My father called out in anguish and ran to my mother’s aid, but the caliph tripped him as he passed, sending my father skidding across the ground. He attempted to push himself up, but he was too slow. The caliph shoved his face into the dirt. Magus Zorn dropped to his knees, and together, he and the caliph both pinned my father to the ground.

“Hold still,” Lon murmured near my side. He flipped the glass talon in his hand and crouched to slice through my bonds. Within seconds, my ankles and wrists sprung free. I stumbled and teetered on wobbly legs as Lon steadied me. I rubbed my wrists as Lon stripped the shroud off my head and threw it to the ground. He inspected my wound, stretching out his T-shirt to stanch the blood, then murmured a quick assessment. “Not deep.”

Nivella’s pink eyes peered down at me from a smooth face framed in white scales. “Give me the lives of these people as retribution, Mother. Those are the rules.”

Were those the rules? I hadn’t personally made a pact with Nivella; therefore, I had broken no pact. Right?

“Your occult community holds a child accountable for a parents’ debts if the parents don’t pay them,” Lon whispered in my ear. He’d been listening to my thoughts. “It’s the same in the Æthyr. This is an old demon who follows old rules.”

My stomach knotted. I glanced at my mother’s limp body on the ground. Her arm twitched and a soft groan fell from her lips as she tried to move her head. My father was still struggling under the caliph. Even then, despite everything that was happening—everything they’d revealed—I was desperately thinking of a way to justify what they’d done, to forgive them or excuse them. After all, they were clearly insane. It wasn’t the first time I’d seen another magician derailed. All that power has a way of worming its way inside your head, making you feel invincible and above the law. And didn’t I feel that way too? Hadn’t I spent the last seven years living as fugitive? Maybe I was no better, so how could I judge them?

Lon gripped my chin and got in my face, anger blazing in his eyes. “No,” he barked. “You are not like them. Hear me?”

“What do I do?” I whispered.

His face softened as he slowly shook his head. “I can’t tell you that.”

Of course he couldn’t. I quickly sobered. This was my problem, not his. My responsibility. And there was no returning from this. My parents weren’t just sick, they were beyond salvaging. No doctor would be able to rehabilitate them; they’d only escape. Hurt anybody who got in their way. The decision clutched my heart and wrung it dry, but I knew it was what had to be done.

“Magus Zorn,” I asked as a swell of tears blurred my vision, “will the other orders consider their debt paid if I let the demon take them?”

“Yes, I will see to it,” he said. “All blood debts will be void.”

“Nivella the White,” I shouted, “You can take the couple along with Frater Blue back to the Æthyr as payment on the condition that you consider the debt paid. Do we have a deal?”

Frater Blue squawked a protest and tried to bolt, but Lon grabbed him and forced him to the ground with my mother.

“What about my talon?” Nivella said.

“I’ll keep it for now,” I decided. If I had the talon, no one else could summon her; I reasoned that it was probably safer this way. “Do we have a deal?”

She paused for a long moment, considering, then nodded her head. “You have my word. Unbind me now and let me take what is mine.”

Not really knowing if it would work, I willed the blue binding to break. Nothing happened at first; but after I strained harder, it finally loosened and disappeared, leaving behind the summoning seal.

Nivella’s long white legs ghosted over the ground as she strode toward my mother’s waking form. Lon bent down, unzipped my mother’s robe, and unceremoniously wrenched it down over her shoulders, tugging it off her body. “She won’t be needing this,” he said, bringing it back to me. My mother groaned and protested groggily as Nivella picked up her nude body with all four arms and slung her over a broad, white shoulder. Lon whispered something to Frater Blue, who whimpered and went limp as Nivella grabbed him. I watched as the demon lugged them both back to my blue seal and tossed them inside one at a time. Then I had to look away.

Lon touched my elbow and held the robe out. My mother’s scent lingered on the fabric, but it wasn’t comforting, it was foreign. A stranger’s scent.

“How did you find me?” I whispered as he helped me step into the robe.

“I lied. I had a dream last night. Your memories. I knew you wouldn’t believe me until you saw it yourself, but I didn’t know it would go this far.”

I zipped up the robe and nodded.

“And like I told you this morning, Five is a much faster drive,” he elaborated, with a weary grin.

As Nivella approached, the caliph and Magus Zorn both jumped off my father. The coward tried to get up and run, but the demon snagged him by the legs and dragged him toward the seal. She continued to hold onto him once she’d stepped inside.

She turned in my direction. “Summon me when you are ready to return my talon, Mother.”

“Seléne!” my father screamed, his eyes crazed and filled with hate.

“My name is Arcadia now.”

“We created you—you belong to us!”

“Not anymore,” I murmured.

And with those words standing as my good-bye, I shouted a banishing spell.