Though Nyimara’s tales about the Ridge grew twisted in the telling, there was still some weight to the warnings she’d given.

The Ridge harbored only a single devil, but he was no less fierce for his solitude— if anything, Hades was more. Like a wounded beast, the dark chestnut was never more dangerous than when he was desperate, and never more desperate than when he faced the truth of his crumbling world. Preoccupied with the evidence of that destruction, he didn’t even see the golden pintaloosa burst from the jungle until they collided. Bouncing off the girl’s shoulder, the dark prince reacted instinctively, snapping his teeth at the curve of her muzzle and missing only narrowly. By the next breath, Aoife’s lips curled back threateningly, and the boy’s hooves clawed at the soft soil beneath them. The backward motion of his body was reversed, and Hades lurched forward again, his flame-colored eyes flitting from the curve of her throat to her face, and then—

—then he stopped, slender limbs returning to the ground with an abrupt and jarring impact. Stretching his whiskered muzzle forward hesitantly, the chocolate male’s nostrils quivered, and the tension in his posture eased. Aoife. Both the girl and her name surfaced from the depths of his long-buried memories; among the other things that had only existed and mattered before. And after... after, his games with the Ridge’s other children were never the same. They became more serious, more savage, to match the dark lesson that Hades had learned— and lacking that same savagery, Siobhan’s youngest daughter withdrew from them.

Where are they all? He hadn’t spoken since that night; he couldn’t speak. The taste of blood still filled his mouth, thick and warm, and his tongue was still trapped between his teeth (in reality it’d been freed long ago, but in his mind the truth was different). Wrinkling his muzzle and tossing his head, Hades tried in vain to express his inescapable silence— and then started at the soft sound of a voice that was not his own. ’im cannot give de answers you seek… With a twist of his head, the young stallion watched the pale figure emerge from the ferns, and felt the hairs along his spine begin to rise. While the saltsinger continued, his gaze was drawn into the darkness beyond them all— to a slender shadow pulling itself apart from the whole.

Feeling his heart do a strange little flip, Hades turned around to face the black creature— and it wasn’t Faolain. It would never be Faolain again. The young stallion flicked his ears back in anger, baring his teeth as much at that unbidden thought as the dark-coated stranger. A heartbeat later, he began to stalk toward it with determined intent, his head snaking down and forward. For the time, he was blind to the similarities that declared them blood; beyond recognizing the vague familiarity of the other’s scent. The only thing that mattered was clinging to the Ridge— and by extension, his memories of the family that was now gone. The Ridge was his.

He would surrender it only in death, and die still striving for that final, fatal hold.