Storm and Fury by Jennifer L. Armentrout

2

I’d never seen a Raver demon before; I’d only read about them in class and heard some of the other Wardens talk about them. Nothing they’d ever described did these creatures justice.

They were like rats—giant hairless rats that ran on two legs, had teeth that a great white shark would envy and claws that could cut through even the Warden’s stone-like skin.

“Well, that’s a bucket full of nightmares,” I murmured.

Misha huffed out a laugh.

Ravers were bottom feeders, scavenger demons that prayed on weak humans and corpses of animals and, well, anything dead. They didn’t attack Warden compounds.

“Something’s not right here,” whispered Misha, obviously following the same train of thought as me. “But that doesn’t matter right now.”

No.

It didn’t.

At least six of them went straight for Misha, seeing and sensing that he was a Warden. Me? They pretty much ignored, probably because I smelled like a good ol’ human.

That was their first and last mistake.

Hand-to-hand combat wasn’t exactly easy for me, not when my vision was constricted to a narrow tunnel, so I had to be careful. I had to be smart and keep my distance.

Misha shot forward, spinning in a wide circle. One of his wings caught the closest Raver, knocking the creature back several feet as he jabbed his clawed hand into the center of another Raver’s chest.

The crunchy wet sound turned my stomach.

Another Raver launched into the air, using its powerful legs. It was heading straight for Misha’s back.

I let honed instinct take over. I cocked back my arm, then let the dagger fly.

It struck true, embedding deep in the Raver’s chest. The thing shrieked as it plummeted from the air and landed on its side, already dead.

Misha spun toward me, his mouth slightly agape. “How do you do that?”

“I’m special.” I switched the other dagger to my right hand. “And you have another one right behind you.”

He turned, catching that one and pile-driving the sucker into the hard ground.

My knife throwing had caught the attention of several more Ravers. One broke off, charging me as its chattering sound grew louder. It swiped at me, and I dipped down, feeling the wind of its swing stir my hair. I popped up behind the creature and kicked out, catching it in its back. The Raver hit the ground and rolled, but I didn’t give it time to recover. I brought the iron dagger down, cutting off its squeal of rage.

I spun but didn’t see the tail on the other Raver until it smacked into my leg. I squealed and jumped back, totally feeling its thick, rubbery texture through my sweats.

“Oh God, you have a tail,” I groaned, shuddering. “You all have tails. I’m going to vomit.”

“Can you hold off on that?” Misha asked from somewhere behind me.

“No promises.” Shuddering again, I leaped to the side and spun to shove the dagger into the chest of another Raver. A hot spray of gunky demon blood splattered my chest. “Oh, man, now I’m going to have to shower.”

“God, you’re whiny.”

Grinning, I darted to the right and found the rapidly decomposing body of the Raver that I had taken down with the first blade. Heart thumping, I pulled the blade out of its chest and then scanned the clearing. Six were left. I took a step forward.

“Beside you!” Misha shouted.

A bolt of panic lit up my chest as I twisted at the waist. Leaping back, I narrowly avoided being swiped by those claws. That would have been bad—very bad.

If my blood spilled, the moment it hit the air, they’d sense what I was.

They’d go into a frenzy—a feeding frenzy.

The thing charged me, mouth opening wide. A gust of rancid breath slammed into me as I slammed the dagger into its chest. “What in the Hell have you’ve been eating?”

“You probably don’t want the answer to that,” Misha grunted.

That was true.

I turned, finding another Raver coming for me. One side of my lips kicked up as a surge of adrenaline lit up my veins. That feeling was so much better than kissing. I flipped the daggers in my hands, completely showing off as I took a step forward—

A huge mass landed in front of me, shaking the ground and the elms.

That’s what it looked like to me at first, just a solid mass of pissed-off fury that was so powerful it was a tangible entity in the woods. Six-foot wings spread out, blocking my view of just about everything.

And then my eyes focused. I saw shoulder-length red hair, and my heart sunk. Matthew.

Not only was he Thierry’s husband, he was the second in command here at the ancestral seat, answering only to Thierry.

He looked over his shoulder at me. His features were a blur, but there was no mistaking the anger in his tone. “Please tell me I’m hallucinating and you’re not really standing out here.”

I looked around. “Well...”

“Get her back to the house,” Matthew thundered as several more Wardens landed, causing what felt like a mini earthquake. “If you think you can actually handle that, Misha.”

Oh dear.

Misha dropped a Raver and then seemed to disappear from where he’d been standing.

I opened my mouth to defend Misha and to also point out that I didn’t need to be carted off, but for once in my life, I wisely snapped my mouth shut.

But then Matthew, who was like a third father to me, spoke once again. “You know better than this, Trinity.”

And then I unwisely opened my mouth. “I had it handled. Obviously.”

Matthew spun toward me, and I saw those blue eyes then, burning with barely restrained fury. “You’re so lucky it is me here and not Thierry.”

That was probably true.

Misha was suddenly beside me, and I wasn’t given much of an option. He folded an arm around my waist and then crouched. Whatever else I was about to say was lost in a rush of cool air and night sky.

I was in so, so much trouble.

Misha wasn’t speaking to me.

He was sitting in the living room, long legs kicked up on the couch, arms folded across his chest. His entire body took up all three cushions. He was watching an info commercial on some kind of magic frying pan like it was the most interesting thing ever committed to screen.

I was pacing behind the couch, nerves stretched thin. I could’ve hidden away in my bedroom, pretended that I was asleep, but that would’ve made me a coward. And there was no point in delaying the massive lecture that was coming my way.

A blur of movement shot in front of the TV. Misha didn’t react to it, so my eyes narrowed. Was it Peanut, my sort of, not exactly alive, friend? I hadn’t seen that punk all day or night. God only knew what he was up to.

A door opened somewhere in the massive house, slamming shut a few seconds later. I stopped pacing. Only then did Misha look at me. He raised his brows.

Heavy footsteps echoed down the hall outside the living room, and I turned to the arched opening. Thierry entered, tugging a fresh shirt on over his bald head. He was still too far away for me to gain much from the expression on his dark brown face. Matthew was right behind him, only slightly shorter and less broad. I clasped my hands together.

“I have several things I need to say, but I want to know something first,” Thierry’s deep voice boomed. “What in the Hell was she doing outside those walls?”

My mouth opened.

“I have no idea.” Misha pulled his legs off the couch and sat up, twisting at the waist so he could see Thierry. “I was happily asleep when she snuck off.”

I snapped my jaw shut, wondering exactly how in the world Misha knew I was outside the walls if he’d been asleep. The bond wouldn’t have alerted him to that. It didn’t work that way.

“It is your responsibility to know where she is at all times,” Thierry responded. “Even if you’re asleep.”

“Okay, that seems a bit implausible,” I said, jumping into the conversation. “And I’m the one who went over the wall, so I don’t know why you’re asking him why I did it.”

Thierry slowly turned to me, and now that he was closer, I could see the hard lines of his jaw and his narrowed eyes. Eek! Probably should’ve kept my mouth shut.

“He is your Protector. He should know where you are.”

Without even looking at Misha, I could feel him glaring daggers into me. “He can’t be responsible for me while—”

“I’m not sure if you fully understand his role, but yes, he is always responsible for you. Asleep or awake, it doesn’t matter,” Thierry interrupted while Matthew leaned against the back of the couch. “Why were you outside those walls, Trinity?”

For what felt like the thousandth time tonight, I explained myself. “I woke up and I knew there were demons nearby. I sensed them—”

“While you were asleep?” Matthew asked, reddish brows snapping together. I nodded, and he glanced at Thierry. “That’s new.”

“Not exactly,” I said. “The last time they came, I sensed them in the middle of the night. It woke me up.”

“And that night you did what you knew you should have,” Thierry responded. “You stayed inside, where—”

“Where it’s safe. I know that.” Frustration rose. “And that night two Wardens died.”

“It doesn’t matter how many die.” Thierry took a step toward me. “Your safety is the number one priority.”

I inhaled sharply. “I can fight. I can fight better than most Wardens! It’s what I’ve been trained for since I could walk, but I’m expected to sit around twiddling my thumbs while people die? And don’t say their lives don’t matter. I’m tired of hearing that.” My hands curled into fists. “Misha’s life matters. Matthew’s life matters. Your life matters! Everyone here matters.” Except for Clay, but that was splitting hairs. “I’m tired of sitting around and doing nothing when people are dying. Knowing better gets people killed. It killed my mother—” I cut myself off with a sharp inhale.

It was so silent you could hear a cricket sneeze.

The vibe of the entire room shifted. Misha rose as if he was going to come to where I was standing, but I took a step back. I didn’t want him to touch me. I didn’t want his sympathy or empathy.

I didn’t want anything other than to do what I was put on this Earth to do. Fight.

Everything about Thierry softened, even his voice. “You didn’t get your mother killed.”

Yeah, that was his opinion and not a fact.

“I know you want to get out there and help,” he continued, “and I know you’re trained and you’re good, but, Trinity...you need to be careful with your vision, especially at night.”

Steel shot down my spine. “I know what my vision is like at night, but it didn’t stop me from kicking some demon ass. It never will.”

All of us in the room knew that was a lie, because eventually my vision would stop me.

It would stop me from doing a lot of things, which kind of canceled out the whole being superspecial thing I had going on.

But that wasn’t going to be today or even tomorrow.

I lifted up my chin as Matthew and Thierry exchanged helpless looks. “At some point, my father is going to summon me, and I doubt that whatever fight he wants me involved in will happen only during the daytime, and even then, my vision still sucks. That’s not going to change. That’s why I train eight hours a day and practice all the time. I should be out there, getting real experience, before I’m summoned.”

Thierry turned away, running his hand over his smooth head. Misha finally decided to speak up. “She didn’t have any problems,” he said, and that was about ninety-nine percent true. I hadn’t seen that one Raver until it was too late. “She did really well.”

I smiled at him, big and bright.

He shot me a look. “And we should probably be getting real-life experience.”

Matthew was watching his husband closely. He sighed as he folded his arms. “It’s a little too late at night to have that discussion.”

While I wanted to have that discussion, I also wanted to have what felt like a way more important one. “Isn’t it superweird that Ravers were out here? That was the first time I’d ever seen one, and wow, they’re really creepy, but I thought they were scavenger demons. Way lower level.”

“They are,” Thierry answered as he looked at Matthew. “They’re not supposed to be topside. They don’t remotely blend in.”

Due to the same cosmic rule that made it impossible to tell humans that demons were real, only demons who could blend in with humans were allowed topside. There were quite a few that, at first glance, looked perfectly human. Giant walking rats totally weren’t one of them.

“And not only that, Ravers are usually a sign of a much bigger problem,” Matthew added. “Where you see Ravers, you almost always find Upper Level demons.”

My heart nearly stopped in my chest. That little tidbit was probably taught in class, but I’d forgotten. I glanced over at Misha, and he looked just as uneasy as I felt.

Upper Level demons were the Big Bads.

Their abilities ran the gamut. Some could sway human minds to do bad, bad things. Others could summon fire and rain down brimstone, change their appearance at the drop of a hat, becoming human one moment and an animal the next. Many of them were biblically old. All of them could take out a Warden.

And if the Ravers being here meant that there was an Upper Level demon nearby, that was a big deal.

I crossed my arms, almost not wanting to ask what I already suspected. “Do you think it’s possible that an Upper Level demon knows about me?”

Thierry hesitated. “Every last one of your kind has been slaughtered, Trinity. If an Upper Level demon knew you were here, those walls would already be breached. Nothing would stop it from getting to you.”

There was a ghost in the driveway.

Again.

Could be worse, I supposed. But the Raver attack was two days ago, and our walls hadn’t been breached by an Upper Level demon hell-bent on devouring me.

Literally.

Even with my crap eyes, I knew the figure pacing in front of the hedges lining the wide driveway was superdead. I knew this mainly because his body kept flickering in and out like poor reception on an old television.

He definitely wasn’t a spirit, and I’d seen enough of the two in my eighteen years to know the difference. The man below in his gold-colored shirt hadn’t crossed over yet.

Spirits were the deceased who had seen the light—and there was almost always a light—had gone to it and then had come back for some reason or another. Usually they had a message or just wanted to check in on their loved ones.

Kneeling on the ledge of the Great Hall, I grasped the rough edge of the roof with one hand and placed my other on the curved shoulder of the stone gargoyle beside me. Heat radiated from the shell, warming my palm. I squinted behind my sunglasses and leaned as far as I could without falling face-first off the roof. The Great Hall was almost as tall as the wall and at least two stories higher than Thierry’s house.

Watching the ghost pace back and forth, obviously confused, I wondered where in the world he’d come from. The community wasn’t exactly easily reachable, nestled in the hills of the mountain and accessed only by back roads—winding, curvy back roads.

Probably a car accident.

Many a tired, unsuspecting traveler had fallen victim to those treacherous roads, with their sharp curves and steep, sudden embankments.

The poor dude had probably lost control and woken up dead before wandering here, like a lot of ghosts did. Last week it was a hiker who’d gotten lost on the mountain and fallen to her death. Two weeks ago it was an overdose—an older man who’d died on one of those back roads, too out of it to realize he was dying and too far away from help even if he had. Last month there’d been a girl, and hers had been the worst death I’d seen in a long time. She’d wandered away from her family during a camping trip and crossed paths with a kind of evil that was all too human.

The weight of that memory, of the girl’s screams for her mother, settled heavily in my chest. Moving her on hadn’t been easy, and there wasn’t a day that went by that I didn’t remember her cries.

Shaking off those memories, I focused on the newest ghostie down below. Car accidents were unexpected and often traumatic, but nothing like murder victims or those who died angry deaths. He wouldn’t be hard to move on.

I hadn’t seen any spirits lately, because I hadn’t been outside the community in over a year. The few times I had managed to sneak off, I hadn’t made it far enough to run across one.

Restlessness crawled over my skin and dug deep. The feeling of being trapped bit and chewed its way to the surface. How long did they plan to keep me here? Forever? Desperation sprang to life and guilt quickly followed.

Thierry and Matthew were still upset with me, and I hated that they were angry, that they didn’t understand why I couldn’t just sit back any longer.

My stomach churned as I turned my gaze to the statue beside me. I was close enough to make out all the details. The smooth layer of stone and the two fierce, thick horns that could puncture the toughest metal. The deadly claws that could tear through cement were currently relaxed. The face, even as frightening as it could be with its flat nose and wide mouth parted by vicious fangs, was at peace. Resting. Asleep.

Misha hadn’t let me out of his sight since the night of the Ravers. I was surprised he hadn’t tried to camp out on my bedroom floor the last two nights.

I’m not trapped.

This was my home and not my prison. Everything that I needed could be found here. I knew exactly how many homes lined the idyllic streets and parks. Besides Thierry’s house, there were one hundred and thirty-six single-family homes and several dozen duplexes and townhomes for those unmated. The walled community was a small city, complete with its own hospital, shopping center, theater, gym and various restaurants and clubs designed to serve every whim or need. Those who were not trained as warriors worked within the community. Everyone had a purpose here.

Except for me.

Mostly everyone here had accepted my mother and me into their clan when we arrived. Thierry protected us—well, protected me. Not my mother. He’d cared for her. He’d welcomed her and treated her like a queen and me like her princess, but he hadn’t been able to protect her.

Protecting her was never a part of the equation.

However, at the end of the day, I wasn’t a Warden, and I...I was running out of time to get out there, to really see the world beyond the mountains of West Virginia and Maryland.

I was eighteen, and no Warden law surpassed the legality that I was, in fact, an adult and could do as I pleased, but leaving wasn’t simple.

Sighing, I pulled my gaze from the resting gargoyle and focused on the road as cool June air lifted the few loose strands of my dark hair, tossing them around my head.

I must look like Medusa.

Squinting didn’t help me see any better, even with the fading sunlight dipping behind Green Mountain, but I saw the ghost stop and turn toward the road. A second later, he fragmented like smoke in the wind, and he didn’t piece back together.

He’d be back, though, that I knew in my bones. They always came back.

My gaze lifted to the road beyond and the thick crush of tall, ancient elms that crowded the paved road. All of it was a blur of colors—greens, whites and blues. Down below, I heard the doors open, and a heartbeat later, I saw the top of Thierry’s dark head as he stepped out onto the driveway.

I really hoped Thierry didn’t look up.

Granted, I wasn’t grounded or anything. Hell, Thierry had never grounded me. Mom, on the other hand, had been a different story. She’d grounded me about every other five seconds.

Nibbling on my thumbnail, I watched Thierry stare at the empty hedge-lined road. Even from where I was perched, I could sense the tension rolling off him, filling the cool mountain air, flowing with the wind.

A moment later, Matthew joined him. He came to stand beside Thierry, placing his hand on the man’s lower back.

“It’s going to be okay,” Matthew said, and I tensed.

Thierry shook his head. “I don’t like it.”

“We don’t have to, but...they requested our help.” Matthew pressed his lips to Thierry’s temple. “It’ll be okay.”

Thierry didn’t respond. They stood in silence then, as if they were waiting for something or someone.

Minutes passed, and I heard them before I saw them. The crunching of tires on gravel warred with the distant call of birds. I knelt and peered around the slumbering Misha as a large, black SUV came down the road and rolled to a stop below.

Curiosity bubbled to life as my eyes widened. The sound of car doors slamming shut was too hard to ignore. Rising just the slightest bit, I looked over the ledge and saw Matthew and Thierry walking forward to greet...

Holy crap on a cracker the size of Texas, we had visitors, and I was completely unaware that we were going to have visitors. If our clan needed to meet with another, one of the Wardens left to carry out said meeting elsewhere. Rarely, if ever, was a meeting held here at the seat. Young Wardens from the Mid-Atlantic region were brought here only once a year, in September, to be trained by the elder Wardens until they reached maturity, and since it was only June, our visitors couldn’t be here with a young Warden.

I squinted, but all I could make out was that there were three male Wardens in addition to Matthew and Thierry. One had longish brown hair, another had shorter brown hair cropped close to the skull and the other was a blond. No females were with them. That wasn’t at all surprising. Female Wardens rarely traveled outside of their home communities or the outposts, because they were often targeted by demons, just as the children were.

Demons were astonishingly clever and logical. They knew that, if they took out those who could produce the next generation of Wardens, they could level a blow near impossible to recover from.

And it was one of the reasons that, collectively, all the classes of demons outnumbered the Wardens by the millions.

I was kind of like a female Warden, caged here for my safety, but for very, very different reasons.

Thierry greeted each of the visitors, shaking their hands, and I wished I could see their faces. The group turned to walk into the Great Hall.

What in the world was going on?

Reaching over, I rapped my knuckles of the stone shell and was immediately rewarded with a low, rumbling growl of annoyance. I giggled. Misha loved his late-afternoon naps in the fading sun. It’s where he always went after training and classes.

“Go to your room,” came the gruff reply from Misha. “Read a book. Watch a movie. Find a hobby.”

I ignored what Misha said, taking a perverse amount of joy in annoying the utter living crap out of him whenever I could.

“There are Wardens here,” I said, the words coming out in an excited rush.

“There are always Wardens here, Trinity.”

I stared at him, brow wrinkled. “These Wardens don’t live here.”

The statue shifted, the stone becoming slightly less hard and turning from dark gray to a quicksilver as the wings unfurled behind me. Reddish brown hair appeared around the horns, the curls blowing in the wind.

Vibrant blue eyes with thin, vertical pupils met mine. Irritation shone in those eyes. Wardens had weird sleeping patterns. Some stayed up all night and slept in the mornings and late afternoons. Misha’s schedule was based on whatever I was doing. “Trinity...”

Dipping under a wing, I took off as Misha rose from his perch, spinning around. “Dammit!” he shouted.

I knew the roof like the back of my hand, not even needing to really see where I was going. I was already on the other side, hopping up on the ledge, when Misha took flight behind me.

“Don’t let them see you!” he yelled as I jumped. “I swear to God, Trinity, I will lock you in your room!”

No, he wouldn’t.

Hitting the small alcove below, I skidded down the rounded roof. The moment my feet hit nothing but air, I twisted onto my stomach. Gripping the edge of the roof, I swung my body inward, through the window I left open when I first joined Misha on the roof.

I landed in the empty, dimly lit hallway and spun around to close the window behind me and then I locked it just in case Misha tried to follow me through. After shoving my sunglasses into the back pocket of my jeans, I took off down the hall, passing several closed doors to guest rooms and apartments that were almost never in use before throwing open the door to the musty-smelling stairwell. I took the steps three and four at a time and reached the first level in ten seconds.

From there, I slowed my steps and kept close to the wall, slipping past a kitchen that was used only when there were banquets and ceremonies. Activity was bustling for the upcoming Accolade, a massive ceremony held to celebrate Wardens becoming full warriors. It involved a lot of eating, a lot of drinking and whole lot of secret squirrel stuff that went down with the newly ordained Wardens.

Beyond the kitchen, I found the room I was looking for, which was a staging area of sorts and filled to the brim with folding tables and stacked chairs. I was careful not to knock into any of them, which required me to walk extraordinarily slowly.

And that took a lot of effort.

I didn’t do slow.

Voices grew louder as I neared the deep maroon curtains that separated the staging area from the Great Hall.

Stopping in front of the curtains, I carefully curled my fingers around the edge of one and tugged it a few inches aside, revealing the wide, cylinder-shaped hall in all its glory as dust spit into the air.

Good Lord, when was the last time anyone touched this curtain?

My gaze immediately lifted to the ceiling even though I couldn’t see the paintings anymore, no matter how brightly lit the hall was. Angels adorned the ceiling, many of which were battle angels—the Alphas. Those were the angels that oversaw the Wardens and often communicated with them, sometimes even in person, though I’d never seen one in real life. Painted in their armor and wielding righteous swords, they were a fearsome sight to look upon.

“How was the trip here?” Thierry was asking as he walked into my line of sight, and I refocused. The visitors stood on the raised dais, waiting. “I hope uneventful?”

Matthew followed Thierry to the center, toward a seat that wasn’t supposed to be called a throne, according to Thierry, but that, with its oversize seat and a back carved out of granite and shaped into a shield, sure looked like a throne to me.

But what did I know?

“Yes,” answered the one standing the closest to the dais. I couldn’t see him quite clearly, but he was the one with the longish brown hair. “The drive was long but it was a beautiful one.”

“It’s been many years since I’ve been to the nation’s capital,” Matthew said, hands clasped behind his back. “I imagine our community is vastly different than what you’re used to.”

Wow.

They were from Washington, DC? The DC clan was a large outpost and their clan leader had died recently, which was right around the time Thierry had begun to act more stressed than normal.

My gaze shifted to the one who’d been speaking. He looked like he was in his late twenties and seemed too young to be a clan leader, but he was the one doing all the talking.

“It is very different,” the male Warden answered with a chuckle. “I don’t think I’ve seen this much open space in years.”

Thierry sat. “Well, we’re glad that you were able to make it here, Nicolai.”

I mouthed his name, sort of liking it.

“Thank you for receiving us,” Nicolai responded. “We were surprised that our request was accepted.”

So was I.

“We don’t approve many requests,” Thierry replied. “But we thought it would be best to meet in person with you and your clan.”

So he was the new clan leader. My gaze shifted to the other Wardens. The one with the shorter dark hair was standing near the blond, who was the closest to me, standing maybe a foot or two from where I stood behind the curtain. I couldn’t see the blond’s face yet, but goodness, he was tall, around six and a half feet, and the black thermal he wore stretched across broad shoulders. His shoulder-length hair was pulled back and secured at the nape of his neck.

“As I’m sure you’re aware, the demon activity around several of the cities has been steadily decreasing over the last three months,” Nicolai said, drawing my attention back to the clan leader. “Before, we spotted maybe two or three Upper Level demons a week. We haven’t seen one in months.”

That sounded like good news to me, especially since one might be sniffing around here.

“Well, that doesn’t sound like a problem,” Thierry commented.

“It doesn’t on the surface, but there’s also been an increase in Fiends and, even more disturbingly, lower level demons that couldn’t blend in with the populace if they tried,” Nicolai continued. “Zayne has come across four hordes of Raver demons this month alone. It’s odd to see so much activity from lower level demons without an Upper Level being behind it.”

My gaze shifted to the blond. Zayne. That must be his name. He turned slightly, and every thought I had scattered like ashes in the wind as I got my first look at him. A tiny, still-functioning part of my brain knew how bad being that distracted by appearance was, but I was... I was stunned.

Stunned straight into stupidity.

I liked to think that I wasn’t someone who could be easily distracted by a gorgeous face, but he was... He was beautiful. And that was saying something, because I was constantly surrounded by gorgeous Wardens who rocked some great DNA when they appeared human.

His skin was golden, like he spent a decent amount of time in the sun. He had a strong jaw that looked as if it were carved from stone, and those lips... How could they look so soft and so hard at the same time? And wasn’t that a weird thing to notice, but I so noticed, which probably meant I was veering into creepy territory. High, angular cheekbones matched a straight, proud nose. I was too far away to see his eyes, but I assumed they were like all the other Wardens. The deepest, brightest blue possible.

From where I was standing, this Warden looked like he was only a few years older than me, and he reminded me of the many painted angels that covered the ceiling of the Great Hall—paintings I could no longer see in detail.

“Whoa,” I whispered, my eyes going so wide that I probably looked like a squeezed bug.

He stiffened, and I held my breath, fearing he’d heard me. When he didn’t look to his left, to where I stood, my shoulders relaxed a little.

“Something has the Upper Level demons afraid enough that they’ve all gone into hiding.” Nicolai was speaking again. “And that something is killing us—killing Wardens.”