We drive another five miles, still climbing the side of a mountain. In the distance, a citadel looms. There’s no other word to describe it. Surrounded by smooth adobe walls, an enormous palace sits on a high hill, with balustrade-lined balconies and turrets overlooking the enclave of little thatch-roofed huts below. A medieval-style home to royalty and peasants—that’s how it looked.
The road dead-ends at a giant portcullis—closed, of course.
The vans stop, and we start to pile out. A flash of movement coming from behind us makes me whirl and partially shift, but I pull up short.
“Sedona?”
My sister is running at us at top speed. She’s wearing some kind of flowy, old-fashioned gown, and I scent her blood, mingled with that of a male’s.
Amber was right—not that I doubted it. Sedona’s be
