious on the floor. She had not anticipated a reunion with Ceis’f in this plan. She’d thought it would be easy. A get-in, get-out kind of job. But, of course, nothing was ever easy in her life.

“Humans never are,” Ceis’f spat. “Somehow, they always seem to cause it.”

“Did you clear out the temple?” Avoca asked.

Ceis’f nodded. “Seemed like the right thing to do since I have nowhere else to go.”

Avoca’s hands flexed and tightened at her sides. “You know you are always welcome in Eldora.”

“Don’t,” Ceis’f ground out. “That is not home, and with you gone, it is nothing at all.”

“I understand,” Avoca said.

Ceis’f grumbled something under his breath. “What are you all doing here anyway?”

“We’ve been staying at a local village, and it has been attacked the last couple of months by wraiths,” Avoca said. “Cal here is from the village, and she was helping us track them. It led us here. You wouldn’t happen to know anything about that, would you?”

“Wraiths?” he asked with a disgruntled snort. “Try a Nokkin, Ava.”

Avoca stumbled forward. Ahlvie reached for her to steady her.

Cyrene sighed. “What is a Nokkin?”

“That’s what I want to know,” Cal said.

“A creature of legend,” Ceis’f told them.

“They were once Doma, one of the first families in ancient times. They were extremely powerful and obsessed with dark magic. They were so determined to gain power that the power they gathered took over their bodies. It stripped their souls and made them something else. Something more sinister. They’re humanlike, but they can become a shadow at will. They feed off magic and suck the life from people until there’s nothing left of them, or so the stories go.”

Cyrene swayed on her feet. Suck magic from bodies. Turn into shadow. Reek of dark magic.

Creator! She had faced one before. Perhaps the same Nokkin that had been terrorizing Fen. Perhaps it had come here because of her. She hadn’t remembered that encounter in the mountains until now. She had thought that she had killed that thing by blasting it with her magic, but maybe she was wrong.

“But they’re all dead,” Avoca said. “Mother said they were all killed in the war.”

Ceis’f shrugged as he circled around the tree. “Guess she was wrong.”

“How do you kill them?” Ahlvie asked practically.

“If I knew, don’t you think I would have done it by now?” Ceis’f spat. “I’ve been trying to get rid of the damn thing since I got here. So, good luck with that.”

“We’ll need to consult with Matilde and Vera,” Avoca said, picking up her blade and concealing it once more. “They might be the only people still alive who have faced a Nokkin, and they will have some insight into how to defeat it.”

“Can we speak alone for a moment?” Ceis’f asked, reaching out for Avoca’s elbow.

Ahlvie crossed his arms and glared back at Ceis’f. Cyrene hoped the trio didn’t ignite and burn the whole place down a second time.

“I’ll handle this,” Avoca told Ahlvie before disappearing with Ceis’f.

“Well, he’s a real treat,” Cal muttered when he was gone.

“You can say that again,” Ahlvie grumbled. “I’m going to go spy on them.”

“Can I come, too?” Cal asked excitedly.

Cyrene was about to tell them both off when she heard a loud groan behind her. “Dean?”

She fell to his side and tried to help him sit up as he seemed to come to. Cal abandoned Ahlvie’s pursuit of Avoca to help Cyrene lift him.

“Is he going to be okay?” she asked.

Cyrene bit her lip. “I don’t know. I don’t know enough about that mirror to be sure.”

Dean groaned again and then leaned forward, pushing his hands into his head. “Ugh!”

“Dean, are you okay? Can you hear what I am saying? Can you see me? Do you remember who I am?”

She pushed her face right before his, and he cracked open an eye.

“Cyrene?” he muttered. “You look beautiful.”

“I look like I trekked hours through the forest and need a good meal and hot bath.”

“Just like the day I met you,” he said, winding a lock of her hair around his finger.

She abruptly pulled back. She hadn’t meant to make that so personal. She had been worried that she would lose someone else. Not that she entirely forgave Dean for what had happened, but she could tell he had been trying to prove himself to her.

“Well, at least you remember that much,” she said. “Do you remember anything you saw in the Mirror?”

He frowned, and his pupils dilated. “Pieces. Bits and pieces. Things that I didn’t want to see. And…a path. A way to earn it.”

“Earn what?”

He shook his head and glanced off. “What did I say?”

Cyrene sighed. He was too out of it to remember anything yet. Avoca was right. They needed to get back to Fen and figure all of this out with Matilde and Vera. Maybe Avoca could even convince Ceis’f to come with them. If he was from here, he had to know something about the Mirror of Truth. She’d be happy to have as much information as she could at this point.

Cyrene and Cal eventually hoisted Dean up between the two of them. Not an easy feat, considering he was a huge military captain and they were two relatively small women. Cyrene would have liked to use her magic to help him walk, but she hadn’t used any since she detoxed from her blood magic. She wasn’t about to start unless they ran into trouble.

By the time that they got Dean out of the room with the sacred tree and down the steps into the ballroom, Avoca and Ahlvie were storming back up toward them.

“What happened?” Cyrene asked.

“Ceis’f is being himself,” Avoca spat.

“Bastard,” Ahlvie growled as he went to take Cal’s place holding up Dean.

“No, I’ve got him. Cyrene is smaller. No offense,” Cal said with a grimace.

“None taken. I am.”

Ahlvie ducked his head under Dean’s arm, and Cyrene took a breath of relief. She didn’t mind that she was smaller, weaker, or more vulnerable than the others. She was always feminine and dainty but fierce and wild in personality. Her magic matched her personality at least.

“So, he won’t help us?” Cyrene asked.

“He won’t leave,” Avoca said. “And he won’t talk further about the Nokkin. He wants us all out of his city by nightfall.”

“Great,” Cyrene said. “We should probably go back then.”

Avoca crisply nodded once. Her eyes said she was ready to go find Ceis’f and beat him to a bloody pulp. But she held herself back and tugged on her bond with Cyrene.

Cyrene responded with a soft touch, as if to say, I understand.

“Did he at least give any more useful information?” Cyrene asked as they exited the building.

Dean had his legs under him, but he was stumbling and still slightly incoherent. She didn’t know how they were going to make it all the way through the forest with him like this.

“If you consider taunting and thinly veiled threats useful,” Ahlvie said.

“He did say that the Nokkin has no interest in him,” Avoca said. “Though why, I have no idea. He has as much magic as the rest of us.”

“Did he say why he’s actually here?” Cyrene asked. “You know it’s not because he isn’t welcome in Eldora.”

Avoca tensed. “He said he came to look in the Mirror.”

“What?” Cyrene asked. “He seemed fine!”

“He said that Dean is lucky that it drove him insane,” Avoca muttered, glancing back at Dean. “Because, when Ceis’f looked to his future in the Mirror, he saw nothing.”

Cyrene clamped her mouth shut at that. She could feel the pain through the bond. Avoca wasn’t usually the one of them who blasted her emotions so wildly. But, if Ceis’f looked into the Mirror of Truth and saw nothing, it likely meant…he had no future to behold.

“Why does this feel so much farther than the way there?” Cal asked.

“Because we’re hauling dead weight,” Ahlvie groaned. “Creator, I have to stop. I need a break.”

The sun had already gone down long ago, and it was nearly pitch-black in the trees. Thankfully, Avoca had created some torches for them to see in the darkness, but the whole situation was blinding. They would never have made it back had Ahlvie and Cal not known the area so well.

“We’ll stop right up ahead. I can feel the stream,” Avoca told them.

And she was right. Only a dozen feet ahead of them, the stream they had crossed earlier that day was finally visible. Ahlvie and Cal dropped Dean onto the ground where he moaned and leaned forward.

“I am sorry about this,” Dean said. “You don’t have to keep helping me. I can walk.”

“Thank the Creator!” Ahlvie said.

“Are you sure?” Cyrene asked.

Dean nodded. “I feel disoriented, like I have vertigo.”

“It’ll pass,” Cyrene assured him. Though she had no clue if that was true.

“It’d better have been worth it,” Ahlvie said, nudging Dean. “Carrying you around is not my idea of a good time.”

“You should have known better,” Avoca chided.

“I did,” Dean said. “But I had to know.”

“And?” Ahlvie pushed.

“The capital city of Eleysia is gone,” Dean told them. “I saw…I saw Byern battleships traveling through our reefs and rocks as effortlessly as our own naval captains. It should have been impossible, but they did it. Then, I saw fire and explosions. The entire island was burned to the ground, and it’s all my fault.”

Everyone shifted uncomfortably in the wan light. The only person who knew exactly what Dean was feeling right now had refused to come back to Fen with them. It was impossible to feel the depth of Dean’s grief in his words.

“I believe I can share some of that blame,” Cyrene said in horror.

“I spared Edric’s life, and he did this,” Dean said with a shake of his head. “He used Kael’s magic as a weapon and bombed my entire home.”

“He was working with Kael?” Cyrene gasped.

Dean looked up at her with hollow eyes. “Yes.”

“Creator…”

“We’ve rested long enough,” Avoca said softly. “Perhaps we should keep moving.”

Dean had just risen to his feet when Cyrene felt it.

“Nokkin,” she gasped.

Instantly, everyone was on high alert.

“Cyrene, to me!” Avoca cried. “Link up, and trust me. Trust yourself.”

Cyrene gulped and then nodded, feeling the brush of Avoca’s magic for the first time in months. It was cool and refreshing. Nothing like the fire and darkness that she had felt when linking with Kael.

Dean and Ahlvie removed their swords while Cyrene hastily pushed Cal and her strung bow and arrow into the middle of their circle. She was not going to risk the life of a fourteen-year-old girl for this monster. She had become much too fond of her already.

The Nokkin blended into the darkness, like shadow and smoke, swooping into their group and trying to reach out for them. The feeling of wrongness…of a contamination reverberated through the group. It was so intense that Cyrene could practically feel its forked tongue slithering up her cheek once more. But she couldn’t allow that to happen.

When the thing reached for her, Ahlvie sliced forward with his blade. It seemed to go straight through the wraith before the thing coalesced into substance once more a few feet away.

“We don’t have to play cat and mouse like this,” it said with its abused and inhuman voice.

“Leave us alone, and never bother this village again, or we will destroy you,” Cyrene said with more confidence than she felt.

But she was crackling with magic and holding on to Avoca like a tether. She had her friends with her and a girl with more inner strength than Cyrene had seen in a long time.

A strange laughed seemed to emanate from the Nokkin. “You cannot hope to defeat me. I will have you. I will.”

Then, it disappeared. Cyrene took a breath and waited. Cal shrieked behind her and let loose an arrow.

Cyrene flipped around and saw the Nokkin reaching out for Cal. The arrow hit it in its shoulder, and it screeched and moaned, as if it had not felt any pain in a long time.

Avoca shot a blast of fire toward the creature’s face. It choked on the smoke as it dissipated all around the thing. For a second, its eyes had been illuminated in the darkness. All white, all seeing yet unseeing. Disturbing and terrifying.

The Nokkin disappeared again, and this time, Dean and Ahlvie tried to slice through its flesh. But found none there. The Nokkin put its hand on Ahlvie’s chest.

“No!” Cyrene and Avoca screamed at the same time.

But the Nokkin hesitated. And then laughed. “You are of my world, I see.”

Ahlvie took that opportunity to slice his sword through the Nokkin’s neck. It was about as effective as trying to cut through water.

The Nokkin appeared again, reaching for Cyrene. “Let me have my prize, and you can keep your friends.”

“Never,” Avoca said. “Now!”

Cyrene and Avoca launched an attack at the same time, blasting the Nokkin with a burst of energy that they’d been slowly gathering together. They used the energy to slice through the hurt shoulder Cal had pierced. It shrieked again. And, just when Cyrene thought it was going to blink out and reappear again, something tore out of the trees with a battle cry and sent a fire bolt directly into the Nokkin’s chest.

Ceis’f landed in a whirl of long silver-white hair in the exact spot where the Nokkin had just been. It had vanished into thin air, and in its place was the battle-hardened Leif warrior.

“Oh my Creator, did we kill it?” Cal gasped.

Avoca shook her head. “No, I don’t think so. We ran it off.”

“Can you not even walk home without getting ambushed and needing me to save you?” Ceis’f demanded.

“We were doing fine,” Avoca said.

Cyrene was doubled over. Her breath was coming out wild and irregular. She couldn’t believe how much energy they’d had to use together. But, with Avoca linked, she hadn’t even had to think about it. It had just come. Still, it had been intense.

Ahlvie was crouching on the ground.

Cyrene reached for him. “It touched you?”

“Yeah,” he said with a shake of his head. “But…I’m fine.”

“Well, I’m not fine!” Cal cried. “I’m awesome! Did you see me hit its shoulder?”

Cyrene burst into laughter. “Our savior.”

“No need for the thanks,” Ceis’f muttered.

“Thank you,” Avoca said softly. “I knew you wouldn’t abandon us.”

Ceis’f muttered something nasty under his breath before marching into the woods and yelling, “Hurry up!”