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Whatever plan the two of us might’ve formed to locate Sybil, it’s just crumbled to dust in the wake of this battle.

Memnon strides forward and as soon as he hits the melee, heunleasheshimself. The sorcerer spins and lunges, cutting through the fighters, stabbing and slicing when he needs to. He makes it look like a dance. What an awful thing, to think of killing as a dance, but there is a mesmerizing quality to it, even as blood arcs. The entire time, his attention remains riveted to Sophia, who hasn’t noticed him yet.

I take a step back, eager to search all sixty-some floors of this building if I have to, to find my friend. I’m about to turn when a cascade of pale blond hair catches my eye. It triggers some old, unpleasant emotion, and reflexively, my gaze moves to the individual’s ears, theirpointedears, then their eyes, which are the color of meadow-sweet grass, the hue too rich for human irises.

It’snotpossible…

I’m staring at a ghost, one who haunts my old memories. She’s the fairy who nearly abducted my soul mate twothousandyears ago.

Eislyn.

My magic immediately rises. She should’ve been long dead. Even the fae have expiration dates. How is she alive? And what the fuck is she doing here, in San Francisco,in this very building?

My power is unspooling out of me the longer I stare at her.

I feel her eyes catch mine, and I see her falter. And now she’s the one looking at me as thoughI’mthe ghost. Did she not know I was here, alive?

Then her gaze moves like a magnet to Memnon. I realize belatedly that she’d been staring at him before she saw me.

Her expression is both fearful and covetous as she takes in my soul mate. Possessiveness rises in me at the look, along with the pressing need to end the fairy before she can be a threat to him once more.

I sense the moment Memnon sees her. He’s nearly upon Sophia when he halts. For several seconds, he stands there, completely still, his head turned in Eislyn’s direction.

Then, all at once, Memnon’s powerconsumeshim. His hair almost violently rises, and sparks crackle in the plumes of his magic.

This is the woman who killed his sister, his mother, his loyal brothers in arms. She’s the one who whispered into his traitorous friend’s ear and brokered a sinister agreement with Rome. She is the one who cursed Memnon to a hundred years of sleep so she might entrap him. And she is the one who set a Roman legion on me and all but killed me that fateful evening.

Memnondetonates.

His power rips across the room, flinging tables and chairs and people across the space. Only my soul mate and I remain standing.

Memnon strides forward toward the fallen figure of Eislyn, more rays of his power lashing out around his form. His magic looks like a thunderstorm that’s descended on the room. Thebillowing power catches supernaturals in its grip and lifts them into the air.

They scream and thrash, but only for a few moments. Then something sweeps through the roiling mass of magic, and the supernaturals caught up in it grow docile.

I stare at their glazed eyes as they hang from Memnon’s smoky power.

“Eislyn, what are you doing here?” he bellows, his magic wrapping around her torso. “Were you too wicked to be accepted into hell?”

I can feel his hate and anger filling him like poison. This is more than just regular power usage. This is the kind that eats away at the conscience, and Memnon already has so little of it left.

“Neither you nor I believe in hell, old king.” Eislyn’s voice is as soft as the wind and as melodic as birdsong.

My mate slowly prowls toward the fairy, who’s caught in the matrix of Memnon’s magic. Unlike the other supernaturals in the room, Eislyn’s eyes are wide and a touch frightened, but they’re not glazed over. If anything, they’re sharp with focus. She stares at him like she’s hanging on to his every word.

“Two thousand years, I was forced to sleep, all to escape your curse,” Memnon continues. “I didn’t expect to see youalive. How I burn, knowing you walked under the sun andlivedwhile I rotted away. But then again, if you hadn’t lived, you wouldn’t be here in my clutches.”

Snap.

A bone breaks somewhere in the room, then the lifeless body of Sophia Fortuna falls to the ground, her corpse smacking into a table on its way down, her neck bent at an odd angle. Hours ago, she was next to untouchable. Now, she’s dead, killed in an instant.

“Did you know I would be here, or was it merely a happy coincidence?” Memnon demands.

Eislyn’s lips part. “I thought I imagined you,” she says softly.

Snap.

Snap. Snap. Snap.One by one, men and women in suits and gowns fall to the ground, dead.