Sammael recovered first, of course. He had taken his hand off Magnus’s shoulder and was looking up at the orb. Magnus remained on his knees. “Excellent!” Sammael said, laughing. “Great work. I love an unexpected turn, don’t you?” He seemed to address this question to Ragnor, who didn’t lift his head to acknowledge any of what was going on. Sammael squinted up at the orb. “Shinyun, if you could be a dear and grab that thing and bring it to me, we can get on with our plans.”

Shinyun was also watching the orb. She didn’t respond.

“Hello?” Sammael said after a moment. “Shinyun Jung? My loyal lieutenant? Get the orb?”

When Shinyun turned around, she wasn’t looking at Sammael. She was looking at Magnus. Staring at him, white-hot hatred in her eyes.

“I will never understand you,” she said, in a quiet tremor that suggested she was barely keeping herself from a complete meltdown. “Never have I seen someone so determined to throw away their birthright. We are warlocks, Magnus Bane. We are the children of Lilith.”

Alec tried to ignore the frothing magic boiling through his body and focus on Magnus. He could feel the rotating sphere of magic above them. Magnus had been looking at it, a little dazed, but now his attention was on Shinyun as she stalked toward him, her wings out and twitching dangerously.

“The power of the thorn is the greatest gift that a warlock can receive,” she said through gritted teeth. “It is the power of our father—our actual father, Magnus, not just the demon that made us individually—the one without whom our race would not exist at all. I found that power. I offered you that power. Despite all you did, despite your rejection of Asmodeus… you showed me mercy. And this is how I repaid you.”

Her voice broke with anguish. “And this is how you repay me?”

“Shinyun,” Sammael said, a hint of alarm creeping into his jovial voice. “I get that you and Magnus have some unresolved stuff, but really, he’s irrelevant to the larger plan.”

Magnus looked over at Sammael. “Well, that hurts a little.”

Sammael threw up his hands and affected a bewildered look. “I didn’t even know you existed. I mean, once I understood that you were Asmodeus’s eldest curse and already had two thorns in you, well, I wasn’t about to just ignore the possibility of your service.”

“So I wasn’t part of your plans… at all?” Magnus said, incredulous. “But you went after my oldest friend… and the warlock who tried to drag me into Asmodeus’s control three years ago.”

“You’ll forgive me,” said Sammael, “if I think of Ragnor Fell as ‘the most knowledgeable expert alive on the subject of dimensional magic’ first, and your ‘oldest friend’ second. As for Shinyun, she came to me.”

Magnus looked helplessly over at Ragnor, who shrugged.

Shaking his head, Sammael said, “I don’t know how to tell you this, but not everything is about you, Magnus. As for you, Shinyun,” he said, reaching out toward the orb, “I’m very disappointed in you—”

“Everybody shut up!” Shinyun yelled, and even Sammael seemed startled. The orb had been drifting toward Sammael’s open hand; Shinyun suddenly shot up from the ground, her new wings flapping, and caught the orb out of the air as if it were a basketball.

Sammael said, “Shinyun,” sternly this time.

She cast one wild glance at him, then thrust her hand forward, punching through the surface of the orb. At once it emitted a high-pitched shriek and began to deflate like a balloon. Alec slapped his hands over his ears and realized, no, not deflating. The six-pointed wound over Shinyun’s heart was absorbing the magic, drawing it in like a deep inhale. As they all watched, the orb grew smaller and more oblong until, with a popping noise, the entirety of it disappeared into Shinyun.

“Uh-oh,” muttered Sammael.

Shinyun hovered motionless where the magic had been, glowing with crimson fire. After a moment, she began to emit a strange shaking sound. After another moment, she threw back her head and Alec realized: she was laughing. A dreadful laugh, a cackle of rage and mockery.

Her face began to crack.

Lines appeared, spreading from her mouth into her cheeks, fissures opening around her eyes and on her forehead and down her chin. The planes of her face began to separate, and Alec felt his stomach drop. Shinyun’s features separated, broke, snapped like something behind the mask of her face was punching its way out.

With a great roar of triumph, inhuman and ancient, she burst, in a shattering of limbs and lines and eyes and wings and teeth…

Her eyes were now twice the size they had been, and Shinyun herself twice the height. Her limbs spread like a great water insect’s, and her wings, now a dark blood-red, flapped slowly behind her. Her face, no longer frozen in place by the arbitrary maledictions of the warlock mark, twisted in glee. Her teeth were bright and sharp, with a pair of fangs, like a tarantula’s. At her back was a long, whiplike tail, and at the end of the tail, a nasty-looking iron barb. The Svefnthorn itself.

Alec watched in horrified fascination. Shinyun had become the thing she loved most—a demon. A Greater Demon, Alec was sure.

She screamed that unearthly scream again, and the ground of Avici began to shake below their feet.

“Shinyun!” Sammael called. “Marvelous new look! I think maybe we’ve gotten a little off task, though. If you’ll just come down and we can decide what to do with—”

In a flash of motion Shinyun was hovering above Sammael and Magnus, her tail flicking dangerously back and forth.

“I thought you were the ultimate power,” she said to Sammael. Her voice was still recognizably her own, though it was slashed through with high-pitched scratches and a kind of skittering that Alec realized was her breathing. “But you aren’t.”

Sammael looked offended. “If you know of a demon more powerful than me, feel free to let me know so I may pay him homage.”

“You may be the greatest of the Princes of Hell,” Shinyun spat, “but you’re so much weaker than I realized. You’re as dependent on others as these idiot humans.” She gestured with a clawed hand at the others. “You’re dependent on Diyu. You’re dependent on souls being tormented to give you power. You’re dependent on me.”

“If you’ve decided that Sammael, of all people, is not powerful enough for you…” Magnus shook his head. “You’re one hard-to-please lady, you know that?”

“Apparently, of all the beings here,” Shinyun said, “I’m the only one who understands true power. True power is to depend on no one, on nothing. If I cannot trust anyone else to rule over me, then I will rule myself. And I will rule alone.”

With that, she circled upward, away from them. She opened her mouth and exhaled a wide cone of crimson light into the dark. When the glare cleared, it formed a Portal, the surface a silver mirror whose destination Alec couldn’t make out. With a last scream, Shinyun flew through the Portal, which closed around her, and was gone.

The ground was rumbling even harder now. Alec noticed that at some point he’d fallen and was crouched on the ground. Magnus was making his way over to join him, moving carefully on the suddenly uneven terrain.

Sammael looked around with some disappointment. “Well, that’s it for Diyu, I guess. She’s going to bring the whole place down around us.” He sighed. “That’s how the cookie crumbles, I suppose.”

Magnus had reached Alec. He was helping him up. Alec was only dimly aware. The whole world was shaking around him, shaking and wobbling. Or possibly he was shaking and wobbling?

He looked up to see that Sammael had come over to join them for some reason. “Magnus, I’m sorry we aren’t going to be working together. And I’m sorry you both are going to die in the deepest pit in Diyu when miles and miles of underground city and courts and temples come crashing down on top of you.” He frowned. “Come to think of it, I have no idea what’ll happen to humans if they die in a dimension for the already dead. Well, whatever awaits you, good luck with your future endeavors. If you turn out to have any.”

“You’re just leaving?” Alec said.

Sammael looked surprised. “Did I not make that clear? I have to go find another realm.” He shrugged and added, almost to himself, “What an unusual several days it’s been.”

Then, blipping out as though he’d never been there, he was gone.

* * *

THE MOMENT SAMMAEL VANISHED, MAGNUS dropped to his knees beside Alec. He pulled Alec toward him almost violently, pressing his hand over Alec’s chest, pushing aside the collar of Alec’s shirt so he could reach the place the thorn had pierced him and run his fingers over it.

There was no wound, no indication that anything had happened to Alec at all, and most of his runes seemed normal. The Alliance rune, however, had disappeared entirely.

Magnus continued stroking Alec’s chest where the thorn had entered, until Alec, with effort, said, “Not here, my love. Ragnor is watching us.”

A sound broke from Magnus’s chest, half laugh and half sob. He grasped Alec’s hair in one hand and showered kisses all over his face, crying and laughing at once. Alec’s eyes were open, and reflected in that midnight blue, Magnus saw a gleam of gold. His own eyes, watching Alec in return.

“That was very brave, what you did,” Magnus said. “Also completely reckless.”

Alec smiled weakly. “I’ve been working on being more brave and reckless. I found a really great example to follow.”

“We can’t both be brave and reckless,” Magnus said. “Who will watch out for us?”

“Eventually, Max, I hope,” said Alec with a grin.

“If you two have a moment.” Ragnor’s voice came drifting through the void. “Do you think you could stop mooning over each other and get me out of this cage?”

Alec’s look of love suddenly turned to alarm. “Magnus. The others. The Hell of the Pit of Fire.”