“What about their other rumored powers?” I asked. “Like mesmerizing? Holding hands and swinging their arms or whispering together in a victim’s ears?” Had they done that to Jack? I glanced at him with a question in my eyes. Curt shake of his head.

“Swinging their arms?” Finn peeled another cat sticker from his crutch. “Like an Arcana version of the Wonder Twins?”

Aric raised his blond brows. If you say so. “The First possess those powers, but the carnates don’t.” He turned to me. “In any case, you’d be immune, since you broke the Hierophant’s mind control over you.” Only because Aric had helped me.

“Then I’m ready for them.” Once I got to the source twins in Dolor, I could take them out. Issue number one: where the hell was Dolor?

“Have you fought the Lovers before?” Gabriel asked me. “What were the crimes they spoke of?”

Gazing around, I parted my lips to confess about the alliance I’d betrayed—

“She managed to take them unawares in the last game,” Aric quickly said, “then destroyed them.” Of course, he knew what I’d done. His gaze warned me to keep quiet.

Show of hands, anyone I didn’t betray.

“Alas, they’ve learned from the past. They’ll be ready to counteract the Empress’s powers.”

“Who defeated them before that?” Gabriel glanced from me to Aric.

“The Hierophant,” Aric said. “He mesmerized the carnates, ordering them to slay their own source.”

Shit. I glared at his icon on my hand. “There went that option.”

“Before that, the Emperor executed the Lovers with a firestorm, burning them and all their duplicates to ash.” Aric’s icon hand clenched. One of his tells.

What was Death’s history with that card?

“Maybe Eves can wrangle that dude into our alliance?” Finn asked. “Emperor and Empress. Sounds like a bond to me.”

Aric’s irises darkened until they looked like cold amber. “The two earned their titles because they ruled over men—in warring empires.” I had? Okay, sure. “When the Emperor set upon the Lovers, he spared no mortal bystanders.”

Then Richter was as despicable as the Priestess had said. Wait a minute . . . She’d told me the Lovers’ icon was “right where it should be.” She’d known we hadn’t killed the true twins! Gee, Circe, thanks for the heads-up.

“Destroy the root,” Matthew murmured. “The Moon sets. Moon rises.”

“We can’t dispatch the Empress and Jack to them alone,” Gabriel said. “What can we do? What can I do?”

“The Lovers are right,” I said. “I’m not going to let Selena pay for what I did in the past. I can take the wolf with me and plan a sneak attack of some kind.”

“I’m goan for Selena.” Before I could protest, Jack strode toward the exit, jamming his shoulder against Aric’s armored one.

He’d done that to Brandon in school. Because Jack refused to deviate from his path in the face of anyone.

I shot to my feet to follow him. “Finn, look after Matthew.”

“Ten-four, blondie.”

Before I left, Matthew gazed up at me. A single tear tracked down his bloody face.

21

“Jack, just wait!”

By the time I caught up with him, he’d already collected his bug-out bag, crossbow, and that mysterious camo duffel.

“Where are you going?”

“Setting off to end the twins.” He stopped a passing soldier, grating some orders about a chain of command or something. Then he headed toward the stable.

I jogged to keep up with his long-legged strides. “You think you can waltz in alone and take the twins out?”

“You mean, as a mortal? The Milovnícis infiltrated my fort. I can do the same to their encampment. I got friends in the rank and file, me. I’ll have help.”

“It’s too risky! And the doctor said you’re supposed to be resting from your injuries—your concussion. This is for me to do. They want me more than anyone.”

“For months, Selena’s had my back. Last night, she did. You think I’m goan to leave her hanging in the wind? I’m riding—now.”

“Riding? Across the river to take one of their trucks, right?”

He shook his head. “Azey North controls all the cleared roads to Dolor. They’d just be waiting for me. I’m taking the slaver route.”

“What is that?”

“It’s how black hats move their merchandise for auction.”

In the stable, he crossed to the large gray he’d ridden earlier, walking him to a saddling area. “And you? You’re goan to sit your ass right here.”

Ignoring that, I led my own mare out. She seemed to scowl at me. I wished I could give her more of a rest, but even recovering, she’d be stronger than any of the other horses here.

“Damn it, Evie, you ain’t goan! Do you understand how dangerous that route is? It’s all off-road tracks snaking through steep ravines. Full of chokepoints, traps, and tolls—where you’re expected to pay in people. If you manage to dodge those, you’ll thread the needle between more cannibal mines and skirt past a plague colony. Bagmen are everywhere. It’s a concentration of all the bad.”

“Then why on earth would you go that way?”

Jack turned to me with flinty gray eyes. “Because they’ll never expect me to.”