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Memnon’s gaze flicks to me. He doesn’t say anything, but there’s a question in his eyes.

“You look like you’re trying to figure something out.” He looks like he’s trying to figuremeout. I rub my arms. “It’s making me nervous.”

His fingers cease tapping; his leg stops jiggling. Not that it does any good. Memnon caged his restlessness, but I can see it still prowling in his eyes.

I move over to my bed and sit on the mattress, so close to Memnon, my knee brushes his.

“Who are you?” I ask. “Beyond Memnon the Cursed.”

At my words, the sorcerer seems to tear himself away from his own thoughts. “I was never Memnon the Cursed. I was Memnon the Indomitable. I presume you gave me the new title when you buried me.”

I bite my tongue to keep from arguing with him on that point. “What else?” I say instead.

He tilts his head a little, considering my question. “What do you want to know?” he asks.

“I don’t know—anything,everything.”

He stares at me for a long time, those enigmatic eyes seeming to plumb my depths. He inhales, then begins.

“I was born Uvagukis Memnon, son of Uvagukis Tamara, queen of the Sarmatians, and Ilyapa Khuno, sorcerer king of the Moche.”

“They ruled different nations?”

“Est amage, they ruled differentlandmasses. My father was from the area you know as Peru. The only reason he met my mother is because he knew how to manipulate ley lines.”

Ley lines are magical roads that lie like a net across the world. They’re areas where space and time wrinkles. If one knows how to navigate them correctly, they can cross entire oceans in minutes. Hell, they can travel to otherrealmsin minutes—the Otherworld and the Underworld share these same ley lines with earth.

I don’t know much more than that about them.

“You’re telling me that two thousand years ago, your dad left South America to visit a continent across the world?”

Because that would upend the entire history nonmagical humans have established about the moment the East met the West. But then, it would also explain why I discovered Memnon himself, a man who lived in Eurasia, asleep in a crypt somewhere in northern Peru.

“He did more traveling than just that,” Memnon says. “But yes.”

I’d like to linger on this, but the truth is I’m not particularly interested in Memnon’s dad. I’m interested in Memnon himself.

I search his face. “What else?”

The corners of his eyes crinkle, like I’m amusing him—or maybe he’s simply pleased to have captured my attention.

“I learned to ride a horse at the same time I learned to walk, and I killed my first opponent at thirteen,” he says. “But perhaps most importantly, my power first awoke when you called to it.”

Normally, supernaturals drink a concoction calledbittersweetto Awaken their powers. To hear that this didn’t happen to Memnon, that instead, a person—Roxilana, I assume—awoke it…

“How?”

Memnon gives me a heavy look. “Trauma. When you were a child, a Roman legion attacked your village and killed your family. In your fear, you called out to me through our bond.”

I’m barely breathing. I don’t bother correcting him on the fact this is not me he’s speaking of.

“I was confused for many moons about the fearful voice in my head. I didn’t know who you were or where you lived—or even that you lived. I thought you were a spirit, one who spoke a language I didn’t initially know. And you couldn’t hear me, not for a long while.

“But once you did”—Memnon smiles—“things got very fun.

“We spoke to each other all the time—sometimes when we didn’t even mean to. I remember being in the middle of battle when I heard you curse at yourself for breaking a bowl.”

I stare at Memnon, hanging on every word.