Deep in a pitch-black forest, a woman sobbed.

It had been quiet, at first, almost impossible to hear even with their enhanced senses, but Lottie had followed it to the small cave before us. Steam rolled from within, like smoke from a dragon’s mouth, churning in the misty air of an early morning in the hours before dawn.

The musk of imminent death oozed from the cave. It was an unmistakable scent, one only angels could detect, and it filled Mori’s head like a fog. She staggered as it hit her, stronger than anything she’d felt before, and she leaned against a nearby oak to regain her balance.

Up ahead, Tia cast a wary glance backward.

“I’ll catch up.” Mori silently motioned for the others to go on without her, more out of habit than anything else. After all, she didn’t want to be the one that slowed them down.

“Is it her?” Cricket asked from his perch on Mori’s shoulder. “You smell death. I can tell. It must be bad.”

“It is,” she said under her breath. She pushed off the tree and followed her sisters into the cave. “I’ve never felt a wave of death magic like that before.”

“Is that a good sign?” he asked. “Or a bad one?”

She didn’t answer, mostly because she had no idea.

Almost instantly, the steam choked out the light. It clung to her skin like dew on a flower, burrowing into her pores, and she tried to ignore the lingering sensation of something heavy clawing its way into her body.

There was something about this mist—something dangerous that she didn’t understand.

Something truly deadly, and something she would have avoided in any other circumstance.

Lottie dissolved into the fog up ahead, and Tia followed suit. Mori matched their pace as she closed the distance between them, but she only caught glances of them on occasion. Every time she got close, the thick mist always swallowed them again.

With each step, the sobbing grew louder.

After a time, the fog ahead of them glowed brilliantly orange. It ebbed and flowed, never consistent in its power for more than a few seconds, and her sisters’ silhouettes appeared each time its light surged.

Ava.

With a frenzied rush of relief, Mori bolted ahead of the others. As she neared the light, the fog cleared almost instantly to reveal a woman curled around herself on the uneven ground. Sweat and steam soaked her hair and covered her skin in a bloodstained sheen.

Arrows stuck from the wounded angel's arms and back. Long tears in her tunic exposed the deep cuts in her torso and thighs from what could only have come from enchanted steel—enough to wound an angel, yes, but not to kill them.

Blood as glimmering and beautiful as a starlit sky streamed from the dozen or so wounds that were visible, and the dark blue puddle under the angel’s body suggested that there were many more hidden beneath her tattered clothes.

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Ava sobbed into the stone beneath her, with tears of fire that burned along her face and left hardened embers on the rock they touched.

A shiver of dark blue light rippled across her skin. Starlight glittered within it, as vibrant and beautiful as the night sky. She grimaced with pain as her body cloaked itself, gritting her teeth to ride out the attempted shift, and the cloak eventually faded.

“Ava,” Mori said gently as she knelt beside her. “Ava, it’s us. We’re here to help.”

“Mori?” Ava’s voice cracked, and her body went eerily still.

For a moment, the wounded angel didn’t move. Mori set her hand on her long-lost sister’s shoulder, careful to avoid one of the arrows sticking from her arm. Ava’s battered and bloody head slowly rose. Though her eyes burned red with her fiery tears, she smiled weakly up at the others.

“Thank the Divine Mother,” she whispered under her breath. “Mori, kill me. Kill me, please.”

Mori flinched at her request, and for a second, she could only stare down at her in shock.

“Please.” With a bloody hand coated in a thick layer of gore, she grabbed Mori’s collar and pulled her close. Despite her wounds, her strength rivaled the others, and Mori wasn’t able to resist the powerful tug. Ava held her there, an inch from her face, and looked her in the eye. “Mori, please.”

Mori set her hand on Ava’s wrist. Her sister’s skin simmered with the unrestrained heat boiling in her veins, so hot that it burned Mori’s palm.

Intent to stay as calm as possible, Mori tried to ignore the pain as she offered her whatever comfort she could. “We can help you. We’re here to—”

“You can’t,” she interrupted.

Mori swallowed hard, still mortified at what her sister was asking her to do. “You’re stronger than the bloodlust, Ava. Stay with me. You can do this.”

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“This is bad.” Tia knelt beside them and gently ran her fingers along one of the deep gouges in Ava’s side. “Her body is trying to heal, but the cloak keeps ripping open the wounds before her magic can work. She’s bleeding out.”

“Tia?” Ava’s burning red eyes scanned the cave, and she blinked rapidly, as if nothing would stay in focus long enough for her to understand what was happening. “Tia, they trapped me. I had no idea how many of them were coming. They tricked me by slaughtering animals, so I couldn’t sense my own looming death. Tia… Tia they…”

“Hush, little sister,” Tia said gently. She ran a tender hand over their sister’s bloodstained hair, and Ava closed her eyes to savor the sensation.

“I’m sorry,” Ava said quietly. “There were too many. I wasn’t strong enough.”

“None of that,” Tia gently chided. “You’ve always been the strongest of us. You did everything you could.”

Lottie sat on the bloodstained ground and set her hand on Ava’s thigh. “Honey, where’s your familiar?”

Ava’s eyes pinched shut, and she choked on a painful sob. “He’s dead.”

On instinct, Mori drove her fingertips into Cricket’s fur. His tiny claws dug into her shoulder as they held tightly to each other, and he leaned his fuzzy head against her ear.

“That shouldn’t be possible,” she whispered. Her gaze darted toward Tia, who let out a slow breath and glared down at the floor.

“That’s why she can’t shift back,” Tia said quietly. “She’s trapped. An angel can only survive without her familiar when she’s cloaked.”

“Just end this.” Ava’s voice cracked, weakening by the second, and her hand curled into a tight fist as she braced herself. “I want to go out as me. Not her.”

“Who?” she asked.

“Aurora.” Ava’s haunting whisper filled the cave, and she stared dead ahead of her as though she’d seen a ghost.

“But that’s your name, Ava.” she looked at Tia in utter confusion. “What—”

“I don’t know, Mori,” Tia interrupted.

“Aurora,” their sister said again. “Aurora, daughter of the goddess Keres, she who burns with rage. With hatred. With hellfire. The other person I become when my cloak takes me too far. When I lose control. Aurora will not show you mercy, as I would. She will destroy you all.”

Oh.

Oh, shit.