This Lethal Love Excerpt by Candlewick / Holiday House / Peachtree

Praise for This Fatal Kiss

Book one of the Spirits and Saints duology

' “A delightfully queer polyamorous romance teeming with splashes of ethereal magic.”

PublishersWeekly, Starred Review ly,

“Engaging and immersive—a delight from start to ﬁnish.”

—KirkusReviews

“This beautiful Slavic reimagining of ‘The Little Mermaid’ will appeal to fans of fairy-tale retellings and queer romantasy adventures.”

—SchoolLibraryJournal

“This polyamorous romantasy successfully juggles themes of identity, family, and queerness, all while building a crisp, clear, beautiful world where readers will want to linger with these characters.”

—Booklist

“A found family of other rusałka with diverse sexualities and gender identities, their irascible (but hot) immortal water goblin ‘grandfather,’ and the small town setting with its witchy cottagecore aesthetic make this an appealing destination for fans of Jasinska’s The Dark Tide as well as readers in search of a cozy, ﬂirty, folklore-inﬂected good time.”

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This Lethal Love

For the readers who asked for another story about Gisela, Kazik, and Aleksey.

I hope you enjoy it.

—A. J.

Published by Peachtree Teen

An imprint of PEACHTREE PUBLISHING COMPANY INC.

1700 Chattahoochee Avenue

Atlanta, Georgia 30318-2112

PeachtreeBooks.com

Text copyright © 2027 by Alicia Jasinska Jacket and case illustrations by Zarin Baksh Jacket and case illustrations copyright © 2027 by Peachtree Publishing Company Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, transmitted, or stored in an information retrieval system in any form or by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, taping, and recording, without prior written permission from the publisher. Additionally, no part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner for the purpose of training artiﬁcial intelligence technologies or systems, nor for text and data mining. Printed and bound in September 2026 at RRD, Dongguan, China.

Edited by Jonah Heller

Book design by Lily Steele

PeachtreeBooks.com

First Edition

1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

ISBN: 978-1-6826-3869-9 (hardcover)

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available

EU Authorized Representative: HackettFlynn Ltd, 36 Cloch Choirneal, Balrothery, Co. Dublin, K32 C942, Ireland. EU@walkerpublishinggroup.com

This Lethal Love Alicia Jasinska

Spirits and Saints

Pronunciation Guide

Characters

Aleksey – ah-LEHK-see

Babcia – bahp-CHAH

Gisela – gee-ZEH-lah

Kazik – KAH-zheek – KAH

Wojciech – VOY-chyeh

Places

Leśna Woda – LESH-nah VOHD-ah

Spirits

bannik / banniki (bathhouse spirit) – BAHN-neek / BAHN-neek-kee

bies / biesy (forest demon) – BEE-es / BEE-esey

błotnik / błotniki (swamp devil) – BWOT-neek / BWOT-neek-kee

czart / czarty (devil) – CHART / CHART-ey

domowik / domowiki (house spirit) – doh-MOH-veek / doh-MOH-vee-kee ki

kikimora / kikimory (female house spirit) – kee-KEE-more-ah / kee-KEE-more-ee

latawiec / latawce (air demon) – lah-TAH-vyets / lah-TAHV-tse

leszy (forest spirit) – LEH-shee

ognik / ogniki (ﬁre spirits) – OG-neek / OG-nee-kee

rusałka/ rusałki (water nymph) – roo-SOW-ka / roo-SOW-kee

skrzat / skrzaty (gnome) – SKSHAT / SKSHA-tey

Strzyga / Strzygi (vampiric demon) – STREE-GAH / STREE-GEE

utopiec / utopce (drowner) – oo-TOH-pyets / oo-TOHP-tse

wiła / wiły (sky nymph) – VEE-wah / VEE-wee

wilkołak (werewolf) – Vil-KOH-wack łak (wer

wodnik / wodniki (water goblin) – VOHD-neek / VOHD-nee-kee

the mortal girl

“Aleksey, wait!”

Gisela sprinted faster, pine needles and sharp stones cutting into the soles of her feet. She ignored the pain, the night air scraping her throat raw with each ragged inhale. Up ahead, a golden-haired ﬁgure danced in and out of sight among the trees. There, then gone.

“Wait—” Her foot slid on a patch of moss. She stumbled, barely keeping her balance.

Aleksey paused, glancing back brieﬂy over one broad shoulder. Then he was moving again, vanishing into a well of shadow between two towering ﬁrs.

Gisela ran after him, her muscles burning. There was something eerily familiar about this. She had the sense of playing out a scene she’d already lived. She’d run like this before—run like her life depended on it, as if a ravenous beast were snarling and snapping at her heels—while heavy footfalls crashed close behind her. Only now . . .

Only now, she was the one giving chase.

She was the hunter, not the hunted.

“Aleksey!” His name left her lips like a curse.

Some piece of her knew she wouldn’t catch up. The forest parted to form a path for him, the trees shifting to make way, then closing ranks against her. Overhead, moonlight struggled to pierce through the dense canopy of branches. The shadows deepened. Even the leaves themselves seemed to whisper at her to turn back.

Stubbornly, Gisela plunged on into darkness.

A wind rushed around her in a rush of bloodstained petals. Her long black hair tangled across her face. For a second, she couldn’t see anything. Dead wood snapped beneath her heel as she came to a breathless stop on the edge of an all-too-familiar clearing. Several paces away in the center of the grass, Aleksey had fallen to his knees.

Before him rose a creature from a nightmare.

A towering boar-like beast with glowing amber eyes and the great branching antlers of a stag. A bies. One of the wild forest demons Gisela’s great-aunt had warned her about as a child.

Racing to Aleksey’s side, she tried to drag him to his feet, but he yanked her down to his level, cradling her face between his hands, pulling her almost close enough to kiss.

“What’s wrong, Gisela?” he crooned. “You look afraid.” His grip tightened—his nails digging into her cheeks. His ﬁngers were tipped with earth-stained claws. His eyes were luminous, the left sky-blue, the right green as spring leaves. When he grinned, his teeth were bloodied thorns. “Didn’t you promise not to recoil when I showed you my true face?”

Gisela stared in horror as more thorns erupted from his skin. A shudder ran through his frame, bunching his shoulders and arching his spine. The tendons in his neck stood out. His ﬂesh rippled, his body contorting into something monstrous. A shriek ripped from Gisela’s lips as a sharp pain tore through her gut and— She woke with a gasp, as if coming up for air.

A balmy breeze wafted through Kazik’s bedroom window, ﬂuttering the lacy curtains and carrying in the earthy aroma of summer: sun-warmed grass and the ﬂowers in the garden. Buttery morning light spilled over the bedsheets. Somewhere outside, two birds sang sweetly to each other.

Another nightmare. Not even the worst she’d had of late. The worst were the times when she dreamed that somebody else was wearing her face. Smiling her smile. Speaking with her voice.

Gisela shuddered. Her heart beat rabbit-fast, but there was something half-comforting about the sensation; there was a time when she’d feared her heart would never beat again. She stared unseeingly at the slanted wooden ceiling. Visions of the forest continued to haunt her mind. She clenched her ﬁsts and dug her nails into her palms, latching onto the pain to anchor herself in the here and now.

A similar sharp pain pricked at her stomach.

Glancing down, Gisela glared at the tubby orange cat kneading his paws against her belly, his sharp little claws kniﬁng through the thin fabric of her nightgown.

Domek’s voice—deep and grandfatherly—spoke inside her head. You were having a nightmare.

“And you couldn’t think of some other way to wake me?”

Gisela scratched the underside of the domowik’s whiskery chin. The house spirit’s glowing ember-red eyes slid closed in bliss.

You’ve been plagued by bad dreams ever since you became human. His words had an unmistakable tang of disapproval. Domek would’ve preferred for her to remain a spirit, like himself.

“If I remained a water nymph,” Gisela said, “I’d be trapped here. I wouldn’t be able to leave or return to my human family. They would never know what happened to me.”

They would never know that Gisela had drowned in Leśna Woda’s river or that she’d been reborn as a rusałka. They would never know she’d spent the past year living in a strange and wondrous world full of spirits and demons, desperately trying to ﬁnd her way back to them.

Water nymphs were cursed to haunt the waters in which they’d met their tragic ends. When Gisela had strayed too far from the river, she’d felt the tether that bound her there like the yank of a chain dragging her back. Fighting the sensation was futile unless she wished to face the repercussions—her skin parching and cracking, her body shriveling like a leaf and withering away to bone and dust.

Now, though, thanks to a magical kiss from a certain grumpy exorcist, Gisela was mortal once more and free to come and go as she pleased. She had the choice to stay or return to the island where she’d been born, where the sea was dark as the blackest of inks and the air always smelled of salt. She could

see her father and her little brother, Hugo, again, whom she’d missed so ﬁercely.

So, you’re leaving then?

Domek sounded anxious. He’d been abandoned by his human family when the younger generation stopped believing in spirits; when they moved away, they had left him behind.

“Not forever,” Gisela reassured him, stroking a hand down his back. “And I’m not leaving just yet.” She did feel guilty for not rushing home immediately now that she could—and a little angry at herself for feeling that way—but there was one last loose end she had to take care of ﬁrst. “I have unﬁnished business here. A score to settle.” Her mind drifted back to the memory of the forest clearing, and Aleksey.

The boy she’d thought would help her become human. The boy she’d spent the summer trying to kiss. The boy she was deathly afraid was possessed by a bies—a wicked and bloodthirsty forest demon.

She didn’t want to believe it. A part of her refused to.

How could the sweet and gentle boy she’d fallen for be one of the monsters who’d had a hand in her death?

She hadn’t confronted him yet, nor even seen him since she’d regained her humanity and all the memories of how she died. After Kazik kissed her, she’d spent three days unconscious, and since awakening, she’d been busy gathering her thoughts and readjusting to mortal life. Kazik had told her Aleksey had stopped by the house while she was asleep to ask how she was. . . . Gisela still wasn’t sure what to make of that.

He couldn’t truly be worried for her. It had to be part of his act. Did he suspect she knew his secret? And if so, what did he plan to do about it?

Gisela bit the inside of her cheek almost hard enough to draw blood. She’d barely survived her last face-to-face encounter with a bies. Together with her sister water nymphs, she’d fought tooth and nail to defeat the demon and seal it away. The girls had risked everything to defend her. She couldn’t repay them by dragging them into even more danger.

No, this was a battle she had to ﬁght on her own. She couldn’t even bring herself to tell Kazik; every time she tried, the words caught in her throat. She knew she had to tell him, eventually. The guilt of keeping it from him ate at her. She didn’t want to keep secrets from him. But if he learned the boy they’d given their hearts to and the demon he blamed for his grandmother’s death were one and the same . . . it would break him.

The breeze wafting through the half-open window blew a strand of hair across Gisela’s face. She batted it aside. “Why does everything always have to be so di cult, Grandfather? Why can’t life ever be easy?”

Domek ﬂopped oﬀ her stomach, stretching out long on the lavender-scented sheets.

“Must be nice living as a plump and pampered house cat,” Gisela said enviously.

Domek let out a deep, throaty rumble of agreement.

Gisela brushed a spot of soot from his fur. Another thought struck her. Domek must’ve known what Aleksey was all along. House spirits had extra keen senses. They could recognize other

creatures on sight. Come to think of it, when they’d ﬁrst caught Domek causing trouble in one of the spa town’s fancy guesthouses, he’d accused Gisela and Aleksey of being Kazik’s demon servants. d

At the time, Gisela assumed he was only referring to her. Looking back, there were so many moments like that, which she could see in a diﬀerent light now. Her mind was ﬁnally putting meaning to all those little incidents that had seemed so innocent in the moment. Damn Aleksey. He’d dropped so many hints. How could she have missed it?

Probably because she was so busy worrying about being exposed as a water nymph. She’d been so anxious he would discover she wasn’t human that she’d never once suspected he might be a monster, too.

Gisela wanted to smack her head against the wall in embarrassment.

Still, what was Kazik’s excuse? He of all people should’ve put the pieces together. He was Leśna Woda’s resident exorcist. The bane of every spirit’s existence. How could he not have sensed what was going on?

But then, Gisela was pretty sure Kazik was thinking with what was between his legs instead of his brain when it came to Aleksey. It was exceedingly cruel that the forest demons had chosen to possess someone Kazik had a hopeless crush on—but that was likely the whole point. They had a reputation for being both vicious and cunning.

Gisela scowled. Before she could question Domek about what he knew, a loud knocking sounded at the front door, carrying through the house.

Domekrolledontoallfours,hisnoseandwhiskerstwitching.

“Is it Aleksey?” Gisela said immediately, mind jumping to the worst possible conclusion. Her throat ran dry. “Or somebody looking for Kazik?”

She could hear him moving about downstairs. A steady stream of visitors came to the little house at the edge of town seeking his magical remedies or assistance with strange happenings, though they rarely arrived this early.

Whoever they are, Domek said, his ears pinned ﬂat against his head, they’re not human.

the exorcist

The young woman at the door looked to be in her early twenties. She wore a gown woven from wisps of cloud and silver thread. The scandalously sheer fabric cast spangles of light across the threshold. If that alone wasn’t enough to hint that she was something unearthly, a pair of feathery wings sprouted from her shoulder blades, and her long blonde hair was ﬂuttering in a wind that touched only her.

Kazik tried not to grimace. No spirit nor demon would’ve dared approach the house while his grandmother was alive. She was someone they’d feared. Someone they’d avoided at all costs.

But Kazik wasn’t his grandmother, and though the thought came with a sharp stab of grief, he was starting to think that maybe, just maybe, he didn’t have to be like her.

Didn’t want to be.

All the same, he wished Gisela wasn’t in bed upstairs so she could be the one to deal with this.

“You won’t need that,” Nadia said, drawing his attention back to her. When Kazik looked blank, she dropped her gaze to

the hand he’d instinctively reached into his trouser pocket and added, “Whatever weapon it is you keep in there. I’m not here to ﬁght.”

Slowly, Kazik withdrew the glossy amber rosary from his pocket, gripping it tightly in his ﬁst. Old habits died hard. It was di cult to shake oﬀ years of conditioning and all the teachings from his childhood that told him to never let his guard down— experience had taught him that spirits were capricious and deceitful by nature.

Grudgingly, he held the door open. Nadia breezed past him into the house, drifting into the tidy little front room where she took a seat in one of the sun-faded armchairs by the window.

“You’re not afraid that I’ll trap you in here and exorcise you?” Kazik asked as he shut the door. He joined her, settling into the second armchair.

Nadia gave him a beatiﬁc smile. “You think you could? You know what I am, don’t you?”

Kazik did. He’d inherited his grandmother’s gifts. Ever since he was small, he’d been able to see, hear, and sense things that others could not. Babcia had taught him how to exorcise these dark forces—these unholy creatures that terrorized the mortal world. But his grandfather had taught him their names and their stories; Dziadek had told Kazik bedtime tales about girls like Nadia.

About the wiły.

The bewitching spirits of the air. The sky nymphs were ﬂighty, fairylike beings. Heavenly maidens so beautiful that mortals often wept at the sight of them. They could transform

into birds and command the wind and conjure thunderstorms. They lived in the mountains, in forests and river streams, in ethereal ﬂoating castles perched on the cusps of clouds. They were generally friendly toward humans, especially to young women, but like so many spirits, they could be touchy and quick to anger. Despite their seemingly delicate appearance, they were ﬁerce warriors and delighted in a good brawl. They were particularly deadly with bow and arrow.

Kazik watched Nadia warily, half expecting her to try something at any moment, but her gaze only flitted curiously about the room, occasionally settling on an object of interest: a holy picture on the wall, the dried herbs hanging from the sagging rafters, a fat votive candle flickering on the home altar in the corner, the pot of linden flower tea steeping on the small round table between their chairs.

To Kazik, it all looked the way it had the day his mother had abandoned him here as a child, like a cross between a cozy home and an old-fashioned apothecary. He wasn’t in the habit of changing things, and his grandmother could never bring herself to throw anything away, while his grandfather could ﬁx anything. The wooden furniture was perhaps a little shabbier now, and the shelves cluttered with ingredients for charms and home-brewed remedies needed a good dusting—Kazik wasn’t as diligent a housekeeper as his grandmother. He worried suddenly what Nadia thought of it all and was immediately annoyed at himself for caring.

“So,” she said, her voice soft and musing, “this is where the old witch lived.”

“My grandmother wasn’t a witch,” Kazik said reﬂexively. Babcia had greatly disliked being called that. Times were changing, but it could still be dangerous to be labeled as such. “Our magic is a gift from God.”

“A witch. A saint. A sorcerer.” Nadia shrugged. “It’s all the same to us. This house reminds me of our workrooms. It even smells the same.”

As well as being ﬁerce warriors, sky nymphs were often said to be master healers. Kazik allowed himself to relax a fraction. “And to what do I owe this unexpected pleasure?”

Nadia didn’t so much as blink at the sarcasm dripping from his tone. “Why am I here, you mean?” She toyed with a strand of hair. “So, I heard that you help spirits now.”

Inwardly, Kazik groaned. His cousin, Zuzanna, had warned him that this would happen. Nothing in his life could be easy. He’d been put on this earth simply to suﬀer.

“The wind is full of gossip,” Nadia said. “Literally everybody’s talking about it. Did you really rescue a latawiec? Adopt a domowik and help Gisela turn human? Is it true you promised to marry her and that your kisses are magical?” She leaned forward, over the table, her gaze focused intently on his lips.

Heat ﬂared in Kazik’s cheeks. He wondered if it was a spirit thing—if they all had no sense of boundaries or personal space. He leaned back, trying to maintain the distance between them.

The sound of someone deliberately clearing their throat saved him from having to answer her questions.

“I hope I’m not interrupting anything,” Gisela said, stepping into the front room. Barefoot and clad in a thin, ﬂowing white

dress, with her hair wild and loose, she could still be mistaken for a spirit herself. Only now, her cheeks had an adorable rosy glow, and the silken black locks framing her heart-shaped face were dry and had lost their greenish sheen.

“That’s my human, Nadia. Keep your hands oﬀ him.” Gisela y h came and perched on the cushioned arm of Kazik’s chair in a move that was more than a little territorial.

Kazik fought back the rare urge to smile.

“Skies!” Nadia sucked in a breath, looking Gisela up and down. “You really did it. I thought the voices on the breeze were exaggerating, but you really are human again.” She paused then said, “Your eyes . . .”

Gisela’s eyes were still a deep wine-red.

“A small side eﬀect from my time as a water nymph. And yes, it’s all true,” Gisela added, waggling her eyebrows. “Kazik’s kisses are magical.”

Kazik snorted.

“And he did promise to marry me.”

“When did I—”

Gisela pulled a chain out from the neckline of her nightgown. On it hung a gleaming silver medallion. His medallion. The Saint is Hyacinth medal had belonged to Kazik, and before that, to his grandmother. Babcia had claimed it would protect him from harm and made him promise never, ever to take it oﬀ—for any reason, no matter who asked it of him. He never thought he’d break his word. Yet it felt strangely right, seeing it around Gisela’s neck now.

“He gave me this in place of a ring.” Gisela sighed dreamily. “After he dove into the river and confessed his undying love.”

“That’s not what happened,” Kazik said.

“He said he’d follow me down to Hell itself. He said he would rather drown than live without me!” Gisela clasped a hand to her breast and swooned dramatically across the back of the armchair. “It was all terribly romantic.”

Kazik felt the tips of his ears burning. He started to correct her version of events, but at that instant, Domek slunk into the room with his tail raised high in the air. “And where have you been?” Kazik hissed at the ember-eyed cat. “You’re supposed to guard the house, to chase away unwanted visitors.”

How can I guard the house on an empty stomach? was Domek’s d Domek’ querulous reply.

“He has a point,” Gisela chimed in. “House spirits gain their strength from mortal oﬀerings. Without them, they fade to nothing.”

“I left out a bowl of honey and cream for him last night,” Kazik protested.

What about breakfast? Domek padded closer. ast? cl

“I’ll feed you more after you do your job.”

Domek opened his mouth in an enormous, jaw-splitting yawn. The sky nymph is not your enemy. If she meant you harm, she wouldn’t have been able to cross through the wards.

Which was true—in theory. The wards encircling the house repelled spirits bearing ill intentions. Kazik had erected them together with his grandmother, burying handwritten pages of holy scripture at all four corners of the property.

Domek twined once around Kazik’s ankles, then started to sharpen his claws against a table leg.

Gisela pulled the traitorous gremlin onto her lap as if he were a pet and not a demon capable of spitting ﬂame and turning a house into a labyrinth. “Grandfather,” she scolded, her voice going all soft and gooey. “What did Kazik say about using the furniture as a scratching post? We’ll eat once we’ve dealt with this.” She shot another narrow-eyed glance at Nadia. “Why are you here?”

“Relax,” Nadia said. “I’m not planning to steal your lover. He’s pretty for a mortal, I’ll give you that. But ill-tempered exorcists aren’t my type. I’m here because I require help.”

“I’m not getting involved in any quarrel between spirits,” Kazik interjected. He had to nip these rumors in the bud. He had to make it clear he wasn’t helping any forlorn creatures coming to him with their troubles. He had no obligation to help them.

“What if my quarrel is with a human?” Nadia countered. “But if you won’t help, that’s ﬁne. I didn’t believe all the gossip was true. Someone of your reputation doesn’t have a sudden change of heart.”

Kazik didn’t know why that irritated him.

“Gisela will help me,” Nadia ﬁnished. “She owes me a favor. I’m here to call it in.”

Gisela shifted uneasily, running her ﬁngers through Domek’s ﬁery-orange fur. “What exactly do you need help with? What are you planning to do to this human?”

“I need your help stealing something from them.”

“Stealing?” Kazik and Gisela chorused.

“Stealing back,” Nadia amended quickly. “You’ve probably heard the tales about my kind, about how our power resides in our garments and trinkets, in our fabled feather cloaks, our

floating veils and fans.” She flicked her wrist and an elegant folding fan materialized in her grip. Its handle was gold, and its leaf was a mass of swan-white feathers. They shimmered so brightly that Kazik wondered if they glowed at night like a firebird’s wings.

Nadia waved the fan and a gust of snow-scented mountain air rushed through the room. Strands of Gisela’s hair whipped Kazik’s cheek. He inhaled sharply at the sudden chill. On the home altar in the corner, the candle ﬂames trembled.

Domek let out a hiss as a stack of papers covered in Zuzanna’s spidery handwriting blew oﬀ the tea table. His tail lashed from side to side. House spirits abhorred mess.

“My apologies, Grandfather. I only wished to demonstrate.” Nadia snapped the fan closed, then extended her arm, oﬀering the trinket to Gisela, who took it, clearly curious.

“That belonged to one of our elders who is now lost to us. It was made with feathers shed from her wings. I wanted to show it to you because my cousin has—had—a fan just like it.” Nadia’s expression darkened, her anger crackling in the air like lightning.

She continued, “A little while ago, the Queen of the Wiły sent word that my cousin, Helena, had lost her head over a human. A young man called Stefan who liked to explore the mountain trails during the hiking season. Helena would watch him and follow him secretly, keeping the wolves away at nightfall. She soon discovered that unlike most mortals, he could see and hear her.”

Kazik saw his own surprise mirrored on Gisela’s face. It was rare for humans to be able to see spirits. The stronger beings, and

those who had once been mortal, could choose to reveal themselves in human or animal guise, but weaker spirits and more elusive beings, like Nadia, often remained invisible. An ordinary person might catch only the vaguest sense of their presence— might glimpse a shadow cast by no one or feel a chill when they crossed paths.

“I tried to warn Helena,” Nadia said. “I told her entanglements with mortals only ever end in heartbreak. She laughed at me. But sure enough, this young man betrayed her. He stole her fan while she was sleeping. If a mortal gains possession of a wiła’s garments or her feathers, it binds her to them and to the mortal world. Her magic is sealed away, and she becomes an ordinary woman. She can’t ﬂy away. When Helena begged this wretched human to return her wings, he promised he would, but only if she agreed to become his wife.” Nadia held Kazik’s gaze, daring him to defend the man’s actions.

“What a monster!” Gisela burst out. “Of course we’ll help you steal her fan back.”

“What do you mean we?” Kazik said.

“Wonderful!” Nadia clapped her hands together in excitement. “I knew you would understand, Gisela.”

“So, what’s the plan?” Gisela returned the fan and cracked her knuckles. “Kazik and I break this guy’s bones while you snatch the goods?”

“I am still here, you know, in case the two of you forgot.” Kazik scowled, but his heart wasn’t in it. Deep down, he already knew he was going to help—he always did when Gisela was involved. She could be aggravatingly persistent, and Heaven

knew what mischief she and Nadia would get up to if he weren’t there to control the situation.

He pushed his wire-rimmed glasses up the bridge of his nose. “We’re not breaking anyone’s bones. Do you know where he keeps the fan? If he carries it with him everywhere, that’s going to make retrieving it di cult.”

“He doesn’t always carry it with him,” Nadia said. “I’ve been watching him closely this past month. They’re staying at one of the fancy bathhouses here with his mother. I’ve seen Stefan enter the baths and steam rooms empty-handed. I searched through his belongings in the changing room once but found nothing. He has to have the fan hidden away in their suite somewhere.”

Gisela frowned. “Your cousin hasn’t tried to ﬁnd it?”

Nadia’s wings quivered. “Stefan rarely lets her out of his sight. And there’s another thing, the rooms are warded with magic.”

Kazik jolted.

“I turned myself into wind,” Nadia said, “and rattled at the door and all the windows. That’s why I came to you. I thought he might have paid you a visit. Did he come to you to learn how to ward oﬀ spirits?” There was a note in her voice that hinted there would be bloodshed if the answer was yes.

But no one had asked Kazik anything like that. Not recently. He shook his head and wondered who Stefan had talked to. The secrets to magically protecting oneself from evil forces had faded from common knowledge as the world embraced more scientiﬁc ways of thinking.

“Well, whoever he learned from,” Nadia said darkly, “their lessons were eﬀective. I can’t get inside their suite at Villa Hyacinth.”

Kazik felt Gisela tense beside him. “Villa Hyacinth?” she repeated sharply.

Nadia arched an eyebrow at her. “Is that a problem?”

“It’s—” Gisela broke oﬀ, biting her bottom lip.

It was Kazik who answered Nadia’s question. “No. Actually, it’s good. Our friend . . .” He paused. Was Aleksey still their friend, or something more? As Gisela had so dramatically recounted, many things had transpired on Saint John’s Eve. Kazik had kissed her. She’d become human. But Kazik had also kissed Aleksey. Or rather, Aleksey had kissed Kazik and confessed to having feelings for both Kazik and Gisela.

Were they going to kiss again?

Kazik was kind of dying to kiss them both again.

“Our friend,” he repeated, shoving the question aside for now. There would be time to ﬁgure out what they were to one another later. Spirit business came ﬁrst. Always. “His family owns Villa Hyacinth. He can help us.”

“But maybe,” Gisela cut in, “we shouldn’t ask for his help?”

Kazik blinked. “Why not?”

“Well, you know.” Gisela avoided eye contact. “It’s not like we need him. We can handle this ourselves. Aleksey could be busy and he might not want to get involved. This could be dangerous.”

Kazik stared at her. Gisela had never worried about dragging Aleksey into danger before. Back when she ﬁrst roped Kazik into

playing matchmaker for her, she’d suggested they deliberately deliberatel put Aleksey in harm’s way—so Gisela would have the chance to rescue him and win his heart.

Girls. They were so damn confusing.

“Aleksey won’t care about the danger,” Kazik said. “He’d be more troubled if we left him out of this.” Aleksey also liked helping spirits. He was sympathetic toward them. It was the one thing he and Kazik didn’t see eye to eye on. “And don’t you want to let him know you’re awake?”

Gisela’s lips parted, then pressed together.

“I want to check in on him anyway,” Kazik added. Aleksey had been hurt helping him ﬁnd Gisela in the water goblin’s glittering palace. “Your grandfather wasn’t exactly gentle with him the other night.”

“Isn’t that even more reason to let him rest?” Gisela said.

“He can still get us into the bathhouse. He knows all the ins and outs of Villa Hyacinth. It’ll be easier if we have his help.” If they handled this quickly and quietly, the less likely it was that any innocent humans would get caught in the crossﬁre. Kazik faced Nadia. “We’ll talk to Aleksey ﬁrst.”

the demon lover

If all had gone according to plan, Aleksey would never have become entangled with Kazik and Gisela.

He’d have slipped quietly into the mortal world, spied on the old witch and her grandson, unearthed their weaknesses, and reported back to the leszy. The ancient spirit lord would have used that knowledge to destroy the witch and reclaim the sacred springs, and afterward, Aleksey would’ve spent the following centuries basking in the admiration of his fellow spirits.

But instead, he’d been discovered, hunted down, and gravely wounded. He’d been forced to hide inside the body of a boy he never intended to possess. He’d spent a year recovering from the humiliation, slowly regaining his strength and plotting dark revenge—vividly fantasizing about how good it would feel to lick Kazik’s blood oﬀ his ﬁngers. All the while pretending to be someone he was not; settling into this sickeningly soft mortal life with all its gentle routines and simple, cozy comforts; and falling so completely into the role that there were moments now

when he almost forgot that he was not the sweet, good-natured boy everybody thought he was.

He forgot that he was a monster.

He forgot that this face had not been his since birth. Did his feet even remember how to put down roots?

Kneeling and placing a palm on top of the earth, Aleksey fed his magic into the damp, dark loam, into a sad-looking strawberry plant in the garden behind the house he currently called home—a two-story cottage with petal-pink window shutters and whitewashed walls veiled by vines of rose and honeysuckle.

A bead of sweat dripped from his temple. The sun blazed high overhead. It was another bright summer day without a cloud. One of those sluggishly hot days when all you wanted to do was lie down in the grass and dream longingly of winter. Every summer now seemed warmer than the last.

“Mother’s been overwatering you again, hasn’t she?” he muttered.

The wilting strawberry plant perked up at the sound of his voice. It shed several brown-edged leaves and unfurled fresh green ones. Aleksey sent more magic into its roots. As he watched, three small white ﬂowers blossomed and swelled into ﬂeshy, pale green fruit.

“There you go, beautiful,” he said.

The strawberries blushed a delicate pink that deepened slowly into a rich bloodred.

Sitting back on his heels, Aleksey wiped his dirt-streaked hand on his trousers. Before he came to live here, this garden

had been as neat and orderly as the surrounding spa parks, every plant resigned never to stray from its tidy bed. These days, the garden was a wilder and hungrier thing, and more than one groundskeeper come to prune the shrubs had ﬂed after the roses tried to drag them into the earth. Everywhere, ﬂowers bloomed extravagantly, in eerily rich colors and for far longer than they should have.

A sudden rustling sounded from the pink and purple hollyhocks blooming nearer to the house. The boughs of the old oak in the far corner creaked like bones, the sounds bleeding together to shape something like words.

Like a warning.

They’re coming.

Aleksey stiffened. His skin flashed hot, then cold, then hot again. He didn’t need to ask who they were. He’d been expecting wer some kind of confrontation since he learned Gisela was awake. Maybe even before that, when he learned the outcome of her fight with Roza. He could hear Roza’s voice inside his head now, an echo from their final argument:

You do realize that they’ll learn the truth eventually. In the end, they’re both going to ﬁnd out what you are.

Aleksey still didn’t know what had become of his erstwhile partner in mischief. The trees had told him the water nymphs dragged Roza’s body into their ghostly underwater realm. But he knew she had to still be alive. Biesy were di cult to wound, much less kill. They were practically immortal. That Gisela and her friends had actually managed to take Roza down was a feat all in itself.

He couldn’t decide if he was furious or impressed. Either way, his bloodthirsty little sister had really put him in a mess. He might have to kill Roza himself one of these days. He had to ﬁnd out what Gisela had done with her. He had to get her back.

Aleksey rose to his feet. Should he go on the oﬀensive—strike ﬁrst? Or act innocent and see how this played out? He didn’t know for certain that Roza had blown his cover or if the water goblin, Gisela’s self-appointed guardian, had spilled his secret.

Aleksey adjusted the triangle of fabric supporting his right arm. The sling was a reminder that he hadn’t walked away from his ﬁght with Wojciech unscathed. Still, he wasn’t at a complete disadvantage; so long as he remained in this body, Gisela and Kazik would be reluctant to harm him.

That thought caused an odd and unexpected gnawing sensation to bloom inside his chest. He scarcely knew what to call it. Irritation? Possessiveness? Because really, what had human Aleksey ever done to deserve their aﬀection? What made him so special?

Gisela didn’t even know that boy, and Kazik . . . when the real Aleksey had been in control of this body, he hadn’t given the exorcist more than a passing glance.

Aleksey’s jaw clenched. He was the one who had charmed Gisela. He was the one who had gotten close to Kazik. He was the one who had kissed him.

As a means to an end, of course. He’d only kissed Kazik to stop him from following Roza. That kiss . . .

That fatal kiss.

That fake kiss . . . which had become a real kiss all too quickly. It was embarrassing how many times he’d thought about it over the past week. How many times he’d thought of the heated press of Kazik’s lips. The way that mouth, startled into stillness at ﬁrst, had softened and parted for him. The desperate sound Kazik had made as Aleksey pushed him back against the tree trunk. The arch of that body against his own. The brush of hardness against his hip. The—

They’re coming this way, the trees whispered again, more urgently.

Aleksey snapped back to his senses. His heart beat wildly. How was it that the mere memory of that kiss could set his pulse racing so stupidly fast?

It was the ﬁrst thing on his mind when he woke, the last thing he thought about before falling asleep. It was a thorn stuck in his thoughts.

This body must be malfunctioning. Yes, that had to be it. There was no other explanation for this.

A feeling like amusement tickled brieﬂy at the very edge of his consciousness.

Disgusted with himself, Aleksey crushed the feeling and shoved the memory of the kiss aside. Most likely, these weren’t even his emotions that he was feeling. It was getting harder and harder to tell which were his and which belonged to the boy whose face he wore. He’d stayed like this too long. He could admit now that he’d drawn things out on purpose, that he’d scrabbled for excuses to linger here simply because he was having fun, and

now all these half-formed thoughts and appalling desires kept spilling unbidden into his mind, no matter how hard he tried to ignore them.

As he strode toward the cottage, the door to the little artist’s studio behind the house banged open. Aleksey felt the garden stir to attention—every leaf, stem, and blossom ready to leap to his defense. Flowers stood taller. Thorns sharpened their points.

Don’t you dare. Aleksey shushed the plants with a warning look. Then he forced a sunny smile for the woman who’d stepped outside. She was dressed in trousers and a paint-spattered blouse, and her face bore a striking resemblance to Aleksey’s own.

Irina immediately started fussing over his sling.

“Mother.” Aleksey’s first instinct was to pull away. He stifled the urge, fighting down an uncomfortable rush of warmth and exasperation. He didn’t have time for this.

“You should be resting, not working outside,” she scolded. “How does your shoulder feel?”

“Better. It’s ﬁne. I don’t need to wear this.”

“That’s not what the doctor said. Rest, and no strenuous activity.” Irina adjusted the triangular bandage.

It was unnerving, letting someone touch him like this. Before, no one had ever helped tend to his hurts. No one had dared extend that kind of tenderness toward him. He’d always had to care for himself. Even now, he didn’t quite know what to do with all these achingly gentle touches. A part of him couldn’t bear them; each one burned like a brand.

Humans didn’t touch him softly. When they reached for him, it was to maim, to hurt, to kill.

Irina patted his forearm. “I’ll ask Mrs. Staszak to make some of her chicken and noodle soup to strengthen you up.”

Aleksey barely stopped himself from rolling his eyes. She was always forcing homemade remedies on him. The worst was the vile honey, onion, and garlic syrup she made for him when he was sick.

He’d vowed to kill her the first time she’d made him drink it. That had been back when he first became Aleksey. He’d been helpless with fury and fever, too weak to escape the prison of blankets she’d swaddled him in—it would’ve been foolish anyway to fight her off and expose his true identity when he was at his weakest. He’d promised himself he would devour her the next day once he recovered, only to make the same promise then, and the day after that, and the day after that. . . .

It was probably just the eﬀect of all the loving memories the real Aleksey had of the woman.

Out of the corner of his eye, he glimpsed a rogue rose vine peel away from the back wall of the house and undulate, serpentlike, in the air, trying to get his attention.

Sweat gathered at the back of Aleksey’s neck. He tried not to react, but Irina turned to see what he was looking at—luckily, the rose vine sank back into place just in time.

“I can’t think what’s gotten into you lately,” she said, facing him again. She frowned at his sling. “You’ve never been in a ﬁght before.”

Of course not. The real Aleksey was too much of a good boy for that.

“I wasn’t in a ﬁght,” the present Aleksey lied, resisting the urge to glance down at his feet as something thorny coiled itself

around his ankle. Perhaps he’d fed the garden a little too much magic. “I was climbing a tree and I fell.”

“Oh, and this tree, it also split your lip?” Irina was, unfortunately, smarter than she looked. It was easy to make excuses for a dislocated shoulder. Harder to explain away the bruises from when Kazik had punched Aleksey in the face.

“I landed headﬁrst.”

“Were you drinking?” Irina said sharply. “Mrs. Moroz said Roza was in some kind of accident—”

Aleksey saw his chance to escape and seized it. “She was. I need to check on her. I promised I would visit.” The real human Roza was still recovering from being possessed—not that Roza’s family knew that.

Irina looked like she wanted to insist Aleksey stay home and rest too. “Be careful with your arm,” she said ﬁnally with a sigh. “And be home—”

“Before dark,” Aleksey ﬁnished for her. “Okay.” He stepped away, extricating his ankle from the spindly grasp of another anxious rose vine. Gisela and Kazik must be getting closer.

Aleksey moved past Irina only to pause. This might be the last time they ever spoke. The thought shouldn’t have aﬀected him as much as it did. He looked back. “Mother . . .”

Irina canted her head.

Aleksey opened his mouth, closed it. His throat grew tight for reasons he refused to acknowledge. “You’ve been overwatering the strawberries again.”

“I was worried I wasn’t giving them enough water.”

“Obviously. Leave them alone for now. They’ll be ready for picking soon. Ask Mrs. Staszak if she’ll make dumplings for you.”

Irina smiled. It was like the sun coming out from behind a cloud. “I do love strawberry dumplings.”

“I know. They’re your favorite.” Aleksey turned away. This time, he didn’t allow himself to look back.

gisela 4 speak of the devil

She had to tell Kazik.

She had to tell him now—before they reached Aleksey’s house.

No amount of cajoling and pouting had persuaded Kazik not to approach Aleksey for help. He walked ahead, leading the way through the leafy spa park surrounding Villa Hyacinth. Beds of that same ﬂower lined either side of the meandering footpath. The air was thick with heat and the drowsy hum of honeybees.

Nadia drifted after Kazik, her ﬂoaty dress rippling in a breeze no mortal could feel. Gisela trailed a step behind, a sick feeling bubbling in the pit of her stomach.

She had to tell him. She had to. Only . . . how would he react? What if he refused to believe her? What if he thought she was deliberately trying to drive a wedge between him and Aleksey?

And what if the truth destroyed the fragile equilibrium they’d found?

Kazik had only just started to believe that spirits didn’t have to be his enemies. This would validate all his worst fears. It would prove all his awful assumptions about spirits right.

He wouldn’t be the same after this. It would break something inside him.

“So,” Nadia whispered, falling back beside Gisela. “This friend of yours, this . . . Aleksey. He wouldn’t happen to be that boy with the two-colored eyes, would he?”

“Why?” Gisela cut Nadia a sharp sideways look. The sky nymph’s body was practically see-through in the sunlight, her willowy form a breath away from fraying into the breeze. “Is that a problem? Is there something you’d like to share about him?”

For a second, Nadia had the grace to look guilty. Back before Gisela had even known Aleksey’s name, back when she’d simply been searching for the boy who rescued her when she was trapped in one of Kazik’s magic circles, Nadia had been the one to suggest Gisela’s savior might be none other than Aleksey, a supposedly human boy, with eyes of two diﬀerent colors. It was why Gisela owed the sky nymph a favor.

Gisela ﬁddled with the ribbon she’d used to tie her hair back. Why had Aleksey done that? Helped her. Freed her. He’d broken the magic circle and even carried her in her frog-form to a place where she’d be safe from Kazik. Those weren’t the actions of a monster. It was that gentle act that had drawn her to him in the ﬁrst place.

“I did hint that you should be careful,” Nadia said.

“You could’ve done more than hint.”

“I told you he might be trouble!”

“You didn’t tell me he might be possessed by a goddamn bies!” Gisela’s heart sank as the words left her lips. Right up until that moment, some small stubborn part of her had been holding out hope that she was wrong. That even Wojciech was mistaken about Aleksey.

But Nadia’s words were as good as conﬁrmation.

The sky nymph crossed her arms defensively. “I didn’t want to get on that demon’s bad side. You know what the forest spirits are like. They love their tricks and games. I didn’t wish to make him angry by giving his ruse away. Honestly, I wouldn’t have even guessed he wasn’t human if I hadn’t . . .”

“Hadn’t what?” Gisela demanded.

Nadia glanced up the path to check if Kazik was still walking ahead of them, then dropped her voice even lower. “I watched him leave this park once and walk into the forest. It was . . . I’ve never seen anything like it. The trees bent just to listen to him talk. Ferns bloomed in his wake, and falling leaves skittered after him like children playing chase. I know wood maidens who can coax seedlings to sprout with a song, but this was something else entirely. I’ve only known the forest to respond that way to the leszy.”

A chill rippled down Gisela’s spine. The leszy. The ancient spirit lord of the forest.

“Whoever he is, he’s no ordinary demon,” Nadia said. “Why haven’t you told him?

“Huh?”

“The exorcist,” Nadia clariﬁed. “Kazik obviously doesn’t know. Why are you hiding the truth from him? Are you trying to protect the demon? You did say you wanted the boy with the two-colored eyes to kiss you.”

“That was before I knew what he was!” Gisela hissed, turning pink. “I’m not trying to protect him.” She was trying to protect Kazik. He’d saved her, so it was her turn to save him. She certainly wasn’t trying to protect Aleksey—even if the thought of him and Kazik ﬁghting ﬁlled her with cold dread.

Even if when she wasn’t dreaming of monsters, she was waking from nightmares about two boys dying, stained red with each other’s blood.

Would Kazik destroy the bies residing in Aleksey’s body the same way he once tried to destroy her with heavenly ﬁre?

She should want that, shouldn’t she?

“Don’t say anything to Kazik,” Gisela said. “Please. I’m going to tell him. I just haven’t worked out how to yet.”

All of this . . . everything she’d grown to love . . . was going to fall apart very quickly once he found out.

Was it so terrible that she wanted this happiness to last a little longer? That she didn’t want to be the one to burst the bubble?

Nadia shot Gisela a dubious look.

The breeze blew. Something ﬂickered in the air and landed in Gisela’s hair. She plucked it free. It was a bloodred petal. Her heart lurched.

Ahead, Kazik halted. Someone was coming down the footpath in the opposite direction. A boy dressed in muted green

trousers and a white button-down shirt. One of his arms was cradled against his chest in a sling.

Gisela stopped breathing.

The sun lit Aleksey’s hair like a crown, turning strands of honey-blond to pure gold. It felt like both an age and only seconds had passed since she’d seen him last. She’d almost forgotten how disarmingly attractive he was.

Those broad, powerful shoulders.

That deceptively sweet, dimpled smile.

Those mismatched blue-and-green eyes that haunted her nightmares.

The moment those eyes caught hers, it was like she’d plunged underwater. She couldn’t breathe. The world turned glassy. Nadia was speaking, but her voice was mu ed and far away. It faded out completely as memories pushed to the forefront of Gisela’s mind. She existed in another place entirely, in several places at once. She was standing on the sunlit path. She was standing at the edge of a shadowy, petal-strewn clearing.

She was standing on an old wooden pier, the rotted boards jutting from the muddy bank of the river. Reeds and rushes and roots twined around her calves, hissing and slithering as they climbed up her body. A strikingly pretty girl with pale blonde hair stood before her. Blood dripped from the vicious thorns protruding from Roza’s skin; shadows swirled across her stormgray irises.

She closed her hand around Gisela’s throat.

“Gisela? Gisela?”

Kazik’s voice snapped her back into the present.

Gisela blinked. Kazik stood before her, his brows furrowed together in worry. His hands gripped her shoulders. She hadn’t even sensed him approach. “Gisela? Hey, look at me. Are you okay?”

“I—” The words stuck in her throat.

Aleksey came up behind Kazik but stopped short when Gisela shrank back.

Oh, she realized numbly. I’m afraid of him.

Every one of her instincts was screaming at her to run. Run. Her pulse was racing. She wasn’t ready for this. The moment stretched as she waited for him to attack—as she mentally prepared to ﬁght for her life.

But Aleksey only stared down at her with disconcerting concern. “Is she all right?” he asked Kazik anxiously.

No, Gisela thought. No, I’m not all right.

She was so far from all right.

I know.

I know what you really are.

“You’re shaking like a leaf.” Kazik’s hands tightened on her shoulders. The warmth of his palms helped anchor her in the present. “I thought you were about to faint. You should sit down—”

“She can rest at my house,” Aleksey said.

“No!” Gisela burst out. The boys exchanged glances. That was the last thing she wanted. “No, I’m—I’m ﬁne.”

“You don’t look ﬁne,” Kazik said bluntly.

Gisela’s nails bit into her palms. “I am,” she insisted, forcing herself to believe it. She couldn’t give in to the fear. She didn’t

want to show weakness in front of Aleksey. She wouldn’t hand him that victory.

She shot another wary glance his way and glimpsed a familiar curiosity in his eyes, but no shadows slithered across his irises. His teeth failed to lengthen into bloodied thorns.

Why was he still pretending? He had to suspect she knew, didn’t he?

Gisela bit the inside of her cheek. “Really, I’m ﬁne. I just needed to catch my breath.”

Kazik’s brow furrowed deeper. Clearly unconvinced, he released his hold on her shoulders but stayed close.

“In any case,” Aleksey said. “It’s good to see you up and about. I was starting to worry.”

“Were you?” Gisela’s disbelief must’ve bled into her tone because Aleksey’s brows shot up. But she couldn’t help herself. Beneath the fear was a rising tide of anger. She’d been so focused on what this all meant for Kazik that she hadn’t truly let herself feel how furious she was for her own sake.

He sounded so earnest. So caring. So entirely, infuriatingly normal. What a ﬂawless performance. She knew he was good at masking his true feelings, but she hadn’t realized how good.

“It’s barely been a week,” she said, studying him closely, trying to get a feel for what game he was playing. “Did you really miss me so soon?”

“How could I not?” Aleksey said without missing a beat. “Life’s no fun without you, Gisela. Kazik’s been incessantly brooding. I think he feared his kiss cursed you into an everlasting

sleep. When I dropped by, he was literally tearing his hair out waiting for you to wake up.”

In spite of herself—in spite of everything—Gisela smiled.

Kazik’s face turned a delightful shade of pink. “That is an overexaggeration.”

“Mm-hmm, sure,” Aleksey said.

“If you’re done,” Kazik said, “then you’ll have to excuse us. We’re busy. We have a sky nymph to free.”

“Aw, look at you.” Gisela couldn’t help falling back into their usual banter. “I knew you were secretly excited to do this.” She looped her arm through Kazik’s. “I’m so proud. A month ago, I’d have had to blackmail you. You actually like helping spirits, don’t you?”

“I’m already regretting this,” Kazik said.

“A sky nymph?” Aleksey’s curious gaze ﬂicked to Nadia, who was hovering uncertainly oﬀ to the side with her wings tucked close against her back.

Before Gisela could stop him, Kazik recounted the whole story. “We thought you might be able to help,” he said.

“Aleksey’s probably too busy,” Gisela cut in at the same time as Nadia said, “We would be honored to have your assistance, and I would owe you a debt, of course. A favor to be called in whenever you wish.” Favors being the currency of choice among spirits.

Kazik looked visibly taken aback.

Gisela stiﬂed the urge to stomp on Nadia’s foot.

“Well, I don’t think anybody would pass up the chance to have one of the famous wiły owe them.” Aleksey’s gaze slid over

Gisela. His eyes glinted with mischief—or was it malice? “And I’m never too busy for Gisela or Kazik. Of course I’ll help if I can. What’s the plan? We beat this thief to a pulp?”

“Gisela suggested that too,” Nadia said.

Gisela scowled, not pleased to ﬁnd herself on the same wavelength as a literal demon.

Aleksey’s cheeks dimpled. “I always knew deep down that Gisela was just as monstrous as I am.”

Gisela glanced at him sharply, but Aleksey’s expression was perfectly innocent.

“We’re not beating anybody up,” Kazik said, his exasperation evident. “What this man has done is wrong, but . . .”

Aleksey seized on his hesitation. “But wicked humans deserve mercy, while wicked spirits only deserve punishment?”

Kazik had no answer to that.

It wasn’t the ﬁrst time Gisela had heard Aleksey accuse Kazik of treating spirits unfairly, but it was the ﬁrst time she truly understood Aleksey’s motivation for doing so.

“Gisela’s on my side,” Aleksey added.

“I—I’m—” Gisela stuttered. She hated that she couldn’t deny it—not in this regard. It wasn’t like she hadn’t challenged Kazik either. She’d die before she admitted it aloud though, wanting to deny the demon that small satisfaction.

Kazik’s frown deepened.

“Whether or not we break Stefan’s bones,” Nadia said, “ﬁrst we need to break into his suite.”

“Or . . .” Kazik shot a sidelong look at Aleksey. “Can you get us a set of keys?”

Aleksey nodded agreeably. “I can sneak a set from housekeeping. Nadia, why don’t you and Gisela use your feminine wiles to distract Stefan while Kazik and I—”

Gisela interrupted. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.” There was no way she was leaving Aleksey alone with Kazik. Wojciech had told her Aleksey wanted to get his hands on Kazik’s body— and not in a fun, sexy way.

“You can give us the keys and I’ll go with Kazik,” she said. “You’re only human, Aleksey. You don’t have the magic to help Kazik break the wards around the suite. Unless, of course, you have some secret powers you’d like to tell us about?” As soon as the words left her lips, she wanted to cram them back into her mouth. She shouldn’t antagonize him, but again, she couldn’t help herself. Gisela had always had a habit of tempting fate, of ﬂirting with danger.

Aleksey eyed her for a beat too long, possibly contemplating exactly how he was going to murder her. Suddenly, the air felt charged, heavy and crackling with all the violence of a building storm.

“It’s true that I haven’t been blessed with Kazik’s godly gifts,” Aleksey said at last. “But you no longer possess the magic to help him either. What can you do now, Gisela? Don’t forget that you’re just an ordinary human girl again. A mere mortal.”

Gisela bristled. Was that advice or a threat?

Kazik glanced back and forth between them with a hint of confusion on his face.

Aleksey’s grin cut wider, silently daring Gisela to give voice to what she was thinking, to make the ﬁrst move.

“The two of you should team up and distract Stefan,” Kazik said.

Gisela’s and Aleksey’s heads snapped toward him in shock.

“Like you said, neither of you have any magic. Nadia will come with me and help dismantle the wards.”

Nadia nodded. “I’m not trusting anybody else getting their hands on my cousin’s fan. No oﬀense.”

“So,” Kazik said, “shall we do this?”

The last thing Gisela wanted was to team up with the a demon, but if it kept him away from Kazik, she’d make the sacriﬁce—even if the thought of being alone with Aleksey made her heart race.

She studied him closely as they crossed through the invisible wards surrounding his family’s famous bathhouse. Villa Hyacinth drew its waters from the mystical Hyacinth Spring. The steaming, mineral-rich liquid had the power to wash away unpleasant memories and conjure up fond half-forgotten ones. Spirits weren’t technically supposed to be able to enter—the town’s exorcists would never willingly allow such creatures to utilize the power of the sacred springs—but the magical protections Kazik’s grandmother had put in place had weakened since her death.

Even so, when Gisela had been a water nymph, she’d felt a slight magical resistance every time she snuck inside: The air itself had pushed back, and a false sense of fear had ﬂooded her senses, a voice at the back of her mind whispering urgently, that this place was dangerous, that she shouldn’t be here.

But if Aleksey felt anything—if he was fighting the urge to flee or panic—it didn’t show on his face. She couldn’t make out even a flicker of discomfort. It was almost enough to make her doubt herself.

Was there really a monster lurking beneath that carefree exterior?

Did that sweet, dimpled smile truly hide fangs?

If Nadia was right though, he wasn’t an ordinary bies. He was someone powerful. Wards like these were probably nothing to him. After all, even Gisela had been capable of enduring their eﬀects.

But if that was the case, why hadn’t Aleksey done anything? Why didn’t he attack her? Why hadn’t he attacked Kazik all those times they were alone together? When she was unconscious, and on Saint John’s Eve . . . he had countless opportunities to harm them both. So, what was he waiting for?

Just what are you plotting, demon?

The more reckless side of Gisela itched to confront him, to whirl on him and demand answers. Even Wojciech couldn’t explain Aleksey’s actions. What had the water goblin said to her the day she woke up?

I don’t think your bloodthirsty little ﬂower knows himself, what it is he wants to do to Kazik—if he wants to kiss or kill him. If you insist on involving yourself in this battle, Gisela, tread carefully. You don’t want to drive him into a corner not knowing how he’ll lash out.

Asalways,Wojciechwasanag,buthewasright.Shehadnoidea what Aleksey was capable of. She was no closer to understanding

his motivations. She didn’t even know his true name or what he really looked like.

As if he could hear her thoughts, Aleksey’s head turned in her direction.

Quickly, Gisela looked away. She needed more time to think, to ﬁgure this all out. She needed time to come up with a brilliant, foolproof plan, and right now she owed it to Nadia to focus on rescuing her cousin.

A grim-faced doorman waved them through the front entrance. Together, they stepped into a grand foyer full of people soaking up the charming old-world decor, the shiny brass ﬁxtures and blushing marble ﬂoor tiles, the indoor fountain shooting glistening spray at the chubby cherubs painted on the ceiling. With its grand bathhouses and idyllic scenery, the spa town attracted an endless stream of visitors. Rich foreigners and dignitaries. Artists in search of inspiration, and city folk eager to escape the hustle and grind of city life.

Gisela felt the heat and steam wafting oﬀ the water as she moved past the fountain. Aleksey fell into step beside her. She tried her best not to ﬂinch away from him.

“You don’t have to force yourself to do this if you’re not feeling up to it,” he said. “Kazik and I can take care of things, if you need more rest.”

Gisela lifted her chin. “I feel perfectly ﬁne.”

“Are you sure?” Aleksey leaned in so close, his breath ghosted against her ear, sending a shiver down her neck. “Because you keep staring at me like you expect horns to sprout from my head.”

Gisela missed a step.

Aleksey pressed a hand to the small of her back to steady her.

Gisela very nearly shoved him away, but he was already striding ahead with a smirk, cutting a path toward the wide mahogany reception desk. “Wait there,” he called over his shoulder, laughter in his voice. “I’ll check in with the staﬀ.”

Nadia came up beside Gisela, Kazik at her side. “Are you all right?”

Gisela seethed. “Can everybody stop asking me that?”

“Where’s Aleksey gone?” Kazik asked.

“To ﬂirt with the receptionist,” Gisela said acidly, watching Aleksey give the weary-looking woman behind the desk one of his charming grins. It wasn’t lost on Gisela that he’d used that same grin to charm her. If it wouldn’t have hurt Aleksey—the real Aleksey—she would’ve clawed that damned smile oﬀ his face.

Did he suspect she knew his secret, or didn’t he? What game was he playing? Was he simply toying with her like a cat with a mouse?

She would make him regret that.

A cold, pine-scented breeze kissed her cheeks. Startled, Gisela whirled around.

Nadia fluttered the feather fan she’d shown off earlier. “You look like you need to cool down.” Snapping the fan closed, she offered it to Gisela once more. “Hold onto it for me?”

Gisela hesitated, knowing it was a prized possession. A tingling jolt ran through her ﬁngers as she gripped the gold handle. The fan was light as air. In a way, it reminded her of the enchanted hair comb she’d wielded as a water nymph, that

she’d used to conjure and control water. A ﬂeeting sadness swept through her at the thought. As grateful as she was to be part of the living world again, regaining her humanity meant losing certain abilities she’d had as a spirit. Even if she hadn’t lost her hair comb in the ﬁght with the bies who’d possessed Roza, as a human, she was no longer able to use it. The magic simply wouldn’t work.

She could no longer hold someone spellbound with her singing either, nor shape-shift into a ﬁsh or a frog. She wouldn’t heal as fast, nor move with eﬀortless grace, with inhuman speed and strength.

It was worth it, she told herself. She could return home now like she’d wanted. She didn’t regret her transformation— although a newly awakened part of her did question if this was one more sacriﬁce she’d made for her brother’s and father’s sakes.

Aleksey’s words echoed in her mind: What can you do now, Gisela? Don’t forget that you’re just an ordinary human girl again. A mere mortal.

She clenched her teeth. What could she do now? As an ordinary human girl, how was she supposed to protect Kazik or rescue the real Aleksey?

What power did she have?

The demon returned before she could come up with an answer.

“We’re lucky,” the infernal creature said with Aleksey’s mouth. “Our thief and his would-be bride are dining in the ground-ﬂoor restaurant.” He reached into his sling and drew out

a shiny brass key ring, which he twirled around his ﬁnger. “And I managed to borrow this. Their suite is on the fourth ﬂoor. Room 425. Here. You should go before you miss this chance.”

He held the key ring out to Kazik, who failed to take it. Kazik’s gaze was ﬁxed on someone walking by behind Aleksey.

Gisela elbowed Kazik in the ribs hard enough to make him grunt.

“What—oh.” Kazik took the oﬀered keys. “Sorry. I thought I saw somebody I know.” He craned his head, then shook it. “Never mind. Nadia and I will head upstairs. We’ll be as quick as we can.”

“Don’t rush,” Aleksey said, catching Gisela’s eyes again. “I can tell Gisela’s excited to spend some quality time with me. We’ll head to the restaurant and create a big distraction if Stefan tries to return to his suite.”

Kazik looked like he suddenly regretted suggesting the two of them team up. “Don’t do anything stupid.”

Aleksey pressed a hand to his heart. “I would never. This way, Gisela.”

Gisela forced herself to follow. For now, all she could do was put herself between him and Kazik. Still, she felt uneasy following Aleksey so trustingly. What if he wasn’t leading her to the restaurant? He could be walking her straight into a trap.

Signs on the walls in familiar and unfamiliar languages pointed directionstothebathhouse’svariousdelights:allthediﬀerentsauna and steam rooms, the resting areas, the private bathing cabins, and of course the communal baths—steaming and spring-fed, both indoor and outdoor, facing onto the forest. They passed a bath

attendant and a stern-faced masseur oﬀ to knead the tension from someone’s muscles, but as they veered down another winding corridor, fewer and fewer people crossed their path.

The sound of voices ebbed, leaving only the fall of their footsteps and the soft rustle of their clothes, all of which seemed obscenely loud all of a sudden.

Gisela’s unease grew.

Aleksey glanced at her sidelong. She pretended not to notice. Words trembled on her tongue. Aleksey seemed on the verge of saying something, too.

Gisela’s grip tightened on the feather fan she was twirling anxiously between her ﬁngers.

Aleksey tensed, as acutely aware of her every movement as she was of his. “That’s a rare trinket,” he remarked. “Sky nymphs don’t part easily with their belongings. Is it Nadia’s?”

Gisela shouldn’t have been surprised he could tell the fan was something that belonged to another world. Really, Aleksey’s intimate knowledge of the spirits should have been enough to warn her that he wasn’t what he seemed, but it was just another thing she hadn’t thought to question.

She wanted to travel back in time and kick her past self.

“It belonged to another sky nymph,” she answered tersely. “Nadia brought it along to show us what to look for.” Gisela slipped her hand through the delicate wrist chain attached to the end of the handle.

Halting at the end of the corridor, Aleksey held a heavy door open. “After you.”

Gisela hesitated, looking up at him, at that too-innocent expression. His eyes held hers. She hated how her heart skipped a beat. “Such a gentleman,” she said with false sweetness.

A fragrant aroma tickled her nose. Inhaling deeply, she stepped past him, following the mouthwatering scent into a long, sun-drenched hall.

Guests sat at round tables as servers in crisp white shirts and aprons darted to and fro with trays of food and drink: sloshing jugs of bright pink raspberry lemonade, bowls of creamy wild mushroom soup garnished with toasted sunﬂower seeds, dumplings swimming in bloodred broth, and plates piled high with unholy amounts of crispy potato pancakes drizzled with sour cream.

Gisela’s stomach let out a plaintive growl.

Aleksey snickered until his own stomach rumbled.

Gisela smirked at him before she remembered that he was the enemy. She turned away to hide her irritation. Only a week ago, she would’ve been thrilled to be here with him.

“Over there,” Aleksey said quietly. “That must be them.”

Was it her imagination or did he sound almost sad?

She didn’t have time to think about it. Gisela followed his gaze through a pair of glass doors that opened onto a small terrace where a couple sat at a table beneath a large creamcolored umbrella. Stefan was stocky, clean-shaven, and had a head of red-brown curls. Helena looked a lot like Nadia, only with her magic locked away, she passed as a ﬂesh and blood woman. She was still breathtakingly beautiful, but her complexion had none of her

cousin’s otherworldly glow. Her olive-toned skin was sallow. Her dark hair was dry and brittle, and her eyes were downcast as she played listlessly with her food, not taking a single bite.

Stefan, on the other hand, was talking cheerfully to another man seated nearby. Gisela wanted to punch him.

“She doesn’t look happy,” Aleksey observed, drawing out a chair at an unoccupied table. He motioned politely for Gisela to sit—playing the part of the perfect date so naturally that she had to remind herself not to be fooled.

On some level, she couldn’t help grudgingly admiring the sheer eﬀort he put into the act. Didn’t he ﬁnd it tiring, wearing that kind, sweet mask day in and day out?

She had.

Living with the constant fear of discovery, always worrying if her performance was convincing enough, being so careful never to say the wrong thing, dreading the moment when someone would inevitably see her for what she truly was had been beyond exhausting.

Ignoring him, she chose her own seat. “Why would she look happy? The boy she gave her heart to turned out to be a monster.” Gisela knew all too well what that felt like. “He lied to her. Betrayed her. He’s keeping her here against her will.” ayed her

Aleksey dropped into the chair opposite Gisela’s. His posture was annoyingly relaxed. “That always seems to happen to nymphs, and yet humans are the ones who claim they need protecting from spirits.” He slid a gilt-edged menu across the table. “Order whatever you like. My treat.”

“We’re not here to snack!” Gisela hissed, then twisted her face into a honeyed smile as a server approached their table. “We’re good, thank—”

Aleksey didn’t let her ﬁnish. “Dandelion lemonade for two, please.” He waited until the server left, then added, “We don’t want to make it obvious we’re watching them, do we? We need to blend in, and I don’t know about you, but I’m hungry enough to devour the next soul that I lay eyes on.”

Gisela blanched. Did he mean that literally?

The corners of Aleksey’s mouth twitched like he was ﬁghting back a laugh. He shifted his attention to the couple on the terrace. “She should have known better than to fall in love with a mortal. You’re lucky, Gisela, that your entanglement with Kazik didn’t end in heartbreak.”

“It very nearly did,” Gisela snapped, thinking back to those terrifying moments on Saint John’s Eve when she was on the verge of dissolving into nothingness.

For an instant, the mischievous expression faded from Aleksey’s face. “I know. There was a moment there when I feared Kazik and I wouldn’t reach you in time. You really gave us a fright.”

He sounded so genuine that Gisela was thrown oﬀ-balance. And the worst part was, even now, even knowing, she still wanted to believe him, to let herself be taken in.

She stared at his sling. He really had been hurt helping Kazik ﬁnd her in Wojciech’s underwater realm. But why would a heartless demon risk injury for her or Kazik’s sake? She couldn’t

reconcile these two sides of Aleksey, the boy who had come to her rescue not once, but twice—three times, if she counted the time they fought Domek—and the monster she knew was lurking somewhere beneath the surface of that sweet mask.

Did he practice those expressions in the mirror every morning? Did he feel any of the emotions he mimicked?

She kept turning the pieces over and over in her head, trying to decipher what had been real and what had been fake—if any of ny it had been real. It shouldn’t matter either way. But she wanted desperately to know.

Do you feel anything for us?

The server returned with their drinks. Aleksey thanked him.

Unfolding Nadia’s fan, Gisela watched Stefan dab at his chin with a napkin from behind it. “It doesn’t make you jealous,” she asked suddenly, her attention torn between Aleksey and the couple they were watching, “that Kazik kissed me?”

“Does it make you jealous, that he kissed me ﬁrst?” Aleksey picked up a glass and his gaze fell to her mouth. “Could you still taste me on his lips? You know, if you hadn’t run away, I would’ve asked you to join us.”

A traitorous blush seared Gisela’s cheeks. She didn’t answer. She might’ve felt jealous, if she weren’t so sure of Kazik’s feelings for her.

She pressed a hand to her chest, feeling the outline of his saintly medallion, tucked down the front of her dress. She threaded a ﬁnger beneath the silver chain, drawing the gleaming oval pendant at the end into the light.

Across the table, Aleksey choked on his lemonade. His slammed the glass down so hard, liquid sloshed over the rim, startling Gisela.

“W-Where,” he stuttered and slapped his chest, “did you get that?”

“Oh, this?” Smugly, Gisela turned the medallion between her ﬁngers. “Kazik gave it to me.”

aleksey 6 a gift from the heart

Kazik gave it to me.

“Kazik gave it to you?” Aleksey spluttered when he ﬁnally got his breath back. The holy medallion that had belonged to the old witch. The amulet of protection that Kazik always wore, that he never, ever took oﬀ. too

For a ﬂeeting moment, the restaurant, the other diners, the noise—the chatter and clinking of silverware—all faded away until he and Gisela were alone in a silent world, as if they were the only two who existed.

Time ground to a standstill.

Aleksey couldn’t look away from the necklace, gleaming silver against Gisela’s creamy skin. It winked at him, catching light off the overhead lamps. How many times had he seen that same pendant shining softly in the dip between Kazik’s collarbones? How many times had he dreamed of closing his fist around it, of yanking viciously on the chain and tearing it off?

That holy medallion, he’d told Roza time and time again, was the only thing that prevented him from possessing Kazik’s body.

And Kazik had just . . . given it to Gisela.

What was he thinking?

Aleksey fought the sudden unaccountable urge to leap up from the table, hunt Kazik down, take him by the shoulders, and shake him.

Where was the exorcist’s usual sense of self-preservation? Why would he leave himself open like this? Somehow, single-handedly, Gisela had gotten him to lower his shield and cast aside his armor. She couldn’t have done better if she and Aleksey had planned this together.

They would’ve made an incredible team.

“You look shocked,” she said.

The bubble of timelessness popped; the world burst back into motion.

Aleksey had no idea what his face—the real Aleksey’s face— was doing. He usually had better control. But this, this changed everything. His mouth opened, no sound came out. Gisela was watching him intently, the same way she’d been all morning, like she was staring down an enemy across the battleﬁeld.

Like she could see the wicked thorns that grew beneath his skin.

He’d never felt someone’s gaze so acutely. She suspected what he was, that much was obvious. But if that were so, then why hadn’t she told Kazik? Aleksey knew she hadn’t because hadn Kazik would’ve tried to end him at the ﬁrst opportunity—he

wouldn’t have succeeded, of course. But the exorcist hadn’t even tried.

It made no sense.

Unless—

Unless Gisela didn’t want him dead? Aleksey wasn’t sure he dared to hope for that.

With furious eﬀort, he wrestled his features into an expression of mild curiosity. “I’m just surprised.” His voice wasn’t quite even. He tried again. “That necklace was hers. His grandmother’s. I wouldn’t have thought Kazik would give it away to anyone. Did he say why he gave it to you?”

Did Gisela realize what she’d done?

“His grandmother’s?” Gisela was visibly taken aback. “He said he wanted me to have it. I didn’t know . . .” She trailed oﬀ, sounding almost guilty. Frowning, she tucked the pendant back beneath the neckline of her dress. “It’s a devotional medal. It invokes a saint for aid. My Great-Aunt Zela used to wear one. It was supposed to protect her from witches and curses.”

“Did Kazik tell you what that medal protects its wearer from?”

“No. Why?” Gisela narrowed her eyes. They were such a bewitching color still—the deep red of sacramental wine and freshly spilled blood.

Aleksey smiled widely. “No special reason.” He had to fight to hide his growing elation. He wanted to seize Gisela in his arms and twirl her around the room. Briefly, he wondered what it would feel like to finally slip inside Kazik’s skin, to twine himself around his bones and sinew, to lace their souls together,

becoming one in the most intimate way possible—would it feel as good as he’d fantasized? Would it feel like revenge?

His mind raced with possibilities. “I was just curious why Kazik was suddenly showering you with gifts. Who knew he was a secret romantic?”

Gisela didn’t look entirely convinced.

Still, some part of Aleksey preferred that—to see her suspicious rather than afraid. He hadn’t realized how badly it would sting to have her look at him like he was something monstrous. Something to be feared.

He’d never wanted her to see him that way.

Which was probably why he couldn’t resist the childish urge to keep baiting her, ﬁguratively pulling her hair just so he could see that ﬁre spark in her eyes.

Gisela was beautiful like this—ﬁerce and angry and so impossibly alive. A girl come back to haunt him. If he’d known she looked this pretty when she was mad, he might’ve tried making her angry sooner.

He leaned forward, both hating and relishing the way she tensed. He couldn’t deny there was a certain thrill in her looking at Aleksey and seeing him instead. How would she react when he came to her wearing Kazik’s face? Would she recognize him still? Oh, all the terrible things he was going do while wearing that body.

For the first time since Saint John’s Eve, Aleksey felt like himself again—like his old self. The kiss and Roza’s disappearance had thrown him off course, but he could finally see his way forward.

Roza was still a problem, obviously, but he knew she’d want him to act regardless of what it meant for her. If he didn’t act, then what had this all been for? Her defeat had knocked some sense into him. It was likely what she’d been aiming for when she went after Gisela, and in that, at least, she’d succeeded. She’d reminded him of who he was. What he was.

And who he wasn’t.

He couldn’t stop here. He’d committed to this. He wouldn’t let Roza’s sacriﬁce go to waste.

“I should thank you,” Aleksey said.

“Thank me?”

“I don’t think anyone else could’ve drawn Kazik out of his shell. I’d never have gotten so close to him, if not for you.”

This was almost enough to make him forgive Gisela for harming Roza. He’d never wanted to be her enemy. He and Kazik had been born into this conﬂict, their sides chosen for them long before they’d met, but Gisela was diﬀerent. Aleksey had no quarrel with her. She looked at spirits not with judgment but compassion. He’d always liked her.

A little too much.

“Go on.” He tapped the menu. “My treat. I know you’re hungry—don’t pretend. Our kitchen makes the most divine poppy seed cheesecake and ﬂuﬀy apple pancakes.” It was what he would miss most about living in the human world—human food. He might despise most mortals, but even he had to admit they could cook.

Gisela stared at him as if he were a puzzle she couldn’t solve. “I’ve lost my appetite,” she said frostily, punctuating her words

with a cold ﬂutter of Nadia’s fan. Hiding behind it, she turned away from him to face the terrace.

Aleksey had almost forgotten about the sky nymph and her mortal lover. Just how long was Kazik going to keep letting Gisela drag him into helping spirits? He had to be tiring of it.

Aleksey followed Gisela’s line of sight.

A beat passed.

They shared a look of horror.

“Shit,” they said at the same time, shooting to their feet.

The table beneath the yellow umbrella was empty and the couple they were supposed to be watching were nowhere to be seen.

daughters of the air

“Find anything?” Kazik asked.

“No.” Nadia huffed with frustration. The floor was littered with clothing she’d torn out of the wardrobe: a jumble of shirts and trousers, an oilskin raincoat, and one of the bathhouse’s fluffy complimentary bathrobes.

Kazik felt under the mattress of the room’s large four-poster bed. “We’ll keep looking.” They would turn this place upside down if needed.

But they had to hurry. Kazik didn’t trust Aleksey and Gisela to run interference. Knowing the two of them, they’d go overboard with their distraction or get distracted themselves. At least while they were keeping an eye on Stefan, they might ﬁnd a chance to talk about whatever was going on between them.

Kazik dropped to his stomach to peer underneath the bed. He couldn’t pinpoint what it was, but something felt oﬀ about the pair. They weren’t behaving noticeably diﬀerent than usual— they were still their regular maddening selves—but there’d been

a strange undercurrent of tension earlier, like that feeling in the air before a storm broke.

There was something new in Gisela’s eyes when she looked at Aleksey, when they looked at each other, something Kazik couldn’t place.

He felt like he was missing something.

Finding only darkness and dust beneath the bed, he rose to his feet and stared broodingly at the towels folded into the shape of swans sitting upon the fancy bedspread. He didn’t know what to make of it all, and he couldn’t help wondering if it was his fault. Maybe Gisela wasn’t as comfortable with him kissing Aleksey as she’d claimed. Maybe now that she’d had time to think about it, she wasn’t happy Kazik liked Aleksey, too.

Maybe she wanted him to want her and only her.

And maybe Aleksey didn’t like the idea of the three of them together either. Did he regret their kiss? Did he think it a mistake? Did he like Gisela more and want to go oﬀ and be exclusive with her instead? Kazik had gotten the distinct impression that neither of them had wanted to leave the other alone with him, and Gisela had been awfully reluctant to involve Aleksey in this.

Kazik tugged on one of the earrings climbing the curve of his ear. He’d never been in a relationship with two people before. He’d never really been in a relationship. He’d had his share of casual hookups, but those were so much easier to navigate because you didn’t have to worry about all these messy feelings.

A sharp bang carried through the bedroom, followed by a horrendously loud scraping sound. Kazik whipped around to see Nadia dragging a large traveling trunk out of the wardrobe and across the polished wood ﬂooring.

He grimaced. “Try not to break anything.”

Ignoring him, Nadia ﬂung the trunk’s lid open with another loud bang.

Kazik heaved a martyred sigh. He’d have to unpack that tense moment between Gisela and Aleksey another time. He took stock oftheirsurroundings.Theopulentsuiteconsistedoftwobedrooms joined by a sitting room, and it had indeed been warded—protected by an invisible barrier that Kazik had passed through with ease, but which blocked Nadia’s way forward, just as she said.

Kazik’s attention hooked on the doorway through which they’d entered. There were several ways to drive oﬀ evil spirits. One of the most common was to burn incense, the kind used in church, which left a spirit too nauseous and dizzy to move. Another method was to draw holy symbols with blessed chalk over thresholds and entryways.

Stefan had gone one step further. He’d driven a consecrated blade deep into the wallpaper above the doorframe. He’d also placed thistles and nettles upon all the windowsills—a protective measure that added a vicious bite to the charm. Breaking through these wards would feel like forcing your way through a thorny thicket of brambles.

Once Kazik dismantled the spellwork, he’d again found himself wondering who had taught Stefan this magic. Even Babcia had preferred to set up protective measures that simply

weakened, confused, or compelled malevolent spirits to leave, rather than create wards that inﬂicted pain.

Focus, he ordered himself, wrenching his attention back to the matter at hand. Since Nadia was now busy tearing through the heavy oak chest at the foot of the bed—it appeared to be full of folded blankets—Kazik slipped into the small study adjoining the master bedroom. Two armchairs stood before a blackened ﬁreplace. Pressed back against the wall was a writing desk on which perched a vase of sweet-smelling hyacinths.

Where could Stefan have hidden the fan?

Kazik rummaged through the desk, riﬂing through stacks of handwritten letters, shoving aside paper and ink and a crystal decanter ﬁlled with amber liquid. Opening each drawer until he found one that was stuck.

He jiggled the handle. Tugged at it once. Twice.

“Nadia?” he called. “I think I found something.”

She was at his side in instant, her face bright with hope. “What is it?”

“This drawer is locked.” Kazik reached into his pocket and drew out the penknife he used to forage wild herbs and mushrooms in the forest. “If I can’t force the lock, we’ll have to ask Aleksey if any of the maids has a spare key—”

There was a brittle crack of splintering wood.

“. . . or not,” Kazik added as Nadia casually ripped the drawer clean out of . . . the desk with impossible strength.

Kazik swallowed hard and made a mental note never to anger a sky nymph if he could help it. “Your cousin,” he said abruptly, watching Nadia empty the drawer’s contents—a small

leather-bound journal and an entry token for another bathhouse—onto the ﬂoor in visible disgust. “You’ve spoken with her in secret, haven’t you? Is she very angry about all this?”

“Angry?” Nadia dumped the drawer on the desktop. “Helena’s livid. The second she’s free, she’s going to choke the air from Stefan’s lungs. She’s going to tear him limb from limb.”

That was exactly what Kazik feared. He couldn’t allow that to happen.

“Personally,” Nadia said. “I think that’s letting him oﬀ easy. I think we should drag him back to our castle in the sky so that we can make a game of it. We’ll pass him around and compel him to dance with each of us until he begs for mercy and his feet bleed red and his mortal heart gives out.”

Kazik winced. “You said Helena loved him. Maybe some part of her still does. Maybe there’s even a chance she could forgive him?” Hope lifted his words, making the statement a question.

Nadia stared at him like he’d sprouted a second head. “Would you forgive someone who betrayed you like that? Someone who claimed to love you, who deliberately, knowingly hurt you?”

No, a voice in the back of Kazik’s mind whispered. He hadn’t even forgiven his mother, his own ﬂesh and blood, for leaving him with his grandparents after his father abandoned them. And yet, she was still his mother. He still loved and missed her.

Nadia continued, “I doubt the spirits you hunted down after your grandmother’s death would say you were the type to forgive and forget.”

Kazik bristled, feeling defensive. He knew he’d been somewhat overzealous in the past. Back then, he’d just felt so helpless.

So bitter. It felt like he’d be swallowed up by grief and guilt if he didn’t do something.

And it was his duty to keep spirits from making trouble in the mortal world, to protect the humans who lived here.

Even the humans who don’t deserve protection? a voice questioned at the back of his mind. It sounded a lot like Aleksey’s.

“I hope you’re not siding with Stefan.” Nadia’s eyes ﬂashed dangerously. “I saw that love token you gave Gisela. That necklace looks awfully like a collar. I know how badly she wanted to leave this place. If you’re keeping her here against her will . . .”

“What? No! That’s not why I—” Kazik’s voice was sharp with indignation. “Why would you think that?”

Nadia shrugged. “Can you blame me for considering the possibility?”

“Gisela’s free to go wherever she likes. We’re not all like Stefan.”

“Sometimes it’s safer to assume the worst.”

It irritated Kazik that he’d had similar thoughts about spirits in the past. “I’m just concerned,” he said through gritted teeth, “about what will happen when we free Helena.” Something in him still balked at the thought of standing idly by and allowing a spirit to harm a human, even if they might deserve it.

“If we free her.” Nadia yanked open another desk drawer, we fr then slammed it shut with a curse. “I swear, if he’s carrying the fan with him today . . .”

That would be just their luck.

Worse was the possibility that Stefan had destroyed the fan. Burned it to prevent Helena from ever returning to her own kind.

Kazik prayed the man hadn’t been so foolish, or so cruel. He approached the ﬁreplace. There was a hidden compartment in the chimney ﬂue at home. Maybe there was one here, too.

A ﬂoorboard groaned beneath his feet as he stepped between the armchairs. Frowning, Kazik paused, then pressed down with his foot again.

Another groan.

He knelt and ﬂipped up the hearthrug so he could examine the wooden boards beneath. “This ﬂoorboard’s loose.”

Nadia hovered close as he pried one of the planks up.

A bright light shone into the study, dancing over their faces. The hollow space beneath the ﬂooring was the perfect hiding place for something valuable—in this case, a folding fan. Exquisitely made. Its handle was dark wood inlaid with gold, and its leaf was made of pale feathers that glowed with a mesmerizing brightness. Their beauty called to Kazik like a rusałka’s song. A terrible desire ﬁlled him—the kind of desperate yearning you felt when your heart craved something you could never have.

His ﬁngertips brushed softness before he even knew what he was doing. Beside him, Nadia tensed.

Immediately, Kazik drew his hand back, blinking rapidly. He motioned for Nadia to take the fan. “If you can convince your cousin not to take revenge,” he said, “then I swear by the saints I’ll make sure nothing like this ever happens again. I’ll do better. Tell her I’m sorry this happened and I’ll make sure Stefan doesn’t try anything else.”

Despite what Aleksey believed, Kazik’s family did occasionally deal with wicked humans. Kazik could remember at

least two times growing up when Babcia had dealt with men who were mistreating their wives. She’d put the fear of God into them—or rather, the fear of Babcia and her walking stick or whatever weapon she had on hand. And there had been that young woman who’d tried to keep a poor little raróg, a miniature ﬁrebird, trapped in her pocket because she believed it would bring her good luck.

Kazik would ensure that in the future Stefan behaved himself.

We’ll break his bones, the voice inside Kazik’s head whispered. Only this time it sounded like Gisela.

She was a terrible inﬂuence.

Nadia picked up the fan and tapped it thoughtfully against her bottom lip. “You know, there may be hope for you yet, exorcist. You’re not nearly as terrible as the rumors say.”

Kazik replaced the loose ﬂoorboard and smoothed down the rug. “I’m taking that as an insult.”

Nadia laughed, a bright bell-like sound, like windblown chimes tinkling in the breeze. She twirled across the room, her toes pointed as a dancer’s, ﬂoating an inch or so above the ﬂoor.

How anyone could want to cage such a creature was beyond Kazik.

“Come!” she commanded.

He hurried after her, trying not to wince at the fact that it looked like a whirlwind had torn through the suite.

Nadia ﬂung open the door leading back into the hallway, not even pausing to listen to make sure it was clear. “We must ﬁnd Helena—”

Kazik’s senses tingled. The hair prickled on the back of his neck.

There was a ﬂash of silver.

Too slow, he grabbed Nadia’s arm and jerked her sideways. She let out a hiss of pain as something sliced past, grazing her bicep. A blade buried itself in the doorframe with a thunk, the handle quivering in the wood.

A dozen paces away, a boy stood in the center of the hallway. The boy that Kazik had feared he’d seen downstairs. He was slightly built with sleek black hair and ﬁne-boned features. His cold blue eyes matched the icy pallor of his skin. A gold cross dangled from the chain around his neck.

“I thought I sensed an unholy presence,” he said.

“You were supposed to be watching them!”

“So were you!”

“You distracted me!”

“You were the one showing oﬀ your jewelry!” Aleksey caught a server’s elbow. “The couple on the terrace. Did you see which way they went?”

The server shook their head.

Gisela bit back a curse.

“I’ll run upstairs,” Aleksey said. “You search down here. If we’re lucky, they’ll have gone into the gardens or something.”

Gisela spun on her heel, then pulled up short and whirled back around. “Wait. We’re not splitting up.” How much of a fool did he think she was? What if he’d planned for this to happen?

Aleksey looked down at her, his jaw clenching visibly. Again, Gisela suspected he was seriously considering the consequences of strangling her in broad daylight.

“Fine,” he bit out. “If we hurry, we can cut them oﬀ before they reach the suite or get ahead of them and warn Kazik.”

“We’re not telling him we got distracted,” Gisela said quickly. “Oh, absolutely not. We’re keeping that detail to ourselves.”

Seizing Gisela’s wrist, Aleksey dragged her after him through the restaurant, eliciting several curious stares from the other diners. “They’ll probably head to the foyer and take the lift. We’ll take the back stairs,” he said, pushing through a pair of swinging doors.

They burst into a busy kitchen. A startled dishwasher with an armload of plates swerved around them with a curse. An apology tumbled from Gisela’s lips, but the words were lost beneath the deafening crash and clang of pots and pans.

Aleksey darted through the chaos with the conﬁdence of someone who’d taken this shortcut a thousand times. Gisela was pulled past an angry chef waving a wooden spoon and an undercook stirring soup, then through a doorway into a storage area, and then into a narrow stairwell.

Aleksey’s stupidly long legs easily took the steps leading up two at a time. Already out of breath, Gisela struggled to keep pace. What she wouldn’t have given for her inhuman speed and strength right now. As a water nymph, she could’ve climbed these stairs in a single bound. A stitch stabbed at her side.

“Regretting your life choices?” Aleksey glanced back with a knowing grin, not even winded. “I could carry you. Would you prefer bridal style or to go over my shoulder like a sack of grain?”

Trying not to wheeze too loudly, Gisela made a vulgar gesture with her hand. If this demon hadn’t stolen Aleksey’s body, she would’ve shoved him down the stairs. “Which ﬂoor

were their rooms on?” she panted, fantasizing about the satisfying scream he’d let out as he plummeted to his death.

“Fourth,” Aleksey said.

Mother of God.

At last, an eternity of steps later, they burst through the door at the top of the stairwell. Gisela skidded to a stop just short of running straight into the opposite wall. They were in a long, wide hallway. On one side were doors stamped with brass numbers. On the other were windows looking out onto the gardens. Halfway down were the golden doors for the cage-lift, and at the far end . . .

Gisela froze in her tracks, trying to make sense of the scene.

Nadia was clutching her arm. Kazik was standing with his hands raised—between Nadia and a boy Gisela had never seen before. Tall. Slight of build, with sleek black hair. He couldn’t be much older than they were. Something silver glinted in his grip. A blade? Some kind of weapon.

Gisela didn’t think. She simply acted, charging forward. Maybe it was instinct—she was used to reaching for her hair comb in a ﬁght—she brandished Nadia’s fan, sweeping it through the air. A crackle of magic raced through her ﬁngers, up her arm, and a shrieking gust of wind ripped down the hallway.

It struck Nadia, Kazik, and the stranger head-on, almost knocking them oﬀ their feet. Staggering, they gaped at her, their clothes and hair whipping wildly.

Gisela was pretty sure her own mouth was hanging open.

“You . . .” Aleksey said beside her. “You should not be able to do that.” His face was a rictus of shock. “How did you do that?”

Gisela had no idea, and she had no time to answer because the doors to the cage-lift were trundling open. Out walked Stefan and Helena.

Nadia rushed toward her cousin.

The dark-haired boy lunged after her, trying to shove past Kazik, only to be caught and held back.

Stefan shouted, “What the devil . . . no! Helena, wait!”

The glare Nadia turned on him could’ve melted stone. “She’s not yours to command anymore, mortal.” She placed a feather fan in her cousin’s hands.

Before their eyes, Helena changed. Luminous, feathery wings exploded from her back. With an audible sigh, her hair came loose, the dark waves floating weightlessly around her torso. Her skin no longer looked sallow. It shone, glowed, like lightning danced within her flesh. And her eyes—her eyes were every shade of a storm-ravaged sky, and they flashed with rage.

“You.”

A wind far ﬁercer than the gust Gisela had inadvertently summoned blasted down the hallway. It trembled the windows in their frames. It blew Gisela oﬀ-balance, billowing her dress and tearing the ribbon from her hair.

But Helena’s fury was focused solely on Stefan, who was actually attempting to approach the enraged sky nymphs instead of running while he could.

“How dare you!” Helena thundered. “How dare you!”

Stefan ﬂinched. “Helena—”

“You caged me. You took my wings!” Helena’s voice rose to a shriek, no longer sounding human. Her chest heaved. But

beneath the raw fury in her expression, there was an obvious hurt, an almost childlike bewilderment, as though she still couldn’t quite believe it. “How could you do this to me?”

Desperation crept into Stefan’s voice. “Why do you need your wings? If you truly cared for me, you would be willing to give up your power. I just want you to stay with me, to be mine.

I couldn’t stand the thought that one day you might ﬂy away. I would go to any lengths to keep you by my side.”

“I am not a thing to be kept!” Another gust of wind, cold as death, tore through the hallway.

Gisela’s teeth began to chatter. Feathers of frost brushed the windowpanes and cracks spiderwebbed across the glass. Beyond, the sky bruised dark. Clouds billowed across the blue, gathering with unnatural speed.

“Helena, have mercy!” Stefan cried in panic.

“Mercy? I’ll grant you the mercy of a swift death!”

Outside, a jagged blade of lightning split the heavens. It struck the building with a thunderous crack. Every window along the hallway shattered.

Gisela heard Kazik shout, but it was Aleksey who grabbed her and pressed her back against the wall, his tall, broadshouldered frame shielding her from ﬂying shards of glass.

“Are you all right?” he shouted, struggling to make himself heard over a booming snarl of thunder.

Exhaling shakily, Gisela nodded. If he thought she was fooled by this fake show of concern, he thought wrong. “We have to stop her!”

“Why? The human brought this on himself.”

Gisela didn’t know why the callous remark shocked her, knowing what she did.

“You think so too,” Aleksey said.

He wasn’t wrong. Gisela didn’t care what happened to Stefan—he deserved Helena’s anger. But somewhere outside, more voices shouted, frightened cries drifting up from the bathhouse gardens. There were innocent people here, and there was zero chance Kazik would stand idly by while Helena vented her fury. He would have no choice but to exorcise Nadia’s cousin, and he had the power to do so again.

“Kazik will try to exorcise her!”

“Pretty sure that’s not my problem.” Aleksey’s voice was maddeningly calm.

Of all the times to stop pretending to be good, he chose now?

“Is that something Aleksey would say?” Gisela snapped.

His eyes held hers, his mouth curving into a grin as the wind wailed like a woman in anguish. Thunder shook the ﬂoor beneath their feet. Dust swirled through the air, shaken loose from the ceiling. Was Helena trying to bring down the entire building?

“Use the fan,” Aleksey said. “Wrest control of the wind away from her if you want to stop her, then.”

Gisela gaped at him. How could she—could she do that? She’d severed other water spirits’ castings before with her hair comb. It all came down to whose will was stronger. But she hadn’t even known she could still work magic until a moment ago.

Did she have any better ideas?

Gisela squinted into the gale, stinging tears welling in her eyes. She could barely make out the blurred forms in the center of the hallway.

A biting, ice-kissed wind gusted wildly around Helena and Nadia, keeping Kazik and the dark-haired boy at bay, forcing them back. Helena advanced on Stefan, holding lightning in her palm, a squirming, crackling brightness.

Stefan shrank back against a closed door, babbling pleas and prayers. “Wait! Wait, wait!”

Gripping the gold handle, Gisela raised the fan Nadia had given her. Saints, please let this work. Stepping forward, she swept her arm down fast—

Nothing happened.

Or something did—the wind raged on, but Helena’s attention whipped away from Stefan and ﬁxed on Gisela.

Oh God, why had she listened to the demon? Was Aleksey trying to get her killed?

The hair rose on Gisela’s arms. White heat crackled the air around her. She could taste the tang of lightning on her tongue. A bolt might’ve struck her next if Helena’s gaze hadn’t slid past her to Aleksey. He didn’t move, but something in his eyes turned sharper, colder. The hallway seemed momentarily to darken, as if the light was ﬁltering through dense forest canopy.

The shadows of leaves skittered over the walls.

Helena blanched.

The wind faltered.

Nadia grasped her cousin’s arm and spoke furiously into her ear. Whatever she said snapped Helena from her stupor.

She raised her chin deﬁantly. But there was something cornered about her posture now. Her gaze darted between Gisela and Aleksey before she looked back at Kazik and the boy with black hair.

Finally, she faced Stefan. “I would have loved you for the rest of time,” she said. “I would have loved you when no mortal alive remembered your name. You wish for me to be with you always? Very well. When the wind runs its hands through your hair, know that those are my hands, but you will never hold them, just as you will never again hold me. Know that when the wind chimes with laughter, that it is my laughter, y laugh my joy, shared y joy with another. And know that I will be listening, always, and if the breeze carries me word that you have hurt or entrapped another woman, you will wish that I had ended your life today.” She spread her luminous wings.

Nadia did likewise. For a brief moment, her eyes met Gisela’s. She seemed to be trying to convey something; her gaze ﬂicked to Aleksey then dipped to the fan Gisela held. Be safe, she mouthed. Then, with a crack of lightning so bright it whited out Gisela’s vision, the two sky nymphs vanished.

All at once, the air calmed, released from Helena’s control. Quiet washed over everything, the ensuing hush almost as loud as the maelstrom itself.

The thud as Stefan’s knees hit the floor echoed. He pressed as S a palm to his cheek with a low whimper, blood seeping between his fingers where the flying glass had sliced his skin.

Gisela could hear Kazik’s voice clearly.

“Just give me a minute, Lev,” he said. “I can explain.”

The dark-haired boy—Lev, apparently—glanced over Kazik’s shoulder, his cold stare raking brieﬂy over Stefan, Aleksey, and ﬁnally Gisela.

A shiver rippled down Gisela’s spine. There wasn’t even a touch of warmth in that look. Nor kindness. Nor mercy. That expression was colder than a winter’s night.

Lev gave Kazik a barely perceptible nod. “I’m listening.”

roses with thorns

“Who is that?” Gisela whispered ten minutes later as a w Aleksey came up behind her. After a stern word with Stefan, they’d exited the glass-strewn hallway, slipping down the back stairwell to avoid crossing paths with anyone they’d have had to explain all the commotion to.

Kazik had pulled the black-haired stranger into an empty, overlooked resting hall where they had at least the illusion of privacy. Gisela was pressed against the open doorway, peeking ’round the frame after them, blatantly attempting to eavesdrop.

Aleksey’s chest brushed against her back as he peered over her head. Her hair smelled like wildﬂowers. He couldn’t help noting how perfectly their bodies ﬁt together.

Gisela tensed but must’ve decided ﬁghting with him would only draw attention because she didn’t pull away.

“I could take a guess.” Aleksey kept his voice down. His eyes remained on Lev. “But I don’t think you’ll like it.”

“Is he one of Kazik’s past hookups?”

Aleksey choked back a laugh. “No.” He had a gut feeling this boy was something much more dangerous. That ice-cold stare had sent a strange sense of familiarity through him. It set his teeth on edge.

“So?” Gisela prompted.

“He’s someone like Kazik. A human with the power to subdue evil spirits.”

“Huh.” Gisela sounded far less concerned than she should. She added, “So that’s why you look so worried.”

Aleksey’s eye twitched. He did not look worried. He hadn’t let any of his unease show—Gisela had seen through him enough today; he wasn’t giving away anything more—and he wasn’t worried. Yet. For now, he didn’t think he was the one who had caught Lev’s attention.

Aleksey rested his chin on top of Gisela’s head and felt her vibrate with rage. “I’m surprised you’re not worried.”

“Why should I be?” Gisela twisted her neck and shoulders to glare up at him. “I’m just an ordinary human girl. A mere mortal.”

It was an eﬀort to keep from smiling when he heard his own words echoed back at him. “An ordinary human girl who can summon the wind?” he said silkily. A dip of his head indicated the feather fan Nadia had left behind and that Gisela still held. “I’ve never met a mortal who could perform that trick.”

Gisela blinked down at the fan in her hands, her eyebrows pinching together. “That could’ve been a ﬂuke,” she said uncertainly.

Aleksey didn’t think so. He wondered if she understood the implications. That fan was not a weapon made to be wielded by

human hands. He’d suspected her transformation would remake her in more ways than one—and those wine-red eyes were a dead giveaway. Kazik’s kiss had restored Gisela to life, but no mortal who ventured into the spirit world returned unchanged. She’d become something new.

Something betwixt and between. Neither human nor spirit.

He wondered how Kazik felt about that. Was his love for Gisela contingent on her becoming human? Over the centuries, Aleksey had learned that many mortal men preferred their lovers tame and toothless. Stefan fancied a wild bride for himself while at the same time desiring to clip her wings and cage her, and Kazik had gone out of his way to help Gisela regain her humanity.

For that matter, Aleksey knew the desperate lengths Gisela had gone to herself. Was she upset?

She was still staring at the fan, her long black hair sweeping forward like a silken veil, hiding her expression.

Aleksey ignored the sudden twisting in his gut that was most deﬁnitely not guilt. He didn’t like thinking about how Gisela had become a spirit. But it wasn’t his fault. Her death had been a tragic accident. She’d stumbled into the middle of an age-old ﬁght. If anything, Kazik and his kind were the ones to blame; they taught people to abhor and fear spirits, and Roza was the one who had chased Gisela down. There was little Aleksey could’ve done to stop her.

Not that you tried, whispered a small voice at the back of his mind.

Ignoring that too, Aleksey returned his attention to the ﬁgures locked in conversation over by the fountain in the center