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Gradually, my pain ebbs away. I sense it the moment I’m fully healed.

With a sob, I lunge for Memnon, wrapping my arms around him and burying my face in his shoulder. My whole body is shaking violently. Even though my body is healed, it still has some memory of all that’s been done to it.

I still sense Memnon’s otherness—he’s more magic than man at the moment—but his arms close around me, and he holds me tight to him.

Fierce queen, enduring mate, I’ve got you. I am yours, forever.

CHAPTER 37

“You don’t understand,”Juliana says angrily once Memnon has returned to her and allowed the sorceress to speak once more. “I am the daughter of Luca Fortuna. Hewillmake you pay for what you’ve done.”

I sit amid the rubble, my body weary, my clothes in tatters, my mind aching to leave this room where so many horrors have happened.

My mate stares down at Juliana where she still kneels, studying her with those burning eyes.

“I felt it when you snapped Selene’s bones one by one,” he says. “I felt her pain, and I heard her screams. They will haunt me for all my days. I am not a nice man. I am an evil one—even more so than you and your siblings. Even more than your father. You think you understand pain? Torture? I want you to know that I can be even more creative than you. If you fail to cooperate with me, I will make you break your own bones, one by one.”

She looks afraid now.

He crouches in front of her. “Do you want to hear the rest of what I’ll do to you? How I will order you to skin yourself alive, how I will make you draw out your own intestines?—”

“Stop!Stop!”

“Then you will truthfully tell me everything you know about the murders of witches.”

“I don’t know much about the murders,” Juliana begins. “I didn’t kill them.” She pauses, like that’s enough to fulfill Memnon’s magical command.

However, after a couple tense seconds, her throat works and more spills out.

“My father and my brother are the ones who know more. I don’t know if they killed the witches themselves or why. I don’t want to know so I’ve never asked.”

She stops again, and I see the muscles in her throat strain as Memnon’s command still rides her.

Tell me everything, he said.

“Each month on the night of the new moon, my sister and I deliver one or two of our bonded supernaturals to my dad and my brother. They’re the ones that die.”

I don’t know what is more shocking: that all the murder victims were previously bonded or that we now know exactly who the killers are.

“This happens every new moon?”

Juliana clenches her jaw, then nods. “At midnight sharp.”

“And your father and brother are the only ones who would know what happens to these supernaturals?”

She hesitates. “No,” she eventually admits.

“Explain yourself—again, truthfully,” Memnon says.

“My father and brother—they get paid for the… the deaths. Whoever pays them probably also knows what’s going on.”

“Yet you don’t?” Memnon says, looking unconvinced.

“It’s the truth,” she hisses out.

“How do I get into the Equinox on the night of the new moon?” Memnon asks.

Juliana laughs. I think she’s about to tell Memnon that getting in is impossible, but then her throat works.