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Vladimir’s eyes sparkled with hope. “Let’s go find them all tomorrow.”

“I expected you to ridicule me.”

“After all we’ve been through together? I’d believe you if you told me hell exists.”

“Does it?” Lucienne asked.

Vladimir flashed a white smile, and Lucienne’s breath hitched. “It might take a decade to locate the quantum plane. We might never find it.”

“Even so, I’m with you until the end, Lucienne Lam.” Vladimir said. “I’ll go with you to the ends of the Earth, even to a quantum hell.”

He might just do that. She had seen him jump into the abyss after her. Lucienne placed her palm against Vladimir’s face. “We’ll be together one day. That’s my promise to you.”

Vladimir held her palm, guided it toward his lips, and kissed it. Over Lucienne’s alarmed look, he chuckled. “I have great self-control. I’m only worried about you, milácek. I’m aware I’m impossible to resist.”

“You’re incorrigible,” Lucienne said.

Their fingers intertwined, Vladimir and Lucienne walked along the bank lined by the willows. The breeze whispered a poem to the moon’s reflection on the lake. The night might look serene and poetic, but Lucienne knew she and Vladimir were being closely watched. Her warriors had arrived from Sphinxes and camouflaged themselves. Kian even placed snipers on the rooftops.

“How are you holding up?” Vladimir turned to Lucienne with a concerned look, noticing her disquiet.

Lucienne inhaled sharply. Her eyes filled with tears.

“Come here.” Vladimir led her to a wooden bench under a willow tree and sat her on his lap, his arm against the small of her back.

Lucienne clung to Vladimir, sobbing. “Jed took the bullet that was meant for me, and I killed him.” All the memories of Jed flooded back. If she hadn’t invaded Jed’s mind by a brutal force, her grandfather would still be alive. She hated herself—the ruthless Siren! Did Vladimir know how lethal she could be? He had only the taste of her toxic kiss, but she knew she could be much worse.

She let her tears flow freely and left a smudge of dark mascara on his collar, and Vladimir rubbed his warm cheek against her silky hair.

CHAPTER SEVEN

ONE YEAR LATER

THE ISLAND OF SPHINXES

Toned legs picked up speed, running through a flock of seabirds on the white beach. The birds scattered, as if they knew not to get in Lucienne Lam’s way on this sunny day when the azure sky bent to listen to the symphony of the ocean waves.

She was six feet tall and as regal as a queen. As the seagulls glided toward the heavens, their wings brushed the girl’s lustrous hair. Lucienne laughed.

She had just come back to Sphinxes—her headquarters on an unmarked island in the Pacific Ocean—after overseeing covert operations in Europe and Asia. Kian McQuillen and his team stayed behind to check the rest of the stations in the U.S.

An encrypted phone—Eidolon—vibrated on her belt. Sphinxes had been equipped with private encrypted satellite uplinks and an inaccessible underground network. Lucienne clicked on Eidolon and read the message: “A signal came.”

“You’d better be right this time.” Lucienne turned on her heels, springing toward a stone castle that leaned against the eastern sky in the distance. When her ancestor bought the island centuries ago, the Scottish style castle was already built. Lucienne and Kian had upgraded it to suit their needs.

Lucienne’s white jeep sped toward the castle. Two heavily armed soldiers guarded the entrance of the gate, while a dozen other soldiers patrolled the perimeter of the castle. Despite this, Kian had wired the fortified island with cameras.

Smiling, Lucienne threw her keys to one of the saluting soldiers and ordered him to park the jeep. She ran into the castle in her whitejogging outfit. Across the ward, several commandos kept watch as a handful of engineers and technicians sat around wooden tables outside the café, drinking their coffee.

Lucienne entered the west wing. The important labs were all set underground. At a private elevator, she stopped, pressing her palm on a bio-scanner. The elevator opened. Lucienne entered and hit B3.

Stepping out of the elevator, she strode down the hallway toward a steel door marked SX1. She placed her left palm inside a glass cipher box. The door slid open.

Lucienne strolled into a laboratory that was larger than a baseball field. Under artificial sunlight, the scientists—almost all of them young and proud—were monitoring readouts on broadband electromagnetic receivers, dark-matter detectors, and other quantum devices.

Excitement and nervousness were thick in the air. Lucienne darted her eyes toward Vladimir. A scar above his left brow added a dangerous allure to his masculine beauty. The scar forever reminded her of how her kiss had made him fall from the horse. Her gaze quickly moved down to his well-muscled chest under his designer black shirt.

Lucienne tore her gaze away, but not before she caught a ghost of a smile on the corner of his lips. She knew his smile was for the brilliant hacker, Ziyi Wen, and not for her. She and Vladimir were keeping their distance now, ever since that second kiss rendered the prince unconscious for two days. There couldn’t be a third. They both knew that.