Lon walked the edge of the circle. We locked gazes. No pity darkened his face. No anger, either. No emotion at all. In the midst of all the craziness around me, the sight of his dead-pan countenance calmed me. I took in shaky, labored breaths, forcing myself to extend them as long as I could, never taking my eyes off him.

“It can’t be breached or broken from the outside.” My voice was rough and strained as I spoke directly to him over the drone of the ritual words. “Not by anything physical. Nothing.”

I tilted my head as something pierced the fog of my drug-addled brain.

“Not from the outside,” I repeated. But if someone on the inside were to step out of the circle, it would break. I was bound, so I couldn’t, and my parents would never step outside. Their eyes were shut. They were nearly in a trance, lost in the ritual.

Not me, not them … but what about Frater Blue? I hesitated, wavering. It was risky. Outside the circle, Lon was safe. I was already doomed, and there was no guarantee that he could save me, even if he was able to break the ward. What if they hurt him? They were psychotic killers and would clearly have no problem doing whatever it took to get my power. Maybe he would be better off if I just told him to leave.

But before I could weigh my uncertainty, Lon closed his eyes. A ripple distorted the blue light of the ward where he was standing. Like an ignited pyre, his halo flared up behind his head, and his horns began emerging. Zorn and the caliph looked up at him with a quiet awe. They couldn’t see his halo, but they obviously spotted his horns. Yet they handled the transformation without fuss or protest; I wagered they’d already seen him do it.

He didn’t look at me after he’d shifted. My nerves stretched like thin wire as he calmly marched around the outer edge of the circle and stopped near Frater Blue. It happened so fast. I saw Lon’s mouth moving, and frantically wondered if he could he manipulate Frater Blue without touching him. The answer to that was reflected in Frater Blue’s face when it drew up in fear.

“Qeh-noh koheh dah—”

My mother’s eyes opened, drawing my attention away from Lon. She kneeled down in front of me. Her fingers lifted the hem of the shroud off the ground and gathered it up into her hands as she stood. If I hadn’t been naked enough before, I was now. She pulled the shroud over my head like I was bride about to be kissed, exposed and humiliated, insult to injury. I spit in her face. Anger flared as she squeezed her eyes shut. But she merely wiped it away, then stepped back.

My attention flicked back to Lon. Frater Blue stood staring at him, his back to me. I couldn’t tell what was going on. Lon’s chest was heaving. He was mumbling something to himself. Frater Blue’s head jerked around. He peered outside the circle at the caliph, eyes filling with panic.

My mother took the glass talon from my father’s hand; the sharp point gleamed in the circle’s charged light. She brought it to my breastbone and pressed down. The tip punctured my skin, stinging as she slowly slid it down between my breasts.

“Oh-reh-reh-heh. Oh-reh-reh-heh,” my father chanted, louder and louder.

Blood welled as the talon slashed. I gasped in pain. In shock. In disbelief. My hands tingled; my vision swam. I was on the verge of passing out when a sound roused me. With bleary eyes, I glanced beyond my mother to see Frater Blue smacking his hands against his ears. He abandoned his droning dirge and cried out, lunging forward with outstretched arms. The moment his foot crossed the circle, the domed blue ward fizzled, then broke into millions of tiny blue stars. Like dying fireflies, they furiously blinked out of sync, then imploded.

Lon did it! He broke the fucking ward. Frater Blue was kneeling in front of Lon, pleading and crying. Whatever Lon had told him, he believed it. And I was so distracted by the spectacle that when my father’s continued chanting registered in my ears—when I looked down and saw the glass talon still tearing through my skin—I was stunned.

My parents weren’t stopping. Nothing had changed. Ward or no ward, they were going to finish this.

The crimson line between my breasts got longer. Warm blood streamed down my belly.

“OH-REH-REH-HEH … KANILA.”

An alarm beeped on my father’s wristwatch.

Midnight.

38

It was a standard summoning. My father paused the incantation to perform it in the center of the circle, where I’d failed to recognize the large binding triangle and seal carved into the dirt, the channels filled with what was likely red ochre. Maybe even hematite powder, like Lon had used for my house ward.

A disturbance churned the air over the seal. The white demon was coming. Hot blood dripped down my legs as I waited for her to appear and answer my parents’ bidding. To harvest me. I didn’t want to watch the demon materialize, but I couldn’t close my eyes either.

Then something clicked inside my head: If this Moon-child ability was so powerful that it was worth killing me to obtain, then what exactly could it do? Could it trump their summoning? Even without the glass talon in my possession? I had no idea, but it was after midnight, and what did I have to lose by trying? I’d already lost everything anyway …

I rallied my determination and tilted my face to the moon. The same way I reached out for electricity, I willed the ability to manifest.

And it came like a bullet.

Every hair on my head immediately lifted and whipped around my face, charged with some sort of strange static; the red shroud, bunched around my shoulders and neck, fell away to the ground. Power hummed around me. My mother cried out. She flinched away from me, the bloodied glass talon gripped tight in her hand. Her eyes fixed on mine, and in that moment I saw realization … and fear.