Honor’s mouth dropped open. She looked crushed. Lost.

Between Magnus’s fear at what might be imminent and his anxiety for Lumina’s safety, lurked his astonishment that someone—finally—had gotten Honor to show any kind of emotion. He’d known her since she was born, and had never seen her be anything but . . . cold.

Okay, angry, too, but mostly just cold.

Lumina stepped closer to her sister, until they stood just a few feet apart. “That’s it, isn’t it? You like being feared.” She tilted her head, examining Honor with a shrewd eye. “You know who that reminds me of?”

Don’t say it, Magnus thought. Dear God, please do not say—

“Sebastian Thorne.”

As Honor stiffened, the air in the room went frigid. Ice formed in crackling long fingers along the walls. The group behind Magnus took another few steps back.

“Well,” said Honor in a furious whisper, “at least I’m not a coward!”

Lumina flushed, looking as if she’d been slapped. “What did you just call me?”

She’d said it slowly, enunciating every word, and Magnus knew that if he didn’t intervene quickly all their lives were in peril. He said, “Ladies, this really isn’t the time or the place for—”

“Butt out!” Honor and Lumina yelled in unison, and a low tremor rumbled through the floor.

Behind him, Ember squeaked in terror. Magnus held still, calculating the time and distance it would take him to get to Lumina. With his Gifts, he could get her to safety, unseen, at least giving her a chance to escape aboveground and get a head start before Honor came looking for her. His own head would be on the chopping block for it, but there was no way he was about to let Honor hurt Lumina.

So you’ve chosen sides after all. Apparently one of your Gifts is Epic Stupidity.

“I said you’re a coward,” snarled Honor, her mouth skewed in the identical don’t-cry grimace he’d seen on Lumina so recently. “You’d rather hide out and pretend to be something you’re not than be with your own kind!”

“That’s a lie! I never knew where you were! I never knew who I was!”

“Because you wouldn’t let me! You blocked me every single time I tried to reach you!”

“I was just trying to live my life! I was doing the best I could! I was just trying to fit in, to be normal, and not get killed in the process!”

They’d drawn closer to each other as if magnetized. The low rumble in the ground amplified. Around the table, the chairs rattled. A fine dusting of grit drifted down from the ceiling above, and a candelabra near the entrance toppled over, falling with a clatter to the stone.

Christian warned, “Magnus.”

“Lumina. Honor. Please.” Magnus eased closer to them. They ignored him, staring at each other with blatant hostility, rigid and silent, fire and ice, opposite sides of the same coin. “You can sort out your differences later, after you’ve both had a chance to—”

“Not get killed?” Honor repeated with an ugly laugh. “Are you kidding me? That’s what you’ve been afraid of? That’s what kept you living like a scared little mouse, hiding under the baseboards? Your fear of getting killed?”

Her voice had risen to a shout. Magnus knew his time was up; he had to act now, or risk Lumina’s life. He inhaled, feeling his muscles relax into the loose readiness they always held before battle, feeling his mind sharpen, all his senses honed to the task at hand. When he exhaled, his breath frosted out in front of his face in a plume of pearlescent white.

Honor said, “Time for a reality check, little mouse.”

And because his senses were so heightened, he sensed rather than saw the sword that flew through the air toward Lumina, wrenched from its sheath on Xander’s back by an invisible force. It parted the air with the barest, sinister hiss.

He moved to leap in front of its path, but too late.

The sword punched through the space between Lumina’s shoulder blades with a loud, sickening crunch of bone, burying itself to the hilt.

Everyone else in the room gasped, or shouted, or cried out in horror, including him. But Lumina only stared at Honor with parted lips, her eyes bulged wide, her face disbelieving. The blade that protruded through her breastbone spurted blood in a fast-flowing gush onto the floor.

Lumina staggered forward a step. Calmly, Honor reached out and steadied her. Then in one swift move she pulled the sword from her sister’s back and tossed it aside. It skidded over the floor with the racket of metal striking stone, rocked once, and came to a standstill.

Magnus caught Lumina as she fell. He eased her to the cold floor, horror permeating every cell in his body. His mind refused to accept what he was seeing, refused to accept the impossibility that Honor had just murdered her own sister, the woman he’d spent half a lifetime searching for.

The woman he’d spent half a lifetime dreaming of.

He looked up at Honor. She stood staring dispassionately down, her white clothing splattered with a lurid spray of crimson, while Lumina lay warm and still in his arms. He growled—a savage, threatening sound that reverberated off the walls—but Honor’s only reaction was the slightest flicker in the depths of her eyes. Her anger seemed to be cooling in degrees, keeping time with the blood pulsing from the gash on her sister’s sternum. She knelt down, watching Lumina’s face, intently watching the light drain from her eyes.

Lumina’s lids fluttered shut. Her breath rattled to a stop, then she fell perfectly still.

Magnus had never hated anyone in his life as much as he hated Honor in that moment. His hatred was a thing inside his chest, a pressure, a volcanic heat—

“Don’t get your panties in a wad, Seeker,” Honor muttered, shooting him an icy glare. “I know what I’m doing. Demonstrations are always more effective than conversations. Have a little faith, will you?”

What?

Honor reached out, and lightly slapped Lumina’s cheek. When that produced no response, she tugged—not gently—on a lock of her sister’s hair. “Hey. Drama queen. Get over yourself. We’ve got work to do.”

There was a long, terrible silence. Lumina’s blood was splashed on his hands, his clothing, all over the stone beneath his knees. He was finding it hard to breathe, hard to think, but he knew beyond his fury and panic and crushing sense of loss—was that even rational, to mourn for a woman he didn’t know?—that he was missing something. Something Honor obviously knew, but he didn’t.

Something that caused a faint glimmer of hope to flare in his chest.

It was at that moment that Lumina coughed. Her body was wracked by a deep shudder. She sucked in a ragged breath, and opened her eyes.

Lumina stared up at Honor with a frown of confusion, and Magnus’s heart skidded to a dead stop inside his chest.

With the single most satisfied smile Magnus had ever seen, Honor said, “Happy birthday, Sunshine. Welcome to the first day of the rest of your life.”

Gasping, Lumina touched her chest. She yanked down the collar of her blood-soaked shirt, and stared; the gash that had been pumping blood only seconds before had entirely vanished.

She looked up at Magnus, and he waited to hear what she would say with his heart now pounding like a jackhammer in his chest.

Her lips quirked. On a faint, exhausted sigh, she said, “So, about that drink . . .”

PART TWO

TWELVE