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  Rolling onto my back, I gazed up at my attacker. Standing barely over five feet, the nightwalker with the sandy blond hair and glowing blue eyes was holding one of the broken legs of the chair. I smiled up at her and the wooden leg burst into flames. All the wood from the chair scattered about the floor was instantly consumed with dancing flames. The nightwalker yelped in surprise, dropping the leg and stumbling a couple steps away from me.

  The fire and pain cleansed me, washing away the blood lust and the need to kill. The monster had grown silent, pleased with my offering. My vision was blurred and my back protested any movement, begging me to lie still, but I couldn’t. One remained. Pushing off the ground with my left hand, I bonelessly rose to my feet. The nightwalker paused, watching me, waiting for my next move.

  Slowly, I waved my right hand, swallowing back the whimper of pain that slashed through my back. Chest-high flames sprung up around the nightwalker, completely encircling her. Her blue eyes widened, losing their unnatural glow. Frowning, I easily stepped through the flames and grabbed her by the throat, but she barely noticed me despite the fact that my long nails were digging into her cool flesh. Her eyes were locked on the fire that danced less than a foot away from her body. It was only after I gave her a rough shake that she finally met my hard gaze.

  “Who am I?” I snarled, tightening my grip on the short nightwalker. Her wide eyes stared up at me, confused and terrified. There was a smear of blood on her small chin. She had fed on Tristan as well. She deserved to die, consumed in the flames that surrounded her, and she knew it.

  “The Fire Starter,” she whimpered in a strangled voice.

  My frown hardened into a cold smile. “Tell them what I have done,” I commanded in a low, grating whisper. “Tell them that if anyone touches what belongs to me, I shall hunt them down and collect their hearts for display in my domain. Remind them of who I am.”

  Still smiling, I shoved her away from me toward the far door on the left side of the room. A terrified scream escaped her as she threw up her arms to protect her face, fully expecting to be engulfed in the fire. But as she reached the ring of fire, I extinguished it so she would pass through untouched. She stumbled and fell to her ass. Quickly realizing she had escaped without being singed, she pushed back to her feet and disappeared through the side door.

  My gaze slowly tripped around the room as my eyes adjusted to the lower levels of light. My brain took in the broken bodies and growing pools of blood as they spread about the room like small black lakes. After nearly a full minute, my eyes reached the far dais. Sadira remained on the stairs before Macaire’s seat, never moving from the spot she’d occupied when I entered the main hall.

  My face was void of all emotion and my thoughts a blank slate. I wasn’t even aware that I was approaching her until I heard Tristan scream.

  “No, Mistress!” he cried, twisting painfully so he could watch me, the chain still around his neck. His bleeding had stopped, for the most part, but he was weak. “She’s our mother.”

  “My mother died centuries ago. She is nothing to me!” I shouted. Anger suddenly blossomed within chest and flowed through my veins like magma searching for an opening. I walked over to her, once again facing her soaked in the blood of others.

  “You can’t touch me,” Sadira confidently announced. “I am part of the triad.”

  I licked my lips as a grim smile graced my features, still edging closer. “If I’ve learned anything during the past few nights, it’s that you’re replaceable. I’ll find another.”

  The triad had been the ones to create the seal that kept the naturi locked away. And with the naturi threatening to break free, we needed to reform the triad, considering that Tabor had been destroyed nearly fifty years ago. While no one seemed pleased with the choice, Danaus had become Tabor’s replacement. Maker or not, I had no doubt I could find a replacement for Sadira as well, if necessary.

  “There’s not enough time.” Confidence still filled her voice, but she rose to her feet. “The new moon and the harvest holiday are in four nights, and they will use it to break the seal. You can’t destroy me if you hope to stop the naturi.”

  “Please, Mistress!” Tristan begged. “It’s my fault. I shouldn’t have left the room. Punish me.”

  I paused, my teeth clenched in frustration. She was right that there wasn’t enough time to find a replacement. And with my luck, it would turn out to be another Thorne fiasco. I couldn’t risk it, no matter how much I loathed her.

  “Why?” The single word came out strangled and fractured from the back of my throat.

  “He’s weak. He has to be taught what it means to be a nightwalker.” Her shoulders straightened as she spoke, confident in her reasons for torturing one of her own precious children.

  “Is this what it means to be a nightwalker?” I demanded, holding my bloody hands out to her.

  “Yes,” she hissed, her composure cracking. Her thin, bony hands clenched into fists before her stomach. An unhealthy glow rose from her wide brown eyes. “It’s about power and not bowing to those weaker than you. I love Tristan, but he had to learn that.”

  I snorted, my fingers trembling, sending drops of blood to the black marble floor. “If you think that is what tonight was about, you’re a fool. He was an appetizer and you let it happen. He relied on you for protection and you betrayed him. Tonight was about revenge. It was about striking back at me because you were too much of a coward to stand up to the court.”

  “They would have killed me,” she argued, her voice wavering.

  “Not yet. Like you said, you’re part of the triad. They would have toyed with you, but you would have survived. Unfortunately, Tristan wasn’t worth it for you. It was easier to hand him over.”

  Turning sharply on a heel, I stalked back over to Tristan, who had been silently watching the petite tête-à-tête between mother and daughter. I wanted her to attack my back. I longed for one more small reason to lash out at her, just so the tiny voice of my battered conscience could use the excuse of self-defense when I ripped her head off. But Sadira never moved.

  “Don’t come back to the suite,” I called back to her without turning around. “If I ever see you again after Rowe is defeated, I will kill you. And trust me, I will be looking forward to that day.”

  “You’re not free of me, my Mira,” Sadira called, her sweet lilting voice burrowing its way under my skin: You belong to me. Tristan belongs to me. I am your maker. It was almost hypnotic, the way it drifted through my brain. There were no protective walls I could put up to guard against her intrusion into my mind. She was my maker; she would have access as long as she survived.

  I spun on my heel to snarl at her, but as I turned, the Great Hall disappeared from around me. The massive stone walls and black marble floor were replaced by a worn wooden floor and uneven stone walls. Sadira had done the same trick before when I was severely wounded. She had mentally taken me to the dungeon I was reborn in. But this time I wasn’t in the dungeon. I was in the small farmhouse I had inhabited briefly back in Greece before Sadira kidnapped me.

  A small whimper escaped me as I looked around the crude house that had given me such joy for an extremely short period of time. For a few years I’d lived in a home, was loved by my husband and adored by my sweet daughter Calla.

  “Stop this, Sadira,” I commanded in the firmest voice I could muster. I struggled to hold onto the rage and violence that had driven me through my earlier fight.

  “This is where it all started, my daughter,” she patiently replied. She stood before me in the open doorway, though I wasn’t sure if it was truly her or simply part of the illusion. Behind her, black night stretched in all directions. “This place was simply a dream. You were hiding. I set you free.”

  “You kidnapped me!” I shouted. “I had no choice.” I took a step forward and swore I heard the floor creak beneath my feet.

  “Mama,” cried a low, sleepy voice.

  “No,” I gasped, taking another step toward Sadira, m
y arms wrapped tightly around my stomach. I moved away from the soft patter of little footsteps from the next room. “Don’t do this, Sadira. She’s not real. She’s dead. She’s been dead for centuries.”

  “I know that, Mira, but you refuse to let her go,” Sadira gently said. Her voice was light, a caress, a soft touch on my cheek. This is your chance to say good-bye and then you can start over with me and Tristan. We will be your family. You won’t have this horrible weight hanging on you.”

  I tried to close my eyes but it was all in my head. There was no escaping the images she wanted me to see. “It’s not real. It’s not real. It’s not—” but my words became lodged in my throat when a girl about three years old entered the room. She wore a long white shirt that just missed covering her small bare feet. A wealth of sleep-tangled black hair fell down her back. She stared up at me with her father’s brown eyes. But then, she got most of her looks from her father, and I was grateful about that. I didn’t want my daughter to be cursed like me, but perfectly normal like her father.

  “Mama,” she repeated, stretching her arms up, her eyes pleading with me to pick her up and hold her close. My arms ached to hold her, finally filling the void that had haunted me for centuries. I wanted to feel her warmth against my body and to breathe her scent in so I could hold it forever in my lungs. I wanted to hold my daughter one last time.

  Painfully, I took another step backward, trying to find a middle ground between Sadira’s image and the image of Calla. I wanted to grab up my daughter, wrap her tightly in my arms, and run from this place. I wanted to run from Sadira, the Coven, and all nightwalkers. I wanted to run back to the life I could have had centuries ago in the sunlight.

  But that chance was gone forever. It was shredding me on the inside, leaving me trembling. My legs shook and my knees threatened to buckle. I refused to give in to Sadira. She would not have me again.

  “I won’t go with you,” I growled, tensing the muscles in my legs and clenching my teeth. “Calla is dead. That life I had is dead because of you. You and Jabari. I won’t go back to you.”

  “You will or I will kill Tristan now,” she calmly said, switching tactics when images of Calla couldn’t make me cave.

  “Ridiculous. You won’t.”

  Sadira laughed lightly, reminding me faintly of a bird’s song. “Of course I will. You are far more valuable to me than he could ever be.”

  “Mira?” The voice was soft and fragile, reaching me from beyond the nightmare I was trapped in. It was Tristan. I had forgotten about him. We were really in the Great Hall, and for now Tristan was alive and still mine.

  It suddenly dawned on me to fully open my mind instead of closing everything down in an effort to block out Sadira. Tristan’s pain and fear instantly flooded in. It was more than Sadira could effectively block out. The image of my home in Greece disintegrated. Calla faded away to only a ghostly memory.

  I knelt on the ground beside Tristan, who was still chained to the floor. Reaching across, I took his hand and gently squeezed it as I slowly reduced our mental connection. His pain was draining me and I needed to be sharp against Sadira.

  The rage from my earlier fight pumped in my veins again, and a new anger filled my trembling frame. I had packed my past away and left it to collect dust in the corner of my mind, but Sadira trotted it out as a way of controlling me. She had defiled the memory of my daughter; she sullied those precious few moments in my life when I’d felt human and whole and happy. I didn’t need the monster dwelling inside of me to fire my need for violence. Sadira had already done that.

  “I’m free now,” I said, pushing back to my feet. “And Tristan belongs to me.”

  You can’t have him, she snarled in my mind. I felt her pulling another veil over my mind, so I opened my thoughts to Tristan again. Trapping my mind between two realities, it stole away my sense of balance. I had no idea where Sadira was. Desperate, I threw up a ring of fire around Tristan and me.

  Sadira’s screams rang through the hall. She had been approaching and got trapped in the fire. With her out of my mind, I extinguished the flames, but she was already blackened to a crisp.

  With a little effort, I broke the lock on the manacle around Tristan’s neck and dropped it with a loud clang. Tristan leaned heavily on me as we moved away, his fingers digging into my forearm as he struggled to stay on his feet.

  The smell of burning flesh filled the room, overpowering the scent of the Lagoon and lush gardens that wafted in through the open front doors. Tristan struggled against my hold on him, trying to look back at the creature that had spawned us both, but I wouldn’t let him stop moving forward.

  Sadira didn’t die that night, but every nightwalker in Venice could feel her pain. At dawn she would fall into her deep sleep wrapped in that pain, and tomorrow when she awoke would still be drowning in it. Even if she gorged herself on blood, it would still take several nights to recover from those burns. I only needed to keep her alive until we defeated Rowe. No one had ever said anything about the condition she had to be in.

  Tristan and I paused at the front doors long enough for him to feed off the two doormen. I knew they would come in handy sooner or later. Borrowing a pair of pants off one of the unconscious men, we slowly walked back to the boat. My back ached and my head throbbed from where I’d been hit with the chair. From the way my vision still blurred from time to time, it seemed that the nightwalker with the chair had cracked my skull. I needed to feed and sleep for a couple days, but I doubted I would get such a luxury.

  Tristan moved more easily as his body healed with the fresh infusion of blood, but our progress was slow. We were several yards from the docks when I saw Nicolai walking toward us up the path. I pulled Tristan to a stop, my whole body tensed. If the werewolf attacked now, I knew I would kill him. My body hummed with pent-up energy from the fight. I might not intend to, but I would still kill him.

  “Walk away, Nicolai,” I called to him. Now was not the time to resume our fight. Jabari had ordered him to kill me, and I could only assume that Nicolai would pursue that task until he finally completed it or was dead. The golden shifter had stopped in the middle of the path more than twenty feet away, watching me. “Turn around, get back in a boat, and drive off.”

  “Why didn’t you kill me?” The question was soft and reached me on the back of the breeze crossing the island.

  “My fight isn’t with you,” I said. Beside me, Tristan tightened his grip on my arm. He wasn’t so much looking for support as he was questioning me, seeking assurance. I placed my right hand over his and gently squeezed it. He had been through enough for one night.

  Nicolai caught the movement and frowned at our hands. “He’s the reason I was sent to kill you,” he said, the words barely pushing past his clenched teeth. “A distraction?”

  “Possibly.”

  Nicolai jerked his eyes away from us as a string of Russian curses rumbled from his chest like a freight train across the desert. His fists were clenched at his sides, trembling. He had been used so another could be tortured, and now he knew it.

  “Please, Nico,” I started again, hoping a nickname would get him to acquiesce to my request. “Walk away. I need to get him somewhere he can rest and recover.”

  Frowning, Nicolai walked toward us. I stepped forward, putting myself between the werewolf and Tristan. His expression instantly softened when saw my aggressive stance and he halted a few feet away from us.

  “I only want to help you to the boat,” he said, holding up his hands in surrender.

  Nodding, I turned and put Tristan’s hand back on my left arm. Nicolai took Tristan’s other hand and placed it on his right arm. The werewolf got a glimpse of Tristan’s back and swore softly, his jaw clenched in boiling anger.

  “This has nothing to do with you,” I murmured a while later, breaking the tense silence.

  “But I didn’t help matters. I held you up when you could have rescued him sooner,” he grumbled.

  I said nothing because it was t
rue. He didn’t know how he was being used. He didn’t know he was aiding in the torture of another. I wondered if he would have followed orders if he’d known what the plan was. By the pained anger that filled his copper-brown eyes, I doubted it.

  We didn’t speak again until we reached the little speedboat. Nicolai helped me lower Tristan in. The nightwalker sighed deeply as he lay across the bench on his stomach.

  “I could have killed you,” Nicolai abruptly said, pulling my gaze back up to his handsome face. He stood on the dock with his hands shoved into the pockets of his dirty slacks. His left cheek was smudged with dirt, and a shadow of blond stubble outlined his hard jaw. A smear of blood stained his temple where I had hit him with the rock, but there was no lump or other discoloration. His stare was intense, holding me silent for a moment, unable to read the emotions that lay just below the surface.

  “You have the ability,” I conceded, a smile lurking on my lips. “But you couldn’t have killed me tonight. You don’t have a good enough reason, and you need a reason to kill.” It was a guess, but I doubted that I was far from the mark.

  Nicolai snorted and opened his mouth to argue, but I held up my hand and continued before he could speak. “Don’t go back to the hall until after daybreak. I didn’t leave its occupants in a good mood.”

  “Thanks for the warning,” he said with a half smile.

  With a nod, I turned on the engine and pulled away from the stone dock, eager to get Tristan back to the relative safety of our suite. By the time we reentered the Lagoon, the worst of his wounds had healed and he was beginning to relax.

  My muscles were battered and the wind was chilling the blood that covered my body. We crossed those dark waters in silence, lost in our own thoughts. Even now I could still hear Sadira’s screams, feel Gwen’s warm heart squishing between my fingers. The soft touch of each soul as it left the bodies of the nightwalkers I had killed this evening pranced through my mind, and I smiled. I felt more alive with every existence I’d extinguished, and I loved it.