An unfamiliar car awaited her outside of the house. A luxe black car, the kind that only the rich assholes in the Arcane Lights, the movie producers and the like drove. When she parked, out of it emerged an older witching man—one that shared the facial features of the boy she'd come to love.

"Hello Solene," said Icarus Beltane—the man she knew to be his father. He had large bags under his eyes, and a certain frantic, weary quality to him.

"What are you doing here?"

"Dorian didn't come home last night." Icarus paused. "I know he isn't here. I know where he is but—I don't think he's going to listen to me."

Solene crossed her arms over her chest as she'd considered what Dorian had told her. "Not if you made him into what he is, no."

"That's what he thinks, I know it is," Icarus sighed. "Children never understand the sacrifices parents make for them."

"What kind of a sacrifice is it, making him a weapon for your political ambition?" Solene demanded.

He laughed—a sad, bitter thing. "I never wanted him to become a weapon. But people have been trying to kill him since the day he was born. The needs of the few outweigh the needs of the majority, and anything to halt the apocalypse."

She could see now that Icarus Beltane wasn't much older than Horus, his cousin. But he looked older, more tired. 

"I can't protect him forever," he murmured. "I already can't protect him. But I thought by teaching him to use his power—" 

He stopped and shook his head. "Never mind."

He withdrew a scrap of paper from his pocket. There was an address scrawled on it. Perrin Street. In Three Ships Point. A small town, far to the north.

"I think he's gone there," Icarus explained as Solene read it, dumbfounded. "It was where his mother and I were married, before. . . "

"Before the Badwolf," Solene answered. She folded the paper neatly and slipped it in her pocket.

"You'll do it then?" His shoulders sagged with relief.

"Of course."

"Thank you. I cannot thank you enough."

...

As Icarus Beltane pulled out, she entered the house and threw everything she could think of that might be useful into a knapsack that had belonged to her father. A change of clothes, something to heal, a wand. It was a frenzied thing. 

She left a scrawled note for whenever her mother returned. Solene knew she'd be angry—furious, more likely. But Solene would face the consequences later, when Dorian was safe. That was all that mattered. 

...

The redwoods towered over the cafe where Solene stopped after crossing the line that marked the beginning of the township of Three Ships Point. She'd driven all through the night to get here, but she wouldn't have been able to sleep anyway. 

The piece of paper Mr. Beltane gave her was burning in her pocket. 

In the moment, all she'd cared about was that Dorian had run away after she left him in the morning, that he was in trouble. But it was now, a good twenty-four hours later and a whole night of driving, that a different train of thought had come to the station.

Dorian had killed people.

And she'd helped him cover it up that night, acting as his alibi.

Her hands were as bloody as Horus Beltane's. 

How could she possibly face him after all of that?

She peered into the depths of her coffee cup, never mind that she'd never taken tot he field of calculations and everyone knew tea leaves were the preference anyway. 

She knew where Dorian would be, his father was quite certain of that. It was still mid-morning in Three Ships Point. Surely she could delay a little. 

After all, it wasn't as if she and her family didn't have history here.

What Solene had heard was never directly from her mother—and even rarer, not from Aunt Soleil. Aunt Helena was the one who told those stories, but always with a certain detachment, couched in rumor and cloaked in urban legend. 

"The Danaans at their height lived in the mansion in quiet little Three Ships Point," she'd say, while staring at the ocean or the stars. Always some force of nature, always something with the majesty to call her away. "They were benefactors, innovators, and they had these parties where everyone who was anyone with magic would be invited. It was at these parties that they would invite mortals without magic to make bargains and wishes with them. Miracle parties, they were called."

What exactly had brought them to an end, Aunt Helena would never reveal. The only clue she'd speak was, "they brought it on themselves."

More fate, more destiny, more prophecy.

All headed inevitably towards doom.

And Solene knew deep down that she was just another Danaan witch to bear the curse, but this time with a role of hero and villain all her own. 

It would be nice, she supposed, to see another place she came from. The Danaans might have started as the Anouirs at the Institute and all its hurricane-strewn ruins. 

And it was another place where she could think. 

...

Shortly after she took off, driving around town. It didn't take long for her to come across the shuttered gates.

Those who trespass will face worse than the law. Good luck, read a sign that hung off the gate.

It must have known that Solene was no trespasser, for as soon as her fingers drifted over the black iron, the gate swung open to her. As she walked through them, her car abandoned behind her on the side of the road, she could've sworn she heard a whisper.

Welcome home.

It truly was a mansion, hidden behind the redwoods. One with a fountain and everything outside of it and a roof made of gold. It was the kind of opulence that put even the Beltane House out in the Arcane Lights district to shame. 

Every door opened for her the moment her skin kissed each golden door handle, and the lights appeared for her, a basic but very showy enchantment. She marveled at each room, exploring the labyrinth of it all. The inside of it was bigger after all than the outside appeared. 

What would it have been like, to grow up in this house, Solene wondered.

"You finally made it out here."

Solene jumped out of her skin as she turned to see Soleil Danaan standing there, in the sunlight, drifting through an arched window. 

The way the light ignited her golden hair, her silver eyes. . . It was too bright, too uncanny.

"What are you doing here?" Solene stammered with her racing heart.

Soleil hesitated, her expression softened. "I think you know."

In that moment, Solene knew that everything that Valo had said was true.

Her aunt was a member of Astarte, maybe even its leader. And she was here for Dorian—and Solene. 

"I do," she said.

Then she ran. 

She didn't look back—she just kept running to her car and vaulted in. The engine roared to life and her tires screeched as she pulled out of the long driveway. She had to get to Dorian—and she knew exactly where he'd be.