I thought I’d heard him wrong. “Hayden and Ian Selpe, heirs to the vampire’s empire, are my cousins?”

“Yes,” Father replied. “Many years ago, Ambrose Selpe visited Rosewater and fell in love with your mother’s sister. When they married, I helped them hide her mage origin.”

I’d heard about serums a mage could take to mask the unusual shades of our eyes and hair and dim the glow of our skin, but I’d never heard of any mage drinking it every day for years. Livia hadn’t just given up her job and family; she’d ceased to be a mage at all.

“Why did she do it?” I asked.

“Because your mother and I asked her to. Mages have impressive magic, but there are so few of us. We needed allies. The vampires’ empire is vast and powerful. If we could get a half mage on their throne, our people would have their protectors. They would be safe.”

My aunt Livia had sacrificed everything for the sake of our people. I suddenly felt really selfish for maneuvering my way out of all those political marriages Father had tried to arrange for me back when he’d been the high king.

“Did she love him?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “But she loved their children. And they adored her. Had Hayden or Ian succeeded Ambrose to the throne, the mages of Elitia would have gained a powerful ally.”

“Would have?” I frowned. “You talk like they’re already dead.”

“Not yet. They were obviously taken for a reason. Otherwise, the vampires would have found their bodies next to their father’s. Something is going on here, Terra. Something big. Are you sure you can handle it?”

“No,” I replied honestly. “But I will do my very best.”

A smile cracked his lips. “You can do it.”

“Will you help me?”

I’d handled a few cases myself, but they’d all been small. I’d always worked with Father on the big ones. And then Aaron had dropped this on my plate: quite possibly the biggest case either of us had ever seen. A conspiracy inside the galaxy’s most powerful empire. I sure did like to hit the ground running.

“I wish I could, Terra, but I’ve already committed to another case.”

The way he said it told me the case was very important. His client had probably offered him a lot of money. We got those every so often, and as long as the case didn’t require us to part with our morality, we took them. We really needed the money.

“What kind of case?” I asked.

“A missing person. I don’t know how much I’ll be around in the next few days, but whenever I am here, I will help you in any way I can.” He squeezed my hand. “You’ve got this, kid. I believe in you.” Then he pushed back his chair and rose. “You can handle everything while I’m gone?”

“You’re going now?” I hadn’t expected him to leave so soon.

“Yeah.” He squeezed the empty pizza box into the small metal trash can under the desk. “I have to start tonight.” He wrapped his arms around me. “I’ll miss you.”

I hugged him back. “Yeah, you will. Now get going before your client fires you.”

He patted me on the back. “Take care of yourself.” He gave me a kiss on the forehead, then left the office.

After I brushed the lingering pizza crumbs into the trash, I returned to my study to finish up the background research for Aaron’s case. The only other things I had on my plate were a cheating spouse case and the Wolf Poodle. Mr. Millen, the victim of the dead plants, had hired me to capture photographic evidence of his neighbor’s Wolf Poodle monster peeing on his bushes.

I scanned Aaron’s files. It had all started a month ago when someone attacked Decia, a large city on a vampire world. The city was completely destroyed. The vampires blamed the Revs, former colonists of theirs who had broken away nearly twenty years ago—and they’d retaliated by bombing every city in the Rev territories, concentrating their destructive power on the capital city of Hope. The Revs were massacred. Very few escaped, and the only survivors were now in hiding.

Everyone knew the Revs didn’t have the military might to destroy Decia. And it wasn’t even their style anyway. If the Revs had wanted to strike at the vampires, they would have spray-painted their buildings or played some other childish prank.

As the vampire forces moved on the Revs, someone had murdered Emperor Selpe and kidnapped his two sons. The timing was suspicious. This whole thing reeked of conspiracy. And whatever it was, it had started in Decia.

I needed to pay a visit to that city. Unfortunately, the vampires had the whole planet closed off. Aaron had refused to bring me there. His “it’s quarantined for everyone’s safety” platitudes were not convincing. The vampires didn’t want any outsiders in Decia because then we’d see the damage and know the Revs couldn’t have done it. And then the vampires’ whole retaliation excuse would go up in flames.

But I wasn’t on a mission to expose the vampires’ duplicity. I wanted to save Hayden and Ian, and my gut told me it had all started in Decia. Something there would lead me to the princes.

I picked up my phone and dialed.

“Yeah?” a deep, gruff voice answered on the second ring.

“Hi, Everett. I’m in need of a kickass mercenary with a knack for getting in and out of tough spots.”

There was a pause, a rumble of gunfire, then something heavy hit the ground with a resounding thump.

“You’ve come to the right place, princess,” he replied. “Let me just bag up this manticore, then I’ll be right over.”

* * *

A soggy wind whistled through the hollow husks of the crumbling high-rise buildings that lined what had once been the main street of Decia. The seasonal rains had washed away the blood, but even after two weeks of heavy rainfall, the ruined city still looked like a graveyard. A layer of crushed glass, coated in the powdery residue of concrete and the green sludge of plant decay, spread across the road like a new skin.

I walked through the ruins of Decia, a mercenary by my side. Everett Black had a rugged orderliness about him. His hair was combed, but his face had a purposefully unshaven look. He wore a dark brown leather jacket over a plain, unwrinkled black t-shirt. Beneath the leather, his shoulders were wide. He was a man who worked out and worked hard. You could tell from the way he stood that he was no slouch as a fighter either. His jeans were made of dark grey-blue denim and cut with a subtle flare to accommodate his heavy cowboy boots. He wore a thick leather belt with a gigantic buckle. A leather holster was strapped to each hip, a gun tucked inside one, a knife inside the other.

Before the attack on Hope, Everett Black had been a Rev. He probably always would be, even long after his people’s scattered survivors had been absorbed by a dozen other groups.

We’d been walking through the city for half an hour, collecting debris samples from the wreckage. I wanted to know who’d really bombed Decia. Suddenly, the wind shifted, blowing new scents my way. Unwashed hair. Burning spice mixed with the stench of month-old sweat. Steel.

“Someone is watching us,” I said under my breath.

Everett drew the pistol he’d concealed beneath his leather jacket. A band of four ragged men stepped out from behind the shell of a building. Scavengers.

One of the scavengers walked toward us, brushing his fingers through his chin-length hair, black speckled with grey. It was unwashed, of course, just like his grubby shirt and mud-stained pants, both of them so filthy that I couldn’t even tell what color the fabric had once been.

His friends looked no better, and there was a look of manic desperation in all their eyes. I steeled myself for a fight. Desperate men made for dangerous opponents. Often enough, they had nothing to lose. I drew my twin swords.

“Hello there, pretty-pretty,” the lead scavenger said, flashing me a crooked smile.

“Careful, Mick. They’re mages,” warned a man with a purple fringed cowboy hat—probably stolen. It certainly didn’t match the rest of his attire. For one, it was actually clean. The scavenger had probably killed another man for the garish item.

“Idiot,” one of his companions said, knocking Purple Cowboy upside the head. The hat tipped precariously but didn’t fall off. “Only the girl’s Elition.” He pointed at Everett. “His eyes ain’t glowing.”

“She’s pretty. I think I’ve seen her before,” said Mick, scratching his head as he gawked at me.

“Don’t tell me you know these hooligans,” Everett whispered out of the corner of his mouth.

“Certainly not,” I assured him. “I’ve never seen them before in my life.” I grinned at him. “I figured they were your friends.”

“Cute,” he snapped back. “Very cute.”

“So, I’ll take Purple Cowboy and Thumper, and you handle the others?” I suggested.

He shrugged. “Whatever. They don’t look too tough. I can take them all on myself if you don’t want anywhere near the stench. I’m sure princesses aren’t used to potent smells.”

I didn’t tell him about my long crawl through the sewers under New Carmine. It would have completely ruined my image.

“True.” I sheathed my swords, then slipped two throwing knives out of the band around my arm. I handed one to him. “In that case, perhaps a long-range attack would suit the situation better?”

“Mick, I think we’re being insulted,” said the fourth scavenger, drawing a shiny gun. It appeared to be a fake. Did such shenanigans even work on real people?

Everett seemed to be thinking along the same lines. “Put that plastic toy away before—”

He stopped, staring at the buzzing knife handle protruding from the fake gun man’s chest. As their comrade fell dead to the ground, the rest of the scavengers scattered like field mice. Where had that knife come from?

Shadows shifted across a nearby building. I glanced up at the roof, honing in on a crouching figure. There was another man atop the building on the other side of the street.

“There are people on top of two buildings,” I told Everett.

“Which buildings?”

“The grey ones.”

Everett rolled his eyes. “All the buildings are grey.”

“The one with a cast iron rail along the roof. One man is ducked behind it, his face pressed to the bars. And there’s one across the street on the building with the shattered glass roof.”

My eyes honed in on another flicker of movement. “A third man is hiding down on the ground, behind the nearest ridge of debris. Based on his location, he’s the one who threw the knife.”

“Vampire soldiers?” Everett asked, squinting against the sun.

“No,” I said. “They’re Revs.”

The man on the ground stepped out from behind the building. He was wearing tan clothes and dark brown boots. He had two leather straps across the hips—a gun on one side, a short sword at the other. A black bandanna was tied around his neck. The typical Rev getup.

“Some things never change, even in nearly a decade.” The man snickered. “How is it you always manage to attract the attention of every scavenger and thief within a ten kilometer radius, Everett?”

“It must be my pretty face,” Everett replied, rubbing his hand across his three-day beard.

“Yeah, that must be it,” his friend chuckled.

“It’s great to see you again, Ryder,” said Everett. “But what are you doing here?”

Ryder shrugged. “Scavenging and thieving.”

“So the usual.”

“Basically.”

Ryder waved at his men hiding on the rooftops. The building’s remaining steel beams creaked as the Revs made their way down to street level. Dressed in the same galactic cowboy style as Ryder, they swaggered toward us.

Ryder’s eyes twinkled at me. “Hey, Everett, aren’t you going to introduce me to your friend?”

“Ryder, leader of the Wayward Bullets.” Everett extended one hand to the Rev, one to me. “Meet Terra Cross, the former Princess of Laelia and Elite Prophet.”

Ryder whistled. “Those are some impressive titles. What’s a former princess doing trekking through these ruins?” he asked me with a dashing smile.

“I’m a PI now,” I replied, ignoring his attempts to flirt with me. “And I’m trying to figure out what happened here. The Revs didn’t do this.”

Ryder’s smile grew wider. “I’m liking you more and more, princess. Maybe we can help each other.”

“Do you know who did this?” I asked, sweeping my hand to indicate the destruction.

“No, not exactly. But I do have something that might interest you.”

“Oh? And what is that?”

“Demon artifacts,” he said darkly.