The bloody battle in the great hall concluded, Jarrett and the other surviving Vanguardians patched themselves up best they could. Not one of them had escaped injury. Jarrett had suffered a cut to his side that pulsated painfully with each breath.

Nine of his friends were dead. They had to leave their fallen comrades behind, and hope that circumstances played out that they could come back to retrieve them. For now, they had to see what had become of his daughter and the rest of the mages.

The smaller, culled group followed Jarrett as he charged through the halls, searching for any sign of the infiltration crew. The halls had been cleared of guards, and any other activity. It seems they had drawn all of them to the great hall. But then, where was Riordan? Why hadn't he come for them?

Perhaps he had come for his daughter instead. Jarrett gulped.

Eventually, they found the entrance into a tunnel. They lit the lanterns they had prepared for this purpose. As they descended the tunnel turned to crystal, confirming it as the right direction.

Not terribly far into the crystal portion of the tunnel, there was a spot where a conflict had taken place. Blood streaked the glimmering floor in several places. A large dome had been carved out of the ceiling, and below it, crystal had been frozen mid-splash, as if it had dripped down from above and then solidified partway through its landing.

"They tried to make the weapon here."

Jarrett's ears were ringing too loudly to notice who made this observation. His grip on consciousness was precarious. The outcome of this battle didn't appear to be in favor of the mages who attempted to morph the crystal.

No, it was too early to make that assumption. There were no bodies, either way. If they had succeeded, perhaps they had gone further in, to find the prisoners and free them.

Jarrett beckoned the others to follow him farther in. As he suspected, they began to come across prison cells carved out of the crystal walls. Even the vertical bars locking each prisoner in were hewn from crystal. Vicious spikes lined the back wall of each cell. In every occupied cell—which was most of them—the prisoners were slumped back against the spikes, most of them unconscious. Dozens of mages, incapacitated.

The Vanguardians started the process of breaking prisoners free. If mining into the crystal vault back at Rosewood was any indication, it would take them a while to chip away at the bars with their weapons.

Jarrett didn't stop to help them. He needed to continue his frantic search. Where was Scarlet, and the other mages? And… Kiera. He wanted to cry out for her, but his throat was tight. What would he say to her, if she were here? In equal parts, he wanted to hold her close, and yell at her for everything she'd done.

He peered into each cell long enough to confirm that he didn't know the occupant. His obtrusive light made a couple of the conscious mages glanced up at him, lethargic and curious.

"We're getting you out," he reassured them quietly before moving on.

Jarrett was far into the prison complex now, probably farther than he should be from the others. He could faintly hear the chinking of axes and swords against the crystal bars. He should turn back and rejoin them, or bring them forward with him. He glanced into one more cell, reflexively turning away with disappointment when he saw blonde hair and not the black of Scarlet’s or Kiera’s, before spinning back to face the prisoner.

“Ange!”

She looked up at him, slowly. Jarrett couldn’t imagine the pain of the spikes embedded in her back, sucking the life out of her. She smiled, blood running out of her mouth and down her chin. “So, you made it.”

“What happened? Where's the others? Riordan?”

Ange shook her head. “Dead.”

Jarrett's heart stopped.

“Riordan's dead,” a voice clarified. Jarrett spun to see Scarlet a few feet down the tunnel, hollow-eyed, a light orb and the glowing dagger she held illuminating the area around her.

His heart started again, and he let himself breathe, this time with relief. “He's really...?”

Scarlet nodded.

“But we weren’t able to make a new weapon,” Ange said. “He’ll go bond with Calder, now.”

“No. I trapped his soul.” Scarlet came closer, and showed Jarrett and Ange a crystal dagger, glowing luminously.

"Impossible." Ange's eyes locked onto the weapon. "Where did you get that?"

"My mom gave it to me. She had put an illusion on it. I didn't know it was a magus weapon until now."

Ange let out a sharp laugh. "So, you brought me the last weapon after all. Kiera transmuted it into a dagger."

"Where is Kiera?" Jarrett asked. "Did you find her?"

"She found me," Scarlet said. "Through the crystal. She's farther in. Much farther."

Jarrett's heart pounded hard, his ribs feeling like cell bars as much as the crystal trapping the mages did. "Then let's go."

Ange cleared her throat. "Scarlet. Want to break me loose before going to rescue your traitor of a mother?”

Scarlet swung around and gave Ange an icy glare. “What?”

“I’ve made it clear to both of you that I’ve had disagreements with Kiera,” Ange said. “I think there are things you need to hear before you speak with her, especially now that you have Riordan’s soul—”

“No. This isn’t—it’s not the time for any of that. I haven’t seen her in months, and my—Jarrett hasn’t seen her in years.”

Scarlet’s dodge of the word “dad” strained his heart.

“Scarlet, this is important,” Ange said. “You have to listen to me—”

Scarlet shook her head. "We'll come back for you."

Ange looked to Jarrett, pleadingly. He shrugged at her as he followed Scarlet away. Scarlet was the one who could use her magic to break Ange free. With his mundane methods, it wasn't going to be fast, and he wasn’t going to put off seeing his long-lost wife for that long.

For now, the tension of the search for Kiera was held taut between him and Scarlet. They were silent as they paced down the seemingly endless tunnel. They passed the cells holding the other mages that had gone with Scarlet and Ange. The bars had been melted away. Jarrett assumed that Scarlet had set them free on her way out to him. The mages were slumped on the ground, free of the spikes but still lacking either energy or consciousness. It was particularly difficult to see Jayden crumpled on the floor, as well as Fae who looked in worse shape than the rest of them.

Jarrett gestured to the fallen Raven. “Is she… alright?”

“Maybe. Barely. I bandaged her wounds the best I could for now, the bleeding isn’t too bad, but there might be internal damage… Riordan seems to have tried to keep her alive, so that he could drain her power, but he might have gone too far.”

“Leland, our medic, will make his way down soon. He’ll do whatever he can for her.”

Leaving her behind felt wrong, but there was nothing more they could do for her. The strained look on Scarlet’s face made him wonder if she was thinking of Dante. If Jarrett remembered correctly, he was supposed to have been a healer.

As they continued, Jarrett couldn't help but notice the dark, bloody circles on the back of Scarlet's shirt. She must have been in a cell as well. He wondered how she had gotten free, and how she had recovered so quickly compared to the other, incapacitated mages. Recovered enough to kill a god.

It was strange to feel pride in his daughter for killing someone.

The crystal tunnel led them deep within the earth. The cells lining either side of them were empty after they passed the Raven mages, and then there were no cells at all, just bare crystal. Scarlet seemed distracted, as if honed in on something that only she could hear.

"How much farther?" he asked.

"We're close."

After a couple more minutes, they turned a corner and abruptly came to an end. The crystal tunnel terminated at another cell. It was identical to each of the previous ones, except it held the woman he didn't know if he loved or hated. The mother of his child. The stealer of memories. His wife, if he could still call her that.

Kiera was pressed against the crystal spikes. Her head bowed down limply, but as he and Scarlet approached she raised it. Her eyes, mesmerizingly blue, bit into his soul.

Once Kiera was in sight, Scarlet ran to the cell, liquefied the bars, and ripped them away. With nothing between them, Scarlet ran to her mother, pulled her from the spikes, and then into an embrace. In Kiera's arms, Scarlet began to cry.

"It's alright," Kiera said. "Everything's okay."

Jarrett stood at the mouth of the cell, unsure of what to do. He was only an onlooker to their reunion. Irrelevant, he didn't belong, awkwardly looming. His heart ripped as he stood on the outside of his family.

Kiera stroked Scarlet's head, holding their sobbing daughter close, despite her obvious weakness. She met Jarrett's gaze with her unreadable eyes. Her voice broke as she told him, "I'm sorry."

For the briefest of moments, his love for her swelled. Then, the anger overtook him. "You have no idea what you put me through."

"I tried to protect you. From Riordan, from all this. It was what was best—"

"You were wrong." His voice rang hollow on the cell walls. He felt cruel. He wanted the perfect reunion. But this wasn't it. It couldn't be. Tears stung his eyes.

Kiera's eyes closed, sparing him from the intensity of her gaze. "I did this wrong. I know I did. Please, let me make this right."

He couldn't help his voice from rising. "I lost years. Years of time, of life. I spent them suffering." Scarlet sniffled, her tears on hold, and unburrowed from Kiera's shoulder to look at him. "My family ripped away from me, something so essential to myself was gone and I didn't even know what it was." He gestured to Scarlet. "She won’t call me 'Dad'."

"I'm so sorry, Jarrett." Kiera's words fell flat to his ears.

"I don't know exactly what you did to make Ange consider you a traitor. All I know is that you betrayed me."

With that, Jarrett turned his back, walking away from the family he couldn’t stop losing.