As they landed in earth’s San Francisco, Naomi spun around, waving her hands to weave the threads of the veil closed. Demons could not follow them here, but beasts and people could.

She sealed the final strands just in time. The muffled, staccato beat of bodies-in-transit sounded against the veil like a rock shower pelting against the pavement. Uneven dents formed in the glowing fabric of the veil. Naomi smoothed the lumps with her magic. If she didn’t do that, tears could later form in those spots.

Finally finished, she crouched over, sucking in air.

“I’ve never seen anyone manipulate the veil so fast,” Leilani commented.

“Necessity breeds competence.”

“You’re more than merely competent.”

Naomi slowly straightened her back, putting on a smile. “How are you feeling?”

“At peace. I hardly remembered what that feels like. For centuries, I was constantly chasing the next power, the next goal, pushing myself ever higher.” She glanced at Makani, her smile wobbling. “I’d forgotten what I truly was, who I was. I don’t expect you to forgive me after all that I’ve done, Makani, but I hope you believe now that I really do regret it.”

“Yes, I do. I can feel it,” he said quietly. “After all these centuries, I can’t so easily forget the sting of your betrayal. But what you did back there in Hero’s castle…you gave up all the magic that you’d gained. And you did it for me. I won’t forget that either.”

Leilani just looked at him, her mouth trembling. Just a few days ago, Naomi never would have believed Firestorm would not only join them, but give up her magic and immortality to become Leilani again. The world was full of miracles. And they’d need a few more of them before this was all over.

Naomi linked hands with both Makani and Leilani. “Come on. Let’s go home.”

She’d brought them back to earth right outside her house, so they didn’t have far to walk. She typed the code into the keypad to open the garage, and they all stepped inside.

As the lights flared on, Leilani’s gaze flickered to the empty cage.

“Now don’t go getting nostalgic for cold iron bars,” Naomi teased her.

“Well, they do bounce magic so beautifully,” Leilani said with a cautious smile.

Naomi chuckled. “I have a sleeper sofa in the living room. Its mattress bounces beautifully too. Doesn’t it, Makani?”

Leilani laughed.

Naomi nodded with approval. “Good.”

“Good?” Leilani said curiously.

“Laughter really is the best medicine. It’s like one hundred and twenty percent better than InstaHeal magic cream. Mages Illustrated did a side-by-side comparison. There were charts and graphs and stuff. It was totally scientific.”

Leilani laughed again. “I’m not sure I put much stock in scientific studies performed by a vanity magazine.”

“You really should. There was a picture of the lead researcher next to the article. He looked really smart. Especially with his shirt off.” Naomi wiggled her eyebrows.

Leilani was laughing so hard, she was shaking from head to toe. Naomi wondered when the last time was that she’d had a good laugh. Cackling over the bodies of her victims didn’t count.

“Thank you,” Leilani said when she’d finally stopped laughing. Her face was fresh and happy. “I needed that.”

Naomi squeezed her hand. “I know. That’s why I did it.”

“So the cute and silly fairy thing is just an act?”

“Yes. And no.” Naomi shrugged. “I’m adaptable.”

“You’re what people need you to be.”

“Something like that.”

Makani came up behind Naomi. “Naomi is compelled to take care of people.”

“And what about you?” Leilani asked her. “Who takes care of you?”

Makani wrapped his arms around Naomi, hugging her back to his chest. “I do.” His hand brushed down her arms, rounding her huge belly.

Naomi leaned back into him, basking in the warmth of his body. He was always as hot as an oven. She loved that about him.

“I should leave you two alone,” Leilani said.

Naomi stretched her arms over her head, her muscles pinching painfully. Damn that demon. He hit hard.

“Don’t be silly,” Naomi told her. “There’s not nearly enough time for a satisfying sexual experience right now anyway.”

“Fairies,” Leilani laughed.

Naomi winked at her.

They moved into the living room. Naomi bent over to pull out the sleeper sofa, but Makani cut in front of her and did it himself.

“If I can navigate the realms and battle demons, I can pull out a sofa bed, Your Majesty. Or did you do that because you know I like to watch you work?” She allowed her eyes to pan up his body, following the contours of his muscles, watching how they moved when he lifted things. She licked her lips.

“Are you sure you two don’t want to be alone?” Leilani asked her.

“Maybe later,” Naomi sighed. “First things first. We need to heal your wounds. Then we need to bring Rane her dagger.”

Naomi grabbed the healing ointment out of her closet. Burns marred Makani’s legs, and Leilani had a number of deep cuts throughout her body.

“Sit,” Naomi directed them.

Makani’s brows lifted. “Practicing your motherly skills?”

“Don’t make me put you in timeout, Your Majesty,” she countered, smirking.

They sat down around the dining room table, and Naomi proceeded to heal their numerous injuries using her assortment of creams and healing sprays. She was saving her magic for the next battle.

Leilani winced when Naomi sprayed the gash on her leg. “Things like these used to heal faster. And not hurt nearly as much.”

“Welcome to mortality.” Naomi stuck a bandage over the wound; it was too big for the spray to heal it completely right away. “It should be gone by tomorrow.” She glanced at the deep cut in Leilani’s abdomen. “What happened here?”

“After its reincarnation, the jewel spider was upset. Specifically, it was upset at me. It jabbed one of its legs into my stomach. I was no longer fast enough to evade it.”

Naomi spread the healing cream over her wound. “This one will likely leave a scar, but as my friend Alex likes to say, scars are badass.”

“Well, without my superpowers, I’ll need all the badassery I can get,” declared Leilani.

Naomi grinned at her. “We all do.” Now finished with the cream, she wrapped a bandage around Leilani’s abdomen. “But you still have some pretty super powers.”

Halfway on her way to returning the healing supplies to the closet, the front door flew out of its frame and cut through the air like an angry renegade saw. Makani jumped in front of Naomi, casting a wind spell to fling the door aside. It changed direction, smashing through the living room window.

Naomi’s first panicked thought was a demon was attacking, but then clarity returned to her mind. She realized there weren’t any more demons left on earth—except for the two hiding inside of her.

A figure stepped through the doorway, his black cloak flapping around him. He flicked his hand, throwing off the cloak. The inky-black fabric dissolved into a swarm of bats. They shot through the open doorway and disappeared into the night.

Beneath the cloak, he was dressed in a suit of black leather that blended with his long dark hair—and contrasted with his pale complexion. Black wings folded out from his back.

“Darksire,” Leilani said in a low whisper.

He looked at Leilani, betrayal burning in his eyes. “You went back to your brother. Makani will never understand you. He will never love you. None of them will. But I do. Come back to me, and I’ll make everything right.”

Leilani stepped forward, her cheeks wet, her eyes burning with anger and magic. “How can you possibly make everything right? You deceived me. You used me, both you and Damarion. And for what? So you could use me to destroy my own kind. Damarion told you to make me fall in love with you so he could use us to tear the world apart with strife. He manipulated us.”

“Damarion is gone. Defeated. We are what remains. Our love. Don’t throw it away just like that, as though the last few hundred years meant nothing to you.”

“They meant everything to me,” Leilani said, her voice quaking. “I changed everything for you, but it was all a lie.”

“It wasn’t all a lie. Yes, Damarion asked me to make you fall in love with me. But I fell in love with you.” Darksire’s hand brushed her cheek. “Come with me. We can rule the world together.” He kissed her hand. “Our magic is unparalleled.”

“No longer,” she said, her words ringing with defiance.

His frown started in his eyes, then spread across his entire face. “What have you done to your magic?”

“I set it right. I put it back to the way it was before I’d ever met you. Before you twisted my magic. Before you twisted me.”

Shock froze Darksire. He just stood there, watching her. Finally, he said, “I don’t blame you. We quarreled. You were angry with me. But we can fix this.”

“Don’t you see?” A dry, pained laugh broke her lips. “There is nothing to fix. Not anymore. I am once again who I was born to be. I am Dragon Born.”

“When you calm down, when your anger with me has subsided, you will see things differently.”

“I am calm.”

“Be reasonable.”

Leilani folded her arms across her chest.

“You are siding with them over me?” he demanded.

“Why does it have to be one or the other?”

“Because that’s the way things are. They are on one side, we are on the other,” he replied with strained patience.

“Things are as we make them. That’s the power of free will, of the ability to choose. Come with me. Choose to stand with me—and to stand against the demons that want to destroy this world.”

“They are not destroying it—”

“They are only remaking it, making it better,” Leilani cut in. “I know all the lines, all the excuses and justifications we use to do the wrong thing. I lived by them for seven hundred years. But in the end, when all the rhetoric is stripped away, only the cold, hard truth remains. What we did was wrong, Darksire. Damarion used us both. But as you said, he is long gone now. So it’s high time we stopped living by his rules.”

“The new powers the demons have given me are just the beginning. We could be more.”

“More of what? More cruel? More cold? More murders, more innocent lives lost? More of us stepping on their bones to reach the top? That is not peace, Darksire. And it never ends. We just keep scaling one mountain of bones after the other, always aiming higher, never happy, never getting anywhere. That isn’t life. It’s hell.”

Darksire grabbed her arm roughly. “Enough. I’m getting you out of here. I’m going to make you understand.”

Translation: he was going to torture her, probably by feeding her dark magic, trying to hook her on the magic high. Trying to make her want more and more—until her mind was as warped as ever before.

Leilani realized that too. “No,” she said, breaking his hold.

“No?” Darksire repeated. He obviously didn’t like the taste of the word on his tongue.

“I have made my choice,” Leilani said. “It’s time for you to make yours, Darksire. Me or the demons. Our love or your thirst for power.”

He shook his head slowly. “You will soon come to understand.”

Darksire shot forward, his movement a perfect balance of speed and strength. As he moved, a wave of magic burst out of him, closing fast on Leilani.

She blasted his dark spell with ice magic, freezing it. It shattered a moment later. The shards of his spell reformed into a swirling black mist, trying to swallow her whole.

“Nice try, but I know all your tricks.” She waved her hand, dissipating the mist with her wind magic.

Leilani and Darksire were such practiced warriors, so precise, so sharp. Their fight was almost beautiful to watch.

Black Fairy Dust shot out of Darksire’s hands and blasted toward Leilani. The spell’s power filled the empty space around them all. It felt like death. Naomi shivered as the temperature in the house plummeted.

Leilani ignited the black Dust with fire. Darksire refocused his spell, shooting it back around like a whip. It snapped out, coiling around Leilani’s wrist. He made another whip and lassoed it around her other wrist. He moved so fast, as fast as a vampire. And Leilani wasn’t nearly as fast as she used to be.

Naomi moved in to help, but the magic mist swirling like a storm around Darksire and Leilani bounced her back, giving her a nasty shock. Darksire had cast the spell to keep everyone else out. He was trying to distance her from them—first physically, then later emotionally.

Naomi considered popping in using her teleportation magic, even knowing the mist would likely eject her immediately. Makani was faster. He hit the mist with Magic Breaker. It simply reformed, adapting. He tried a second magic-breaking spell, but the result was no different. The demons had made Darksire very strong. Makani would have to hit it many more times—potentially many more times than he had magic left in him.

Inside the mist, Leilani had fallen. Darksire loomed over her. Makani stepped forward, determination etched into his face. He was going to break through that mist, consequences be damned.

Naomi took his hand. “Wait. It will just bounce you back.”

“My magic and Leilani’s are one. We are linked. She is a part of me and I of her. The mist will let me in.”

It was a risky move, but it wasn’t like they had any other option. Darksire was already lifting Leilani into his arms. He might cast a transportation glyph any second now and carry her off.

Naomi gave Makani’s hand a squeeze. “Be safe.”

He squeezed back, then ran into the mist. It didn’t spit him out. He was right. As he ran, he cast a spell at Darksire, blowing him back. Makani caught Leilani as she fell. He tapped her face, waking her.

Leilani’s eyelashes fluttered open. Her gaze flickered to Darksire. “He’s strong.”

“He’s not stronger than the two of us together,” Makani declared, pulling her to her feet.

She nodded, then they circled around Darksire, trapping the dark fairy between them as they bombarded him with spells from both sides. Darksire grunted, but he didn’t waver and he didn’t fall. He lashed out with dark magic and looped it around Makani’s neck. The black lasso coiled down Makani’s body, pinning his arms to his sides, binding his legs together.

Darksire pulled back on the black lasso, tightening the noose. The spell bit into Makani like a hot iron. Smoke rose from his seared skin, but Makani didn’t scream. He simply glared at Darksire, his stony stare burning with promises of revenge.

But Darksire had him completely pinned. Would he even survive long enough to enact that revenge? Naomi wasn’t going to wait and find out. She rushed forward, preparing to teleport. She just had to pop in long enough to grab him before the mist spat her back out.

Firestorm was faster. She grabbed the black lasso with her magic-charged hands, breaking the spell’s bonds to free Makani even as she pumped her own magic into it, reforming it. She caught the lasso end as it retreated, looped it around Darksire’s neck, and gave it a rough tug.

It was all over in an instant. And then Darksire was on the floor. The black mist around him faded out.

“He wouldn’t have stopped until he killed you,” Leilani said quietly. She stood over Darksire, unmoving. “I had to do it.”

“Darksire is dead,” Makani said.

Her face twisted with anguish, Leilani dropped to her knees. She held Darksire’s body in her arms, tears pouring down her cheeks.

Naomi went to her, crouching down beside her. She set her hands on Leilani’s arms.

Leilani looked back at her, her eyes red. “I still love him. Even after all that he’s done.”

“And he loved you. I really do believe that he did.”

“Yes, he did.” Leilani’s voice quivered. “But it wasn’t enough. He couldn’t give up his powers, his ambitions. His need to win. He couldn’t shake the darkness.” She wiped her hand across her eyes, sweeping away her tears. “But there’s no time for tears. We need to get to Rane. I couldn’t save Darksire, but we are going to save your babies.”