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Imani Cato stood gloriously clothed in a white Roman sheath against her brown skin. Her head was shaved close and her expression fierce. She had absolutely not been on the guest list.

Graves’s ex-apprentice was a master in her own right. After they had stolen from her, she had sought revenge against them by dosing Ethan with her wish powder and nearly killing him. Kierse had hoped that would be the end of her schemes.

“What the fuck do we do?” she asked Graves.

But he was already striding toward the other warlock. Graves was more powerful than Imani, but Kierse had a bad feeling about this. Something was niggling at the back of her mind.

Her champagne had been floral. The room had the same scent under the cherry blossoms. Lyra had smelled like flowers.

Imani’s powers smelled like lilies. Kierse had been smelling it all night, but she had assumed it was the cherry blossoms. A convenient cover. She’d been so set on the plan that she hadn’t realized what it was until it was too late.

“She dosed the party,” Kierse said.

The moment the words left her mouth, Imani blew a cloud of red wish powder into Graves’s face. He coughed and sputtered around it, throwing up his defenses to keep it from getting its hooks in him.

Kierse rushed forward. “Do you have the antidote?”

But before she could reach him, she slammed into another body.

Strong hands gripped her bare arms. Kind blue eyes found hers.

Her heart quickened, and she felt a squeeze in her chest like the air was being forced from her lungs.

That smile, ever present on his face. Like he’d known the exact moment she would walk out of that door.

“Hello, little songbird,” Lorcan said, “what trouble are you getting into tonight?”

“Let me go,” she said.

His pupils were blasted out so large there was only a thin ring of blue around the edges. He smelled like lilies. Fucking hell, he’d been affected by Imani’s wish powder, too.

The potent red powder was her signature. She had figured out how to transpose her wish-granting abilities into a powder that could be inhaled or ingested for maximum effect. While she could grant any wish, in theory, her red powder homed in on…sexual desires.

“I’m persistent.”

“This isn’t you speaking,” she told him.

Or maybe it was. Maybe this was what he wanted, but propriety kept him from indulging quite so dramatically.

She remembered what it had felt like to be burned alive when she’d accidentally ingested a white powder so potent that it had overpowered her absorption powers and had turned her wish against herself. There was nothing Lorcan could do .

He laughed softly. “Who else do you believe you are speaking with?”

“You’ve ingested wish powder. You can’t control what is happening.”

She tried to move around him, but Lorcan’s hulking form moved with her.

“Or perhaps I have just been waiting for the right moment.”

“Don’t do this,” she warned him.

“I would if that was what you wanted,” he said.

Kierse changed tactics and focused her powers, narrowing in on Lorcan. She could absorb the wish powder. She had done it for Ethan and saved his life. She could do it again if she had to. If there wasn’t so much magic that it would incapacitate her.

But when she zeroed in on Lorcan, the golden glow and scent of lilies was all over him. She coughed at the noxious fumes that reminded her of her near misses with death.

No, he had way too much in his system. How had Imani done this without them knowing?

“You must know how I feel about you,” Lorcan said like a confession.

A hand went to her jaw, tilting her face up to his. She felt frozen once more, as if she was suspended in place like a marionette and she had no idea who was holding the strings.

“Lorcan,” she said, her heart beating furiously in her ears. “Do not do anything you will later regret.”

“I could never regret this,” he told her, dragging her closer.

He was going to kiss her. Oh God. She could see it there in his perfect summer eyes. That he had wanted to do it before, and today he would act on it because the powder lowered his inhibitions. And trapped in his gaze, she didn’t feel like she could stop it.

A hand slammed down on Lorcan’s shoulder, jerking him back from Kierse and breaking his hold on her.

“Touch her again and I’ll fucking kill you.”

Graves’s voice was like dragging Lorcan’s face across gravel. His body was tense, prepared—he’d come ready to make good on his threat, if necessary. Kierse came back out of the fog like coming up from underwater.

“You know that you cannot keep us apart,” Lorcan said with a laugh.

“Funny,” Graves said drily. “I can still taste her on my tongue.”

“She is my chuisle mo chroí,” Lorcan snarled, half ready to lunge at him.

Kierse tried to wedge between them. She was not ready for cosmic god magic to start shooting around at this goddamn party.

“What the fuck does that mean?” Kierse demanded.

Lorcan’s eyes met hers, and again she felt that press against her chest, almost like she was going to be sick. “Do you not know?”

“Pulse of my heart.” She whispered the words Graves had told her all those months ago. She hadn’t taken them literally. She had assumed they were some Irish pet name.

“You are my soulmate.”