Amoroth released her grip upon me and I shrugged off the Realm's influence, blinking my eyes in the sudden shift of light.

We were in the Sin's penthouse. The rain had been quieted to an insouciant hiss outside the plate-glass windows, and the dim, atmospheric lights gave the room a tired, yet inviting, ambiance. No sooner had her hand freed itself from my shirt than the woman vanished into the far rooms. I heard heavy objects being thrown aside with loud thuds and bangs of shattered glass.

Cage coughed. Though he'd only loosened that ridiculous ribbon an increment, the mage was studiously reinforcing the tie, measuring the width of the loops with his thumb and forefinger.

He saw me staring and grinned. "I'm quite fond of it. Wouldn't do to lose it now."

"I don't care about your stupid ribbon," I snarled, brushing bits of exploded concrete and splattered mud from my arms. "What, by the Seven, just happened?"

The mage eased himself onto the sofa's arm—but he didn't sit. No, none of us could sit after what we'd witnessed. Though he feigned nonchalance, I could see how rigid the man held his body and how he laid his hands upon his thighs like bared weapons. They were weapons; I'd been witness to the devastation he could wreak with just a few simple gestures.

"I thought it was obvious," Cage said. "To me, at least."

"Well, it wasn't obvious to me." Amoroth responded before I could, storming back into the room with her bare, filthy feet trailing grime. She threw a duffel bag to the floor, and from it spilled a collection of scribe runes, enchantress baubles, and stacks of currency. Not only were there American dollars, but renminbi, pounds, euros, and a sack of clinking coins I didn't immediately recognize were present.

It was a bag for an alternative—and more plane bound—escape. Plan "B," as it were.

"Why was that winged bastard there?" she demanded, gaze swinging from the mage to me and back again. "Did it follow you?"

Cage shook his head, though the corners of his eyes creased as if he'd not given that any thought. "No. I did nothing to draw his attention, nor did you. Think. Who was there? Who witnessed our arrival to the Gate? Who reported your presence without word or message?"

Brief images flicked through my thoughts as I recalled the glazed, open eyes of Sethan's children waiting in the Gate's tunnel.

"The vampires," Cage explained in a calm, measured tone as his fingers tapped together. "were the ones who summoned the High King's golden boy. He saw what he needed through their eyes and didn't have to follow a disturbance in the void or a stirring of magic. Don't you see, girl? The Call has passed on. Sethan's Call has been inherited by another."

Lightning flashed against the horizon as I stared into the fathomless dark that filled the sky in its absence. I remembered the winged Absolian in his black garb and that familiar—yet so unfamiliar—face. "Brother," he'd called me. 

"That creature named me kin," I muttered as my fingers skirted over my jaw and felt the roughness of hair beginning to grow there. The word hung at the tip of my tongue as if it were branded there, and the taste of it was upsetting. Brother. I wasn't his brother. "Is that even possible?"

"Haven't you ever considered the possibility?" the black mage asked, splaying a hand before himself. "You Originals were once Absolians, and though you were defeated in the Rending and thrown from Absolia's cliffs, you had lives in that realm. Don't you ever wonder about those you left behind? About your mates or children? Sisters or brothers?"

Brothers.

In an era long since gone by, I had thought of the people I might have known in Absolia. When we Originals were young and hadn't yet left the Baal's care, he'd sent us out across the Pit to survey that bleak, hungry land. Wandering those colorless canyons and isolated peaks, I'd given much thought to the creature I'd once been.

It was maddening to know I'd lived an entire life—years and years, perhaps even whole millennia—before I'd fallen, and I remembered none of it. While I'd walked the long, quiet dark of the Pit's farthest plains, I'd pondered often the man I'd been, the choices I must have made, and the consequences I was forced to live with. What type of fool had I been to follow the Baal of all people? To join in his rebellion against a true King? I hadn't been able to reconcile the idea of who I'd been with the person I'd become, and I'd squandered years in futile reflection, compiling the designs of a being I was supposed to be but could never become.

Then, before returning to the Baal's stronghold, I'd decided none of that mattered. Pretending I could ever understand or imitate the behavior of who I'd once been was not only useless, but also stupid. Darius the Absolian had been a fool who'd sided with a bastard and had lost. He'd been punished, had lost part of his very being in the descent, and had cursed me to suffer the retribution and never know my crime. I didn't want to recognize that man. I didn't want to be him.

So yes, I had considered those I'd left behind—and I'd long since decided they were inconsequential. They had allowed me to be punished and essentially killed. I didn't care a wit for those who couldn't stand up for me when I'd needed them most.

However, if I did have a second brother who'd assumed Sethan's Call, that was far from inconsequential. The Absolian had inherited Wrath's greatest weapon.

I sighed with heat.

"Ignoring the potential of Darius having yet another psychotic brother," Amoroth cut through my silent contemplation with her pointed comment. "We can assume the Absolian inherited the Call. And? What is his angle? Cuxiel—." Her breath hitched, and she quickly bent at the waist to gather the fallen runes and currency. "Cuxiel said they believe themselves paladins of truth, or some shit. That they won't lower themselves to debasing humans and won't match our machinations. He said all they did is search, and destroy."

"That's true," I said, irked by her mention of Sethan. "Whenever they descend with the purpose of purging our—your—kind, they come as a comprehensive unit, the Wandergard, and do as you say: search and destroy. They don't hurt humans or disturb society. They purely act to eliminate threats to the realm's supposed natural state."

"So what is this loner doing?" Amoroth stuffed the fallen items into the bag again. Frustrated, her hurried motions jabbed one of the sharper runes into her fingertip, activating the intrinsic magics laced through the stone to set off a piercing alarm. She crushed the thing in her bare hand. "The rest of the Wandergard aren't here, and he's out—what? Using vampires as CTV cameras and blowing up bridges full of mortals?!"

Her voice was high, broken, and breathless. The air was crisp, but the Sin's eyes were boiling over with imminent energy stolen from the atmosphere. Her panic tasted bittersweet in my mouth.

"Calm down—." The mage went to touch the Sin's arm, but snatched his hand back before it could be ripped off.

"Don't tell me to calm down, you son of a bi—!"

"I doubt he's only using the vampires as monitors," I intoned as I crouched and lifted a witch's knot from the floor, squinting at the frazzled design. It was a finder's charm, consisting of two bits of twine, a cut of hair, and a thread of sorceress magic. What was Amoroth looking for?

We had discounted the presence of Wrath's children in the tunnel, but I suspected their being there hadn't been a coincidence. They were little more than tainted mutts, but vampires had a sensitivity to weak spots in the void. The Absolian could have scattered them like hunting dogs to any such weaknesses and had them wait, reporting the appearance of any Sins who dared approach.

But to what end? If the Absolian controlled the vampires, then he was also behind Jackson Klau's disappearance. It wasn't inconceivable for one of the winged familiar's of the High King to have discerned who Amoroth's host is. All it took was time, careful observation, and patience—three elements the Absolians had in abundance.

"Why" was the true question. Why hide a host when, according to their King's law, killing the man who'd bound himself to a Sin was within the range of their destructive spectrum. Hiding him preserved the tie, the anchor, which held Amoroth to this Realm.

That explosion of creation magic—which, by its nature, was a volatile form of theurgy that drew upon Absolia's existential fabric and was not meant to be wielded in Terrestria—would have destabilized the Gate, rendering it useless. True, the bastard had tried to kill Amoroth, but he hadn't tried hard; his main goal had been destroying the Gate and stranding the Sin of Lust within this realm.

"But why?" I mumbled aloud as I ground my teeth with aggravation. "To what end? Why does he want to keep you from returning to the Realm?"

Cage grunted, still eyeing Amoroth as if expecting her to rip him to shreds. "I'd wager he's marooned Greed here as well. Has anyone been in contact with him?" He peeked at the Sin. "Have you spoken with him of late?"

"No!" The viciousness of her voice resonated throughout the penthouse and caused the lights to flicker. "No, I haven't spoken to that—that—!"

She snatched the knot from my grip, and I now understood what it was meant to find. Danyel. It was meant to find Danyel.

"And it doesn't matter if Greed can return to the Realm or not. Once I find that coward, Danyel will be dead."

Amoroth thrusted her arm through the duffel bag's strap and slung it into onto her back with a savage motion. The bag was almost as large as her, but she handled it with ease. "I'm leaving, and you two should leave as well, lest you want to be here when that thing finally shows up. The next Gate isn't on this continent, but I can manage to put enough space between myself and this city to escape." Her sentence cut off prematurely, and I heard the unspoken wish of 'I hope' held in her breath.

Cage straightened as he soothed the ribbon's position against his throat. Below the thin band of silver fabric were slight, bluish marks not unlike fingerprints patterned into his skin. Where had those come from? "I believe that's our cue then, boy—."

The mage went to move his feet and lurched, catching himself by digging's his nails into the couch's arm. I tried to step as well—and my legs locked in place, as immobile as carved rocks. "What...?"

Amoroth growled, and though she managed to lift one foot into the air—cracking the flooring beneath—I saw green filaments of light woven about her ankles, calves, and knee, all plunging into the hardwood below. I could see them upon my own legs as well, and on Cage's, crackling with an electric heat I hadn't noted until I tried to find it.

Cage let out a loud exhale as his eyes widened. "Oh dear. I'd all but forgotten about them."

Claws of iron and steel clamored up our spines and lever us to our knees. My mouth went dry and the chill was sunder by a lance of metallic heat as they came streaming through the very walls. Men in coats of black and grey poured from thin air, materializing as if their bodies were vessels holding their shape together. Too soon, they surrounded us in great numbers, their looming presence a cumbersome weight pressing firmly against my head.

I lifted my furious eyes to the nearest man and spat upon the floor at his boots. "Mages," I sneered. How I despised their kind—what I would have given to rise from my knees and have the power to incinerate the presumptuous fools.

The dark-eyed mage laughed.

I should've expected reprisal. The boot I'd spat on rose and struck my temple with impressive force. I careened to the side, stunned, as a listless sensation overcame my limbs and bright, vivid sparks of light burst behind my eyes. Darkness came afterward, crawling and creeping like frost upon a dew-streaked window, stealing my vision of Amoroth's penthouse and the invaders who'd set upon it.

It was a strange singularity, succumbing to the greedy hands of oblivion. For something that was, by definition, an onset of nothing, it was filled with such sound, such color, and emotion. My thoughts and worries blended and blurred into that absentee terror, and I did nothing to stop myself from collapsing into the floor.

Somewhere in that tremulous dark, long forgotten voices ascended from cracks in my mind like streamers of sunlight through obscuring clouds, eliciting images and ideas and connections to another world, another existence. I saw the Absolian's face and knew him. I knew his name.

"Au...Aurelius...."