“You brought your poisoning on yourself,” I say.

“Would you say the same about your father?” Luna’s mocking grin twists my insides and tightens my fist. “Of course I know all about Leonardo Rey’s illness. I’ve studied up on Keon’s scion, your adopted brother. It’s tragic what happened to your father.” She walks around the center table and tidies her station, rolling up a blueprint I didn’t get a chance to examine. “You like stories, yes? Do you know the one about how my younger sister, Raine, was sick, and every alchemist and practitioner I trusted to save her failed us? You’re so willing to dismiss me as power-hungry, when everything I do has been for life.”

I can’t believe that this queenpin watched my videos on YouTube.

“You’ve got a lot of blood on your hands for someone who cares so much about life.”

Luna is absolutely fearless as she walks past me, smelling like woodsmoke. Her back is to me as she trails a finger through some black powder, pressing it to her tongue and sighing deeply. “Unfortunately, life must be lost to figure out how to preserve it, restore it.” She turns around, and her thinning eyebrows narrow. “You aren’t worth killing in my grand design. You weren’t even worth locking up, unlike Emil, whose true power would require us to use the heaviest of chains. You are nothing but a pawn in my possession to collect the urn your brother stole from me.”

I grab the screwdriver and thrust like it’s a dagger, but Luna smacks it out of my hand. I shove her against the table and grab the lightning potion as Dione leaps across the room.

I uncork the vial. If I’m struck with blood poisoning, it won’t go away with rest and water like some common fever, but desperate times call for desperate measures—Luna knows it, my father knew it, I know it. I drink the potion, and it tastes like cough syrup, rotten berries, and iron. I gag, but I don’t spit it out, even when I get instantly dizzy, like whenever I was a kid and Dad would spin me around in his desk chair at work. I fight back a cough as Dione grabs me by the throat and slams me against the wall.

“I have no problem snapping his neck,” Dione says with her menacing eyes.

Luna balances herself against the table. “He remains not worth it.”

Blood rushes to my head the tighter Dione squeezes, and there’s a charge running through me, crackling throughout my arms. I think back to Atlas coaching Emil on how to call his power. I’ve heard it all a thousand times from editing those clips. I focus on bringing the lightning to the surface, can feel it right beneath my skin, needing just a little more of a push. . . . I press my hands against Dione as if to shove her and bolts of white lightning blast through her. Dione’s eyes widen and her grip loosens and she falls at my feet, smoke rising around the hole in her stomach. I expect flesh to regrow and piece her back together, but she’s still.

It was self-defense. I killed her in self-defense like the Spell Walkers have. I’m more in shock over how quickly it happened than I am having had the power to protect myself in the first place. Dione has done a lot of harm, so I’m not going to twist myself up over this, especially when I can slay the monster who underestimated me.

I step over Dione’s body, and Luna backs into a corner.

She thought I was harmless. The acolyte I saw before with the crate returns, and I hurl a bolt directly through his heart. He crumples with his mouth open.

I’m a first-timer calling my power with more ease than Emil ever has; this is what I’ve been saying all along. He may have been reborn, but my blood comes from a long line of power that’s beginning again with me. Luna tries escaping, and I strike her down with bolts of lightning.

“I was wrong,” Luna whispers while pressing down on her bloody arm.

“About what?”

“You’re extraordinary.”

I nod. “Unfortunately, Luna, life has got to be lost to preserve it.”

I stand over her and cage her in lightning until she’s dead.

I’ve done what no one else could do. I killed the one Blood Caster who Eva feared confronting on the battlefield, and I executed the queenpin before she could become unstoppable. I can’t wait to bust out of here and get back to Nova to celebrate with my family and Prudencia. I’ll ask the crew what we can do about getting me some proper Spell Walker gear and then we’ll take down the next threat.

The room spins and everything reverses in rapid flashes—what little color there was returns to Luna’s face as lightning retreats back inside my hands, she’s running backward, the acolyte’s corpse rises and exits, I’m pressed against the wall again and Dione’s hand is back around my throat.

“You’re supposed to be dead,” I say in choked breaths.

“Never,” Luna says. “Especially not at the hands of some fool who cannot tell an illusion apart from reality.”

“Illusion?”

Luna eyes one of the vials. “These are potions of mine that failed to convert humans into celestials and were revealed to have hallucinatory side effects. I couldn’t keep risking the health of my acolytes, so we’ve been selling them on the streets and filming the drinkers in the event one proves to exhibit actual powers so we can study the subjects. We’ve been marketing it as Brew—Ness’s idea, but surely he told you this given that he’s on your side, correct?”

I’m powerless and speechless. Of course I was drinking Brew like those clowns in the park. It was so lifelike, but the reality of Ness being a traitor is just as crushing. My brother thinks Ness is trying to turn over some new leaf and make an honest guy out of himself.

Dione drags me through the hall with ease, even though I’m resisting and dragging my feet. She throws me into a room where I skid across the concrete, scratching my arms and face, and rolling into Stanton’s feet. June continues reading through a dusty book, not glancing up at me once. Luna is the last one in and locks the door behind her, as if I stand any chance at getting that close to escape with three Blood Casters here.

“Your fantasy of what makes someone a hero is your downfall,” Luna says. “Not a long fall, of course, since you’ve never known great heights. To save and rebuild the world demands a soul that will do what is necessary. You don’t possess the nature or the heart that I do. But that’s okay. Everyone has their role.”

Stanton lifts me by the back of the neck and forces me into a chair against the wall.

My camera that I dropped at the cemetery for the wand is here and facing me.

“You crave the spotlight so badly,” Luna says. “Go ahead and give us a smile.”

Thirty

The Brightest Fire

EMIL

I’ll never forgive myself for putting the world before my family. Turns out Eva can’t heal hearts, but Wesley was quick to grab Ma’s nitroglycerin, and we’ve got her stabilized down the hall while the rest of us are working away in the boardroom. I’m about to check in on her again when I get a notification alert on my phone.

Celestials of New York just uploaded a new video: Return the Urn.

“Brighton!”

Everyone turns to me. Prudencia snatches my phone. He’s got to be alive. No one else knows his super complicated password for any of his accounts. Unless they tortured it out of him. I’ve imagined so many nightmares for what they’re doing to Brighton the past four hours I’ve been without him. If Luna was so cruel with her parents and their ghosts, she would be merciless with my brother. Not going to lie, if things are as horrific as my gut thinks, death might be better.