“I have already won.” Alden waved his hand, soothing her pain.

She looked down at her blistered skin. The blisters cracked and faded away, crumbling before her eyes to reveal smooth, perfectly-healed skin. She jumped up, ready to fight.

“I want you to see, Sera,” he said. “I want you to watch me take apart the Magic Council piece by piece, layer by layer, leaving only those who can be saved. Only then will everyone see what the Council members truly are beneath that polished, pretty facade. They are the monsters.”

“The supernatural world will fall into chaos without the Magic Council,” she said, slashing with her sword.

He caught the blade with a whip made of glistening magic, then tore the sword from her hand.

“You, of all people, seek to defend them? You who were sentenced to death for being born? They killed all of your kind, Sera.”

“Yes, they are tyrants, but not every one of them. And they are all that’s keeping the humans from turning on us. There is a group of supernatural-hating humans trying to take us out. If you destroy the leadership of the supernaturals, then you will make their crusade that much easier.”

“I am not destroying the leadership. I am replacing it. With a fair and just one. And I can handle a few humans.” He gave his hand a dismissive wave. He probably already had his fairies back at work on that vile experiment to strip the magic and life from humans.

“What about all the people you and your followers have killed? History does not remember you kindly,” she said.

“Don’t be naive, Sera. History is written by the victors. The Council bested me last time, but they won’t do so again. Change is coming, and you have a first row seat to the revolution.”

She grabbed her sword from the floor and ran forward, swinging it in a big arc. He took the bait, blocking her with a magic shield. With her other hand, she hit him hard with her magic-breaking power. His magic shattered like glass, peeling away from him.

He growled, but he kept fighting, drawing his own sword to meet her next strike. It was not just his magic that was powerful, she realized as they fought. His fighting skills had been honed for centuries, all the better to effectively kick her ass.

Alden’s people were coming. She could feel them on the periphery, waiting for the signal to rush forward. And Alden’s magic was already regrowing. He was drawing on his followers’ devotion to refill his magic cup. He was only seconds away from getting his power back. As soon as that happened, he’d have her. She was not ready for this fight. She had to get stronger.

She slammed her magic into the glyph and thought about where she’d been: the Summit. Hoping that was enough, she dove into the shining symbols on the floor.

Sera fell through a pool of swirling magic. Wind whistled all around her, like she was stuck inside of a hurricane. She couldn’t see a thing through this storm, but she could feel Kai’s magic. Using it as a tether, she pulled herself toward him, one heavy step at a time. An opening appeared in the storm, and through it she caught a glimpse of the Magic Council’s meeting chamber. The doors were flung open. She kept walking, fighting the wall of wind that was trying to push her back to Alden.

Finn wasn’t inside the chamber and neither were any of Alden’s people. But he must have left only recently. The council members’ voices were raised, agitated. Sera’s heart jumped a beat when she saw Kai. He stood at the center of the chamber, facing the commandos. Something was wrong. Anger burned through his magic.

“You used her to draw them out! After I explicitly told you not to!” he shouted at Tony.

Kai looked angrier than Sera had ever seen him. Several chairs in the room burst into flames as the windows shattered one-by-one. One of the wires holding up a large hanging monitor snapped and the panel swayed, threatening to drop. Panic saturated the room—panic and its cousin fear.

“We didn’t use her as bait,” Tony said. “Middleton had already been turned. He grabbed Sera, pulling her with him onto one of those glyphs, and then they were gone.”

Kai roared, a blood-curdling sound of primal fury, a sound that promised he was going to kill everyone. Every person in the room froze.

Sera ran now, bursting through the storm. She fell into the meeting chamber. The moment Kai saw her, his rage melted away. Relief flooded his magic. As he ran to her in powerful strides, the crowd scattered before him.

Kai set his hands on her cheeks. “You disappeared. Tony, Dal, and Callum—”

“It wasn’t their fault,” Sera told him. “Both Middleton and Bender had already been turned. This whole thing was a ruse. Middleton pushed me into a glyph, and Alden activated it. He activated it from another state, Kai, having not even set foot in here. His power is…”

She stopped. Everyone was watching. And they were afraid. Afraid of how powerful Alden was, that he could not be defeated. After her last encounter with him, she wasn’t sure they weren’t completely right.

“What happened in here?” she asked.

“Finn popped up in the middle of the chamber, and then two ghosts publicly declared their allegiance for Alden. They floated over to Finn, and they all vanished dramatically into a glyph,” Kai said.

“Alden’s magic,” Sera said in a whisper. “He swore he would take the Council apart. This is just the beginning. More people have turned than we know. He boasted as much. He wants to rule, not just destroy. He wants to turn the Council members, to make them his worshippers. And he can do it too. He has the power. We have to stop him.”