“But how?” cried North.

“My collar,” Lu whispered, reaching up to touch her throat. “There must have been a tracking device in it.”

A ripple of panic went through the group. Suddenly Magnus appeared as if from nowhere, stepping out from behind the massive trunk of a nearby tree. He said, “Everyone follow me,” and began to stride quickly toward the entrance to the caves, a small, black opening in the side of the hill.

But he was brought up short when Honor said, “That won’t be necessary.”

Everyone turned to look at her, but she was still staring at those helicopters, drawing inexorably closer.

“There’s only three of them.” She glanced at Lu with an odd, wild gleam in her eyes.

Magnus walked slowly back, and stood in front of them. “You’re right. It’s a scouting party,” he said. “If they were sure we were here, they’d have sent an entire battalion.”

“They’ll have thermal imaging cameras,” interjected Oz, sounding even more nervous than Sayer had. “If they do a ground scan—”

“They’re not going to get that far,” said Honor softly, still looking at Lu. “Are they, sis?”

Everyone fell quiet, looking back and forth between the two of them, and Lu had a bad feeling about what Honor might mean. She said, “If these three go off grid, the IF will know something happened. They’ll just send more.”

Honor didn’t even blink. “Yep. But it will take them a while because they won’t be sure what caused them to go offline. Could be weather interference, could be an equipment malfunction, could be a million different things. The IF will wait awhile before they send another search party, maybe even a few days. Whereas if they get infrared readings on close to a thousand warm bodies living in the caves of Ogof Ffynnon Ddu, the entire Federation will converge on this island faster than you can say, ‘Smaug is obviously the smartest dragon.’” She paused for a beat. “And the prettiest.”

Her stomach knotting as she watched the helicopters fly closer, Lu asked quietly, “So what do we do?”

Honor replied with one of her cold, cold smiles, sending a shiver of dread down Lu’s spine. “What we do best.”

“Which is?”

A sudden, freezing wind whipped through the trees with such force it bowed their highest branches. Honor’s chilling smile grew wider. “Wreck shit.”

Magnus said, “Beckett, get back to your lab and destroy that collar. And take everyone with you.”

Looking at Honor with a strange, conflicted expression, Beckett replied, “I’m not leaving.”

“It wasn’t a request!” snarled Magnus, stepping closer to Beckett. “Get everyone inside and take care of that collar! Now!”

Beckett’s nostrils flared as he stared hard at Magnus. The two men stood chest to chest, Magnus standing a few inches taller, but Beckett broader in the shoulders, until Sayer took Beckett’s hand and tugged at it.

“Beck. C’mon.” She shot a worried glance at Magnus, then gave another, sharper, tug on Beckett’s hand.

“You should listen to Magnus,” said Honor softly, staring at the sky, the wind whipping her hair into a cloud of glinting gold around her shoulders. “He knows firsthand how things tend to go a little sideways when my sister and I lose our tempers.” She flicked a glance at Sayer, then at Beckett, then at their joined hands. Her gaze returned to Beckett’s face, and she said, harder, “I don’t want anyone to get hurt.”

A flicker of emotion darkened Beckett’s eyes, and for a moment he and Honor just gazed at one another. Then he said quietly, “Someone always gets hurt when you’re involved, Honor.” He turned his back and dragged Sayer away by the hand, and the rest of the group followed him, setting off for the entrance to the caves at a trot.

As Honor watched them go, a low rumble of thunder echoed through the hills in the distance. The wind grew stronger. A roiling black mass of thunderclouds appeared in the sky, crackling with hellish purple veins of lightning.

“Is that you?” Lu whispered to Honor, watching the sky darken in fascination.

“You should see me when I’m PMSing,” Honor replied in the same hard tone she’d used with Beckett. She’d finally stopped watching him when he and his group disappeared into the caves. “Which is pretty much all the time,” she added, which made Magnus snort.

“Go inside, Seeker,” said Honor. She took Lu’s hand and held it tightly.

“Not a chance in hell, Ice Queen,” he replied in a tone that clearly broadcasted how serious he was. He came and stood beside Lu, and she looked up at him, into those dark, beguiling eyes. Holding her gaze, he murmured, “I wouldn’t miss this for the world.”

Honor said, “Suit yourself. But don’t blame me for your bruises.”

Magnus glanced at Honor, frowning.

That’s when the first of the hail began to fall, hurtling down from the sky with such force the golf ball–sized chunks of ice bounced high off the ground with a sound like the clatter of hooves.

“Control, this is Tango Aztec two-niner-six-four Alpha, over.”

“Go ahead, Tango.”

“We’re experiencing severe weather conditions en route to target. Request permission to land until flight conditions are more favorable, over.”

A crackle of static. “Describe your situation, Tango. Control is getting interference with your readouts.”

Interference? The helicopter pilot and his copilot shared a glance.

“Tail wind at twenty-eight knots, low visibility due to heavy fog, temperature currently at—” No. That couldn’t be right. The pilot frowned at the digital readout; according to his instrument, the outside temperature had dropped thirty degrees in the last minute.

“Tango, repeat your last transmission, please, we’re having trouble with your signal.”

The pilot knew the temperature gauge was malfunctioning. It had to be, because at the rate it was dropping, the fuel lines would ice up—

Bam! Bam! Bam! The pilot started in his seat, shocked by the enormous white balls raining down on the windshield.

On the console, a red warning light blinked on at the same time an alarm shrilly sounded. There immediately followed a grinding, hollow groan from the rotors, and a violent shudder shook the cabin.

“Oh, shit!” shouted the copilot.

Control called over the com again, but the words were garbled, lost beneath the howling of the wind and the blinding crackle of a jagged fork of lightning that exploded in the dark sky not ten meters in front of the aircraft.

Now truly panicked, the pilot engaged the anti-ice system, but his instrument panel lit up like a Thornemas tree with a barrage of warning lights, madly blinking red and yellow. The gyroscope spun wildly, the vertical speed indicator lurched, the torque meter went off the charts.

The rotors stalled. The copilot screamed, louder even than the wind. Then with a jolt that flattened the pilot’s stomach up under his lungs, the helicopter dropped like a rock from the sky.

“This one’s dead, too.” Lumina covered her mouth with the back of her hand. She turned away from the mangled body of the man who had been thrown clear from the smoking wreckage of one of the helicopters, and stood with her eyes closed, dragging fresh air into her lungs, her lips pressed together, blood quickly draining from her face.

As it had drained from the man’s body to stain his frayed uniform, and darken the grass.