Yet between the cracks in his armor, something else stirs. Dairon doesn’t just watch her: he studies her as if trying to remember something lost. And Saeris, who’s lived alone, wounded, broken, begins to feel Dairon’s presence like something that consumes and calms her at once.

An attack on the Fae stronghold shifts the balance. Creatures from the Void breach through an unstable portal. Saeris faces them with a power that frightens even her allies. No one had summoned fire with iron in centuries. No one except the Lost Alchemists.

That night, the Fae Council summons her. They want answers. But Saeris has none… yet. Only questions. Who was her father? Why did her mother teach her to hide her gifts? What does the symbol mean that appears under her skin each time she uses the gauntlet?

Dairon takes her to a temple buried deep in the mountains. There, in the dark, he reveals part of the truth: Ajun was a door sealed by alchemist blood and Fae magic centuries ago to contain something even the gods feared to name. And she, with her hybrid blood, is the living key.

—Why are you telling me this? —asks Saeris, voice cracking.

—Because if you don’t do it, I will. And you won’t survive to see what you’ve unleashed.