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They remained silent as Estelle’s servant escorted them to a small, grated elevator that whisked them to a higher floor, then led them down the hall to a wooden door.

“Your usual room,” the woman said.

“Merci,” Graves said. He pushed the door open for Kierse. “After you.”

She stepped inside and found a grand guest suite overlooking the Eiffel Tower, complete with an adjoining bath and a four-poster bed.

Kierse hastily turned away from the bed as Graves shut the door and pressed his hand against it.

A second later, the crush of magic around them diminished.

Kierse gasped in a breath. She hadn’t realized quite how oppressive it was until it was gone.

The house was dripping in magic. Pervasive and all-consuming.

“Holy shit,” Kierse said as she sank into a chair. “How much magic is she using?”

“Too much,” Graves said. He shot her a wry look. “She’s showing off.”

“For you?”

“Me. You. It’s all a bluster.”

“She must be incredibly powerful,” Kierse said.

“She would like you to think so.” He swept his hand out, and for a second she could feel his magic wash over her and then disappear.

“Now who is showing off?”

“I don’t want her to be able to listen in.”

While Graves’s main magic was knowledge, his secondary magic was noise distortion. Even another master warlock wasn’t going to get through his magic to hear their conversation. Which was for the better. Since they were lying.

“That was quite a performance,” Kierse said.

His expression remained hard as he looked at her, but she could see a question in those swirling irises. As if he wasn’t quite sure whether she was complimenting him. “It went as planned.”

“Stirring,” she praised drily. “The way she was shocked that you’d risk your precious objects for a lover.” Kierse almost laughed. Instead, she bit the inside of her cheek and glanced away, inspecting the room. “When we both know you wouldn’t.”

“Hmm,” was all he said.

She flicked a glance at him and found him watching her. “What? Are you so surprised everyone knows you? I’m shocked you got away with a marriage ruse yet again. Perhaps it was just shocking enough to get her to believe it.”

“Perhaps it was,” he said stiffly. No expression change.

Kierse turned away again. No reaction from him shouldn’t matter. She wanted to get the cauldron for the thrill of it. If it cancelled out her debt for his help with the bracelet, then all the better. In fact, maybe he’d be in her debt. Wouldn’t that be a welcome change of pace?

“What did you see when you looked at her?” Graves asked.

“A woman no older than me. Mid-twenties at most, with dark hair down in waves around her shoulders, and violet eyes. She was wearing a red gown and gloves. Did she not look the same to you?”

“She’s talented in hiding her appearance when she wants to.

She usually has the violet eyes, but the gown was different.

An expensive tiered pink thing that she used to wear back in the day, and fancy heeled shoes I’d recognize anywhere.

Her hair was coiffed into this big elaborate…

” He trailed off as he held his hands above his head for emphasis.

“I wasn’t sure how much of it was fake.”

“I thought you could see through her illusions?”

Graves shrugged. “I can parse the truth from her magic when I touch it. For instance, I knew that the room wasn’t a full falsity from the authentic fireplace. And I could tell her dress was false when she hugged me.” His gaze swept over her. “But you couldn’t see the shape of her illusions?”

“No. I could feel her magic, though.”

“Interesting.”

He said it like it was something she should be able to do. But she’d never been able to discern the nature of someone else’s magic, just that they were using it. She was pretty sure that was part of the magical intuition that was on the other side of her wisp abilities.

“What game do you think she would have made me play if I had been willing or able?”

He shrugged. “Nothing you would have enjoyed. She uses her illusions to put people into difficult situations. She’s very perceptive.

Her secondary magic is reading emotions between people, and then she uses what she sees there to her advantage.

Generally entangling them or making them face hard truths through some kind of trickery. ”

“If she can read emotions, then she would know we are not married,” Kierse guessed.

Graves arched an eyebrow. “Are we not entangled?”

Kierse swallowed at the heat in those words. “That’s a word for it.”

He bridged the distance between them. The entire world suddenly seemed to drop away in his presence. His bare hand came up to brush aside a lock of her hair. His magic breezed through the glamour as he tucked the hair behind her faintly pointed ears with a smirk on his perfect lips.

His fingers dipped down her jaw and to the pulse in her neck.

His hand wrapped gently around her throat as he had done that first night they had met.

When he had been testing his powers to find out her ill intentions and found silence instead.

He still couldn’t discover what she was thinking with a touch of his hand, but that did not mean there were no clues.

“This heart beats for me.”

Kierse wrenched herself free. A heavy breath escaped her. She had been trapped in those stormy eyes and felt adrift at sea, his touch a lifeline in an endless ocean. But it was a ruse. This wasn’t real. Whatever he was doing was part of his games, and she didn’t want to play.

“If all she needs is a beating heart, then we’re fine.”

Graves dropped his hand. “It’s a secondary power,” he said, unperturbed. “Powerful emotions swing in either direction, and she cannot tell the difference between contrived emotions and reality. Though she is better at it with people that she knows.”

“Then I am safe,” Kierse said.

“Indeed.” Graves checked his phone for the time. “We’ll begin shortly. I would like her to believe us sufficiently out of her hair.”

“What are we going to do until then?”

Graves shot her a devious look. “We do have a bed. It would be a shame to waste it.”

“Then go to sleep,” she said.

“Not exactly what I had in mind,” he said under his breath.

“Graves, could you be serious?”

“Who said I wasn’t?”

In another life, she would have been able to read him and know what all this teasing meant.

But it couldn’t be genuine. Graves was lots of things—dangerous, secretive, charming, mysterious, disarming.

What he wasn’t was sincere or forthright or honest or, god help her, seductive.

He’d never had to use wiles to get her to fall for him.

In fact, the asshole that he was had done the trick.

They were so alike in so many ways. Both closed off and ruined from abandonment—her by her father when she was a child, him by basically every person who had ever trampled through his life. They’d had to claw their way through the dirt from their buried coffins to notoriety.

Maybe they’d been too alike, and that had been the problem.

“Let’s review the plan,” she said instead, turning her back on the rather inviting bed.

“Excellent suggestion,” Graves said. He put his back against a wall, hands in his pockets. “Break out of our luxury suite.”

“Easy enough.”

“Locate the hidden room where Estelle keeps her prized possessions.”

“One floor above us cloaked by illusion magic and warded. All of which I can absorb easily.”

He grinned. “Collect the cauldron.”

“You don’t know if there’s a vault or extra security?”

“The vault I’m not sure of, but security is handled,” he said, checking his phone again. “Almost set on that front. I assume you can handle a vault by yourself.”

“Obviously,” Kierse said. “And my exit is…”

“Through the window onto the roof.”

“And what will you be doing in all of this?” Kierse asked.

He crossed his arms over his chest. “Might take a nap.”

“You’re joking.” Then she narrowed her eyes. “Since when do you joke?”

“When I know that someone is going to understand my wit.”

She scoffed. “If you say so.”

“I will be covering your exit.” He stared down at his phone once more. “Now, get ready.”

“For what?”

“George almost has the security system down.”

“George can hack security systems?” she asked with wide eyes. “Your driver?”

“Like I would choose anyone in my employ for a single skill set.”

Kierse eyed him appreciatively. He certainly hadn’t chosen her for just one talent.

“He’s good. Here we go. The cameras are going down in…” Graves held his fingers up.

Kierse cursed under her breath and rushed to the door. “How long will I have before they come back up?”

“If we’re lucky, a half hour, but could be closer to fifteen minutes.”

“Fifteen minutes,” she hissed.

“And three, two, one…go.”

He pointed at her, but she was already darting out of the room. Fifteen minutes. Fifteen minutes . Fucking hell.

That was absurd. She couldn’t do this in fifteen minutes. There was no possible way. And yet she had no other option.

She raced barefoot down the hall, yanking open a door to the stairwell.

Without stopping to think, she dashed upward on the tight stairs that led to what were once servant quarters.

Kierse heaved a deep breath in as she reached the landing in record time.

She listened at the door before pulling it cautiously open and looking within.

Okay. Maybe these were still servant quarters. The simple interior was night and day compared to over-the-top decor below. Everything was drab and gray and bare. Not a rug or painting or gilded anything in sight.

Also no people, thankfully.

Kierse hastened down the hallway. The door should be overwhelmingly obvious, guarded by wards and surrounded by magic.

There was no need to hide the warding, because it was very difficult to break another master’s wards, sometimes impossible.

Graves had insinuated that very few people could break his wards—though she’d seen a Druid spell on the winter solstice take them down last year.

None of the doors she passed felt right. She was beginning to wonder if this was a fool’s errand when the weight of Estelle’s magic suddenly hit her like a wave. She retreated a step in revulsion. It was a lot of magic. Maybe enough to overpower Kierse’s absorption.

The first time that had happened, she and Graves had been stealing letters from Imani and her husband, Montrell.

Kierse had been sick for days afterward, even after taking an antidote to Imani’s powers.

She couldn’t overdose on magic tonight. Not when her escape was a climb onto the Parisian rooftops.

But fuck, this was her best shot at the cauldron.

“Goddamn it, Graves,” she hissed under her breath.

Then she stepped into the wave of Estelle’s magic.

She coughed around the heat that was like stepping into an inferno.

She wondered what it would be like to see and feel Estelle’s illusions right now.

Was it a fear tactic? Did it show her death or a person’s worst nightmares? What would others see in this scenario?

Kierse didn’t know, and she was glad for it, as her hand closed over the doorknob and opened the door.

She choked through a gasp as the sight of Graves lying dead on the floor hit her like a freight train. His head snapped at an unnatural angle. Those storm-cloud eyes devoid of emotion. His tattoo black against his bleached-white skin. It was so real. Too real.

Her heart constricted as she crawled forward. Her hand reached out for his body as if there was possibly a way to put it all back together. Tears fell from her cheeks as sobs wracked her body.

“Graves,” she whispered in horror. “It’s not supposed to end like this. You promised…”

But what had he promised? Nothing.

Graves had never promised her anything. And now he was dead. Dead and gone, when he was supposed to be covering her retreat. How could Estelle have gotten to him this fast? How could he have let this happen?

Graves? Her Graves? He was the most powerful being on the planet. One of his old apprentices could never have gotten the drop on him. His eyes were lifeless. His body empty of all that fire and magic he always exuded.

She rebuked this. It could not be Graves. Would not be Graves.

Estelle couldn’t have done this, not in this short of time.

Still, the image remained. He didn’t waver.

It wasn’t until her magic began to drain away as if through a sieve that she realized something about this was really wrong.

She wanted to keel over and die from the intensity.

Like she’d never breathe again, seeing Graves like this.

But it was wrong. This was Estelle’s doing, and she could see through the vision if she… just…

She threw herself forward over the threshold and through to the other side.

The magic snapped off. Graves’s dead body vanished. The world was once more whole.

Kierse dry heaved onto the hardwood flooring, now thankful that she hadn’t eaten anything all day. Her body shook from the loss of magic. Her absorption was used up. Her glamours were down. She had only scraps left.

A throat cleared, and Kierse slowly lifted her head in dawning horror to find Estelle seated on a chair at the other end of the room.

She clapped her hands. “Not bad. Not bad at all.”