“Kai?” she asked. “Where is Kai?”

“When you disappeared, Kai went berserk,” Tony said, walking up to her. “He charged at Alden. Alden lured him onto a glyph and transported them both away.”

“He’s…gone?”

The world slowed to that moment, that sharp pinch of pain. She dropped to her knees.

“We will find him,” Tony told her.

“Alden has him,” she said, despair choking her words.

A flash of movement caught her eye. She looked past him, right at Ares and Lara. Sera jumped up, her anger fueling her movements.

“Sera—”

She didn’t wait for Ares to finish. She grabbed him and Lara by their collars, her wind spell yanking them off the ground.

“Where has Alden taken Kai?” she growled up at their suspended bodies.

Everyone had turned to watch, but Sera didn’t care. She was going to get her answers.

“I…don’t know,” Ares croaked out, grasping at his throat.

A tear rolled down Lara’s face.

“I don’t believe you,” Sera roared in anger.

She slammed her magic into them. Their minds broke, crumbling like a shattered eggshell.

“Where is Kai?” she demanded.

“We don’t know,” Lara said. “Alden played us. He used us.”

“How?”

“He knew we weren’t loyal to him.” Ares blinked a few times, as though he were trying to clear his vision. “He fed us bad information.”

Lara looked at him. “He made us suspicious of each other.”

“He used us to redirect your attention at the Summit.”

“So you wouldn’t know what was happening.”

“Until he got his hands on you.”

Lara reached toward her. “Sera, we’re so sorry. I didn’t know Alden would go after you there.”

“Neither of us did. Not until it was too late.”

The naked, painful truth sang through their magic. She’d broken their minds beyond all deception.

“Ok.” She lowered them to the ground.

As soon as they set down, her legs collapsed from under her. Alden had Kai. And he would do everything in his power to break him. Sorrow swallowed Sera. Alden would use Kai to get at her. He thought she would do anything to save him.

He was right.

She wiped the tears from her face and rose, her legs weak but holding. She would do anything to save Kai, but not in the way Alden thought. He wouldn’t turn her. Some way or another, though, she was going to kill the Grim Reaper.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

The Lord Dragon

WEEKS PASSED, AND Kai was still missing. They hadn’t heard even a hint of where he could be. Sera was trying to run things in Kai’s absence—because he would be coming back—but in reality, it was the commandos who were holding everything together. She just went out and killed things, breaking magic and minds. In the beginning, right after Kai disappeared, people tried to tell her to stay in hiding.

Well, no one dared tell her that anymore. Not after they’d seen her rage. Rage was all she had left. She nurtured it, fueled it, helped it grow. It was her best weapon, the only thing that would help her find Kai. Eventually, she would break the right mind, and all of Alden’s secrets would come spilling out. She just had to keep going.

At the base, some people were whispering that Kai was lost to them forever. That maybe he was even dead. Sera refused to believe that, even though no one had heard anything about him. Nothing at all.

But Alden hadn’t taken Kai just to kill him. He never did anything without a purpose. He wanted Kai for a reason: to use him against her. To draw her in. She chose to believe that they hadn’t heard anything about Kai because Alden hadn’t turned him yet. She tried to find the hope in that—and failed. If Kai hadn’t turned yet, that also meant Alden was still torturing him. It meant Kai was suffering.

Keep fighting! She sent that mental message out to Kai every day, so many times. They were connected, the two of them. Connected by love and magic. He had to hear her—somehow he had to hear. He would keep fighting.

Not only had the Dragons—that was the name Kai’s allies had selected for themselves—not had any leads on Kai, Alden’s trail was effectively dead too. Sera went out from dawn to dusk, trying to sniff him out. Every day, she drove further. Every day, she pushed her magic harder, trying to grow its range. She was barely sleeping, only moving and sensing. But it was not enough. She was still too weak.

All the while, she’d been dodging attacks from what remained of the shattered Magic Council. It seemed that every idiot on the planet had come here with dreams of collecting on her five-million-dollar bounty. She didn’t want to kill them, but after the twentieth or so attempt on her life, she’d given up on feeling any kind of remorse for them. She was in pain and playing nice hadn’t worked before. It had only lost her the man she loved.

She had to find Kai. She had to save him. And these assassins, bounty hunters, and Magic Council lackeys were simply in her way. Maybe someday, when this was all over, she would regret her brutality, but not now. Not as long as Kai was gone and Alden was still out there, warping the world. He hadn’t gotten the chance to be the world’s savior against demons, so he’d had to fall back on the old standby of converting people piece by piece, dynasty by dynasty. He was immortal. Immortals could afford to be patient.

“Are you ready?” Dal asked Sera.