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"We held it. Barely." Camael's gaze swept the hall, landed on the half-finished door frame, then settled on Sarah as if she was a problem he hadn't finished solving. "Lucifer pulled every demon back the second the sun cleared the water. He either thinks he won something. Or he’s done committing to fights he can't win outright anymore."

"He believes he’s scared me. That’s why he sent the invitation." The words came out of Sarah before she'd fully thought them through. "And he's rationing his power. He knows he can't win outright. He's stretching us thin instead, betting I snap before he does."

"That's my read too." Camael's mouth twisted, something almost approving moving through the exhaustion carved into his face. "Which means whatever answer you're planning to give him, Scribe, he's counting on getting it soon. Sooner than any of us are ready for, I'd wager."

Sarah felt the mark on her palm pulsing. She looked down at it without meaning to. For one unsteady second, the black lines seemed to ripple beneath her skin. It was a reminder that whatever slept inside her hadn't fully agreed to take orders from her yet.

"Then I guess I'm done pretending I can do this without leaning on somebody." Sarah reached over without looking and found Abraxos's hand, lacing her fingers through his like she'd been doing it for years instead of days. "Doesn't mean you get to cage me over it, Sparky. Just means things finally worked out in your favor." His fingers tightened around hers, and for once, he didn't argue with her.

CHAPTER 12

IZZY

A small and steady buzz had Izzy swiveling around. The instincts wired into her from years of training and fighting were impossible to ignore. She needed to know what was going on and if a fight was imminent. And her vampire hearing had never once done her the favor of letting anything slip past unnoticed.

Camael's soot-streaked hand was still on Abraxos's shoulder as he physically marched the warrior angel toward the med bay. They never made it because Camael’s phone buzzed against his hip. He yanked it free without breaking his stride.

"Ayil, talk to me," he ordered as he put the call on speaker and held the phone out between himself and Abraxos. He was a smart angel and knew this conversation might need more than one set of ears.

"Tell Jace to quit holding out on me," Ayil's voice crackled through the speaker. It was tinged with pain but still carried enough attitude to fill the hall. "The male's standing right there with the power to fix me in about ten seconds flat, and instead I'm getting rationed painkillers like we're running low on morphine in some Civil War tent. I need the good drugs, Camael, or I need Jace to stop being stingy with the cure."

Abraxos leaned in toward the phone before Camael could get a word out, some of the tension easing out of his own shoulders now that he had actual proof of life. "Quit whining, you baby. Jace will get to you when he has the chance. You’re not the only one hurt," he told his brother. His tone was dry and earned a tinny, pain-laced laugh from his brother. It was followed by something that made Abraxos's mouth twitch despite the night they'd all just had.

Camael ended the call then and pocketed his phone. He looked at Sarah and at the mark still catching lamplight on her palm. Something behind his eyes did a quick, brutal calculation that Izzy recognized because she'd watched her father do the same thing a hundred times. He was answering the question of, ‘Who needs me more right now?’

"Abraxos, you've got the house." Camael's wings snapped out behind him. They were black and heavy with the promise of more fighting before the sun fully committed to rising. "Izzy, Donovan, I want to know everything that happened tonight, start to finish, the second I'm back. I'll be at the port till Araton's wing is set and Ayil is healed." His gaze swept the hall once more, landing hard on Sarah. "And nobody so much as steps off this property without clearing it through me first. That includes you, Scribe."

"Wasn't planning on it," Sarah promised, her thumb moving over her palm, as if she were rubbing at a bruise that refused to fade.

"Keep it that way." Camael's gaze cut to Abraxos one last time, and something passed between the two of them that didn't need words. It was the language males who'd bled next to each other long enough to skip the small talk. "Don't make me regret leaving my second-best fighter parked behind a bookshop counter two nights running."

"Second-best? Try the best," Abraxos corrected, out of pure reflex. Izzy caught the ghost of something almost fond cross Camael's face.

Camael was gone a breath later. Izzy watched him go and felt the power in the house rearrange itself around his absence. That was how command worked in the Dark Warrior Alliance that her father had helped create centuries before. One of the faction leaders stepped up to be the one making the hard calls and leading the fight should shit go sideways.

"Let's head back to the war room," Izzy told Donovan, already turning to head back the way they'd come, because standing around in a hallway that smelled like scorched parchment and dead demon wasn't doing anyone's nerves any favors. She didn't wait to see if he'd follow, mostly because she already knew he would, ribs be damned. "We need to go over the accounting Camael asked for, whether your ribs like it or not."

Donovan smirked as he fell into step beside her, moving with the careful economy of a man doing the math on every breath before he took it. "And here I thought you had other ideas for tonight," he drawled, low enough that it was clearly meant for her ears alone. "You should know after Khoth, I'll always follow you into rooms."

"Yeah, well, maybe try following me into fewer rooms that end with you in prison or leaking on the floor." Izzy shot him a look over her shoulder, equal parts fond and exasperated. It was the look she reserved for him because he'd apparently decided bleeding for her on a regular basis counted as a personality trait. "But you know I have a hard head, Hero. You'd think that lesson would've sunk in by now." She shouldered the war room door open without waiting for his answer.

"You’d think," he replied as Izzy dropped into a chair and reached for the tablet, not bothering to hide the small shake of her head.

"Some lessons just don't take," she told him with a wink.

"And some students are slow," Donovan teased as he lowered himself into the chair across from her. "Give me two minutes before you start interrogating me. I need my organs to settle back into their assigned seats."

"You've got ninety seconds. I'm generous, not patient." She dragged the corkboard closer and pulled the invitation toward her before he could stop her. It was close enough now to notice something she'd missed on the porch with demons still smoking on the lawn. The burn along the parchment's edge wasn't random scorching. It created a shape as if whoever had held the flame to it had known exactly how far to let it eat before pulling back.

"Look at this. The burns are intentional," she said, turning it toward Donovan. "Look at the edge. He created a border."

Donovan leaned in and frowned as he stared at the invitation. "A border around what?"

"That's what I'm trying to figure out." Izzy pulled her phone out of her jacket and thumbed through the photos until she found the one she wanted. It was a shot she'd snapped of one of the Codex's pages back at Sarah's shop before she’d become the Guardian and Scribe. The actual book was still sitting on its pedestal several blocks away. It was warded into the studs and going nowhere, which meant a handful of photos on her phone were the closest thing to it any of them had in this house.

She laid the phone down next to the parchment and pointed it out. "Tell me that's a coincidence."

Donovan leaned in and tilted the screen so the lamplight caught it properly. The photo showed the page Sarah had shown them of the underground complex, etched in black stone and silver sigil work. There were fifty levels of it going down into the earth like a wedding cake built by something with no sense of proportion. Steel reinforcement ran through stonework old enough to predate modern building techniques.