Daivad caught her scent just in time.

He was one furious heartbeat away from vaulting an overturned stall and following the kid straight into a mob of city guards, Z Vigore, and Ubika himself—but a wave of her scent came crashing through the smokey night air. It had that same earthy, bottomless smell to it, just like that night in the forest. The moment she pointed her finger at Lenna. The scent of Darkness.

Daivad dropped to his knees behind the stall, cobblestones and spilled trinkets wrecking his kneecaps as he skidded to a stop out of sight. One more heartbeat and he glanced over the top of the stall to see her—in a soft blue dress, her braided hair pale and shimmering in the firelight. On Ubika’s back with one of her knives to his throat.

She never ceased to baffle him.

Daivad tried to take everything in, to understand what was happening as Z pulled Nyxabella off Ubika, then the kid ran in shouting, but before Daivad could get a grasp on things—she looked at him. Pinned him.

It was just like in Ike’s Tavern; she shouldn’t have been able to tell he was there, and yet he felt her eyes on him, like she was just inches away. Her scent, different now, washed over him—all of that earthy Chaos was gone, replaced by something warm and wavering. He could swear he heard her breath catch, her pink lips pop apart. New emotion-scents bubbled up from her, all in a mess, so tightly knit he couldn’t pull one apart from the others, and he didn’t get any time to untangle.

“I’ll take the giant over him.” The kid was scrambling back, but—

“Well, well. I’m far from surprised to find my favorite street mutt in the middle of this chaos.”

The golden armor, the enormous scarlet plume on their helmet and matching scarlet chlamys around their shoulder plates, and the arrogant tone all denoted this person as the Head of Luvatha’s City Guard. “Aelia Pait, you are under arrest.”

“For what?” Pait spat, trying to jerk free of their grasp. “Arrest him!”

The kid pointed at Ubika, who had narrowed his black eyes at the golden guard, assessing. He seemed unimpressed with what he saw, because he turned his attention instead toward Nyxabella, which made Jac, and Daivad, tense.

Nyxabella, however, was still staring in Daivad’s direction, her palm rubbing soothing circles over the freckled skin of her chest.

“Him too.” The Head of the Guard’s voice was obnoxious, grating as they pointed at Ubika. “Move in!”

But no one moved.

Ubika didn’t seem to have heard them, or just wasn’t concerned with what he’d heard. His eyes searched Nyxabella’s soft face and followed her gaze…

Daivad crouched lower. He was downwind, and Ubika didn’t know Daivad’s scent (yet), but Z did. If the wind shifted, this was all over. The queen, and even Z, were too smart to dismiss Daivad’s presence here, now, as just a coincidence, so they could not know. It could fall on Nyxabella. He needed to get out of here.

“…be taking Ubika with me, Commander Johnson,” Z was saying, but she seemed as reluctant as everyone else to approach the Selachian, whose glittering eyes were searching the shadows around Daivad.

“Of course, Lord Vigore,” Johnson said. “This prize,” they held up the kid’s elbow in their gauntleted hand, “is plenty for me. This is one strike too many, Aelia Pait.”

Daivad didn’t like the sound of that. He didn’t know Luvatha’s laws specifically, but too many offenses could be grounds for a marking. For banishment to the work camps. Surely this prick wouldn’t damn a kid…

“What strike? I did nothing!”

Ubika, his nostrils flaring, purred something to Nyxabella in the language of monsters. It was curious, eager. Daivad didn’t move.

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Nyxabella’s face crumpled for just a moment—but then she’d corrected it, put on an empty, dismissive countenance and let the hand on her chest fall away. Her response, also in Xo, was short and hard. A heavy stone dropped in Daivad’s belly.

“I did nothing!” the kid repeated. “Nothing but run from some giant asshole.”

“You should know well,” Johnson said, “that people tend to chase when you steal from them.”

“Search me!” Pait shouted. “I’ve got nothing worth stealing!”

“Believe these words: I will—”

But suddenly that golden gauntlet was empty, and the Head Guard stood there blinking in confusion. Pait had slipped the guard’s grasp—but the problem was, she was surrounded. She ducked and dodged, and the guards clamored, trying to catch her, and in the confusion Daivad lost sight of Z and Ubika.

This was his chance to slip away. But…

“Let me free!” the kid shouted. “I did nothing!”

She was a kid.

Pain shot through Daivad’s foot and he looked down—a bramble with enormous barbs had burst through the cobblestone out of nowhere, curled around his boot, and stabbed through the leather side. Apparently Ben thought this was Daivad’s chance to move too.

And it was. But which way?

Daivad’s presence could damn Nyxabella. He couldn’t be seen. He would have to trust that she or Jac or even Z wouldn’t let that kid get marked. So, though it made his skin burn, his hands curl into claws, and a furious growl bubble in his chest, he had to turn his back—

A face popped over the top of the stall, not two feet from Daivad’s own, making him reel back in shock.

“Hi there.”

An obscene grin warped the whole face and dozens of jagged teeth peeked through pale, grayish, stretched lips. Black eyes reflected no firelight, nothing.

Ubika’s nostrils flared as he drew in a breath, then purred, “Your blood smells strong.”

“Ubika!” Z was calling.

Shit.

Ubika’s words warped as his jaw cracked, and his skull reshaped. Impossibly, his grin widened. “But,” he slurred, “it’ll smell even better when it’s black.”

“Ubi—!”

The Selachian lunged, teeth first.

On instinct more than anything, Daivad threw one magic-wrapped forearm up to catch Ubika’s jagged teeth. Though the magic kept his bone from snapping into pieces when Ubika clamped down, it didn’t keep the saw-blade teeth from tearing into his skin, spraying blood. Daivad lashed out immediately with a full set of claws straight to Ubika’s neck, and the Selachian had to release him and roll aside. Still grinning.

Ubika didn’t give Daivad time to think—to do more than glance at Z, looking very un-Z-like in soft features and plain clothing, as she goggled at him and said, “Daivad?”—before Daivad had to dodge to the side to avoid Ubika’s next lunge. The asshole hadn’t even bothered to finish shifting—his bones were still cracking and his skin still warping, fins slicing through the flesh on the backs of his arms, as he crouched and then dove.

A whip lashed out just in time to catch Ubika around his bulging neck—not a whip, a vine. It yanked Ubika to the side, hard, sending his body of all sharp, gray edges into the stall that had been Daivad’s hiding spot, spraying shards of wood. Ubika had slashed through the vine with one of his fins in half a second, but half a second was all Daivad needed to sink his magic deep into the cobblestone street and the earth below.

Daivad swept one leg in a half-circle before him, letting his magic surge out in a wave—and when he stood, the cobblestone street rose with him. The air was filled with a headache-inducing clanging as the guards had their footing pulled out from under them. They knocked noisily against the floating stones on their way to crash finally into the dirt.

But Ubika managed to not only stay vertical, he actually wove in between the stones to continue his charge on Daivad. Daivad swung, punched, kicked the air, with each strike sending stones flying at Ubika so the Selachian had to throw up his arms, using his fin-blades to block them.

Daivad glanced around, looking for her, but all he saw were bewildered, overturned guards and Z Vigore scrambling to her feet. He shoved aside his disappointment—it was good. If she, Jac, and the kid were out of the way, he didn’t have to hold back.

Z finally straightened and pointed at him, shouting, “This man is named Traitor to the Queendom of Lushale! Kill him!”

“Wanna play projectiles?” Ubika asked, ignoring Z completely. “I can do that!”

He swung a punch of his own, and the fin-blades on his arms shot forward, slashing through the air. Daivad quickly knocked them aside with a few of his stones—but that only redirected them. A moment later, they were arcing right back toward him.