CHAPTER ONE

LOGAN

“Five minutes.” The soldier guarding Lankenshire’s dungeon raps sharply against the bars of the cell I’ve been in for the past three hours.

Three hours since the Commander showed up outside Lankenshire with an army and a demand that I be released to him by dawn or he’ll attack the city. Three hours since the Rowansmark trackers inside Lankenshire demanded that I give them the device Willow hid in the Wasteland or they’ll call the Cursed One—the tanniyn—to destroy Lankenshire. I’m assuming the gray metal boxes I saw mounted to buildings throughout the city while I was being marched from the gate to the dungeon—boxes that match the one Ian pointed out to me in the square—all contain a signal capable of summoning the beast. Maybe capable of summoning more than one beast, if Ian’s claim about multiple tanniyn roaming the earth is correct.

Three hours since Ian took Rachel and disappeared.

“Five minutes until what?” Willow asks from the cell beside mine. “Until you let us go? Why wait? Open our cells now, and we’ll be gone before you can finish locking the doors behind us.”

The soldier doesn’t look amused. “Five minutes until I escort you to your trial, where the triumvirate will try to figure out a way to appease both the Rowansmark trackers you’ve managed to upset and the army waiting at our gates.”

“It’ll be fine.” Willow sounds far more confident than I feel. “Logan has a plan. Right, Logan?” When I don’t answer, Willow’s voice sharpens. “Right, Logan?”

“Do you?” the soldier asks softly, his eyes locked on mine.

I open my mouth. Close it. Swallow against the lump of fear that wants to close the back of my throat and say, “I’m working on it.”

“You’re working on it?” The man steps closer to the iron bars that separate us. “You listen to me. This is my city. My home. I have family here, and I don’t want to lose them because some refugee from Baalboden brought trouble down on our heads.” He shoves his green cloak off his shoulders and points to the row of gold bars that line up neatly over his heart. “I’m a ranking officer in Lankenshire’s army. I haven’t pulled dungeon duty in years, but I’m here today because the triumvirate thinks you merit special treatment. They think you’ve got a way out of this impossible situation. So don’t tell me you’re working on it. Figure it out before all of us die. You have five minutes.”

He turns on his heel and stalks toward the entrance of the dungeon, his boots slapping against the stone floor as he goes.

“That was dramatic,” Willow says as she leans against the bars of her cell and looks at me.

“That was accurate.” I close my eyes against the terrible image of Rachel, badly injured, traveling to Rowansmark at the mercy of my murderous brother Ian while I sit in a dungeon, faced with the impossible task of appeasing both the Commander and the trackers, unable to save her. “Every worst case scenario running through my head has come true.”

“Oh, please,” Willow says. “Knowing the way your brain works, I’m sure there are at least five scenarios worse than this one that you’ve spent useless hours worrying over. Besides, this isn’t that bad.”

“Not that bad? Willow, the Commander is sitting outside the gate with the Carrington army and what’s left of Baalboden’s guards and he’s promised to attack the city at dawn if I don’t give him the device by then. He’s a man who keeps his word. And the trackers are going to call the tanniyn to destroy Lankenshire the same way Baalboden was destroyed if I don’t give the device to them instead. But I can’t give the tech to either of them, because if I do, I have nothing to use for ransom when I arrive in Rowansmark to barter for Rachel’s life.” I rub my eyes and try to think my way around the impossibility of it all.

There has to be a way out of this. Too many lives depend on it.

Willow’s voice is steady. “If you give the tech to the trackers, it’s the same as giving it to Rowansmark itself. That should satisfy the ransom for Rachel. Then we just have to deal with the old man and his stupid army.”

I’m already shaking my head. “The second I give up the device, I’ve lost my leverage over both the Commander and Rowansmark. Plus, I doubt Ian’s pain atonement vendetta against me will be satisfied by hearing that the device made its way back to Rowansmark. He wants to hurt me, and what better way to hurt me than to hurt Rachel?”

My throat closes over her name, and I can’t push away the fear that pounds through me, taunting me with images of Rachel hurt. Bleeding.

Dead.

“So the trackers, the Commander, and rescuing Rachel—those are all of your worst case scenarios?” Willow asks. “Because you forgot to mention that my brother, the bastion of self-sacrifice, went missing too. Presumably to track down Rachel, since no one would be crazy enough to kidnap Quinn. Of course, Ian is a lunatic who wouldn’t recognize sanity if it slapped him in the face, so there’s that.”

“Thank you for summing that up. I feel so much better about the whole situation now.”

“I thought we were just listing our problems. Nobody told me I was supposed to provide sympathy.” Willow sounds irritated.

The fear pulsing through me makes it impossible to stand still, so I start pacing the small confines of my cell. “I don’t need sympathy. I need a plan. My people are trapped. The clock is ticking. And I’m stuck inside a Lankenshire prison cell without a weapon or a shred of tech within reach.”