Mother? Father? Kat could hardly believe her ears. What she believed, however, were her eyes. The family resemblance was littered all over Calix and the elderly couple.For a long while, no one spoke. Even the brothers in the corner. The silence in the room got so awkward that Kat felt like laughing hysterically just to break the tension. She didn't do that, though. She couldn't even move, especially when Calix's father found her with his cold gaze."I did not expect this too, Calix," he said, and Kat got the feeling that she was the one he wasn't expecting. "To be frank, I did not expect to see you back here so soon."Calix straightened up from his bow, and so did Thisbe. He faced his father squarely. "Me neither, nor did I want to go back, but I have to help someone important to me."He put a hand on the small of Kat's back, which made her even more hesitant to move.Was this supposed to be the 'meet the family' part of their dating life? If so, then they would fall under rank one of

Being in the Underworld had been nothing but bad, but at least Kat got to see the cute dogs.Okay, there were not really dogs. They were called shadow wolves. Their furs were purely black, as dark as . . . well, as shadows. Also, they were only cute because they behaved well and rather intelligently, not because they looked like normal dogs. For starters, they were the size of a small bus, with fanged mouths that could swallow an adult. They also had three eyes, one positioned at the forehead and all of them glowing red like a stop sign."Do not pet it," Amicus warned sternly as his shadow wolf named Nyx, sniffed her hand. "You do not want her to lick you

"Demons," Amicus muttered, reining in Nyx as she continued to howl and fidget in her leash.Apart from the wolf and Amicus, everyone else was frozen, even the Demons. They looked at the four with their unblinking human-like eyes, standing in their path like they were meant to stay there all along.And perhaps they were. It was most probable that they had been assigned to guard the paths leading to Sygnus. They were just obstacles to be dealt with, but that didn't make their presence any less bothersome, especially for Kat, who had never seen these creatures before.But that wasn't entirely true, wasn't it? She had seen Demons before. Or at least a part of them. She'd seen their hands taking the souls at the gates for evil mortals. She'd heard them make noises, felt their presence at the other side every time she and Calix went to such missions.However, nothing could have prepared her for the sheer physical and emotional torture that they brought upon her.Kat knew perfectly that the f

"NO!" Kat's voice echoed in the vast field, raw and brimming with rage. "NO!"She lost Gregor all over again, only this time, it happened right before her eyes. It was another death, a different level that spared nothing. No remains. No memory. Nothing. And he didn't deserve that. He didn't deserve anything that he'd suffered through. He'd only been caught in between the choices of the woman he'd chosen to be his wife and the tainted child they had who shouldn't have existed in the first place.Kat staggered forward, tears flooding her eyes and flowing down her dust-speckled cheeks. The emotional blow itself was enough to make her want to sink into her knees, but she ended up lunging towards Aldonra.She knew she was going to get destroyed in the process, but she didn't care. Her anger was the only thing that mattered. Broken. Everything inside her was broken and burned and now she had to release the embers. She tried to shoot a line of flames at Aldonra, but her shaking hand and her m

"Kat!" Calix's face sharpened in Kat's blurring vision. "Kat, stay with me.""I'm not going anywhere," she assured him, surprised that her vocal cords even worked. Her throat was parched; she couldn't even swallow. "Not going. Not leaving."The battle had long been settled. It seemed that the moment Aldonra vanished, her hold on the corpses had gotten lifted too. All of them were laying on the battlefield again, more damaged than before. They took many of the allies with them, though, and that made Kat wish she had done this sooner. "Amicus!" Calix was yelling. "Amicus, help!"Footsteps rumbled around Kat. Around her, people started to gather. She could see Thisbe's horrified and concerned face, an expression that mirrored Byron's. Lady Gethen and Lord Odion stood next to their son, both of them looking devastated. Amicus loomed into view, taking out his assortment of medicine with trembling hands. The confidence he had on his face when he'd attende