I need help, and I need power. Memnon has both.

Resolve straightens my back. Kneeling in front of him, I take his blade from his other hand. My own magic is already unspooling out of me, the smoky tendrils of it straining for Memnon’s dripping blood.

I take a deep breath, then before I can reconsider my actions, I draw the dagger down my palm, grimacing as I cut my skin for the second time in two days.

I reach for Memnon’s hand, pausing just short of it. My gaze flicks to the sorcerer.

“This doesn’t mean I forgive you,” I warn him.

“I’m repaying a debt. No forgiveness is needed,” he says smoothly.

Scowling, I finally clasp his hand in mine.

The moment our blood touches, our powers hiss to life, streaming out from between our clasped hands and swirling together around us.

I drop Memnon’s blade as his magic enters me through my wound and makes its way up my arm. It reaches my chest, and I suck in a breath as his power takes root beneath my ribs.

As soon as the magic settles, Memnon releases another wave of power, and I feel the cut on my palm seal itself up.

I release his hand, running my fingers over my newly repaired skin, smearing a little of the residual blood.

Memnon sits back on his haunches, resting his forearms on his knees. He watches me quietly for several seconds.

I can’t look at him. I now control a man—my own soul mate. Shame blooms in me. I shouldn’t have agreed to this.

“Test it out, Empress,” he says softly. “Compel me to do your bidding.”

My dread rises. This sort of bond is what I fought against only two weeks ago. It was the fate I saved the shifter girl from.

Yet this is also what Memnon freely offered. And it is what I wanted.

Finally, I look at Memnon, ignoring the sad, wondrous way he appraises me.

“Stab me.” I say the words softly, casually. No magic accompanies them, and a part of me is sure the command won’t work.

Memnon blanches. “Selene,” he protests. But already his hand reaches for his discarded dagger.

Dimly, I’m aware of my magic forcing him through the movements, but I cannot see the plumes of it at work. It’s all happening within him.

I lift my chin. “Right through the heart.”

“No.” But even as he speaks, his hand curls around the hilt of the blade, and his body is angling toward me. Panic clouds his eyes, and I can feel an echo of it through our connection.

One of his hands braces me by the back of the neck while his other arm draws back.

For an instant, that arm trembles. “Please,” he begs.

Then he lunges at me, his arm driving forward, the dagger aimed right for my heart.

“Stop.”

Memnon’s blade freezes inches from my chest. He’s breathing hard, and his arms are shaking.

I don’t realize until then that I’m shaking as well. I don’t think I fully believed that the binding spell worked until that moment.

“Put the blade away,” I say softly. “You won’t be stabbing me tonight—or any other night.”

Oh Goddess, I’ve traded my memory loss for a new complication: needing to be precise with my words.

Memnon banishes the blood from his blade, then sheathes it, his breath a little ragged.

“I don’t want to marry you,” I say. My whole body still aches from the unfulfilled vow.

The sorcerer hesitates. When he finally looks up, his eyes are conflicted. “It’s an unbreakable oath, est amage.”

“You don’t need to keep calling me that.”

His jaw clenches. “Then command me to stop.”

The two of us stare each other down.

I blow out a breath. “Fine, if I cannot undo the oath, then we’re going to work with that other part of the vow.”

How had he worded it?

As soon as circumstances allow, Memnon says to me through our bond.

I give him a look. “I want the ‘circumstances’ in question to be that we have to fall in love.” I can live with that.

His eyes flash. This is what Memnon thought he had in the bag yesterday.

“Or,” I add, “if you’d prefer, we could simply get married—” I feel an instant spark of hope from the sorcerer. “Then immediately have it annulled.”

Spark gone.

I smile. Oh, I think I could easily relish this.

Reluctantly, he nods. “We might have to make another vow for it to work, but let me see if the magic will simply adjust to the new meaning behind that clause.”

He closes his eyes, focusing on the vow, and after a moment, I shut my eyes and do the same.

The circumstances needed for us to get married are that we must first fall in love. I repeat it over and over until I believe it. That malaise that has clung to me all day gradually lifts.

When I open my eyes, Memnon is studying me curiously, his head tilted, a small smile of his own curving up one side of his mouth.

“Do you feel better?” he asks.

I nod, sitting back on my haunches in the tall grass. “I think it worked. Did the vow…affect you too?”

Memnon gives a sharp nod. “I was under its compulsion as much as you were. I don’t feel its effects any longer, but if they come back, we will need to make another unbreakable vow.”

Or marry. But he’s smart enough not to propose that.

The sorcerer is still studying me with that peculiar look on his face that’s part amusement, part curiosity. It’s tempered by the somber air he has about him, but it’s making me oddly self-conscious.

I tuck a lock of hair behind my ear. “What are you thinking about?” I ask.

Memnon’s gaze is steady. “That I should’ve given you control long ago.” He stops speaking, and I think that’s it. However, after a protracted moment, he frowns as more words are pried from his lips. “I’m also replaying your last day as Roxilana over and over again in the back of my mind,” he adds unwillingly, “but I’m trying not to let you see how I’m slowly suffocating on my own pain.” After he finishes speaking, he grimaces. For all that we are connected, Memnon still has his secrets.

Or he did until now.

I didn’t really want to hear that either, if I’m being honest. Memnon is more palatable when he’s heartless and cruelly devious. Now that we have this arrangement, that’s where I want to keep him.

“I’m fine,” I say, trying to brush over the events. “I’m alive.” But Memnon also violently lost his mother and sister, and unlike me, they’re not coming back. He has to come to terms with that as well.

I clear my throat, eager to turn the conversation away from the past.

“I don’t want you to hurt my friends ever again,” I say.

Memnon’s eyes sharpen. “You’re going to need to nuance that command.”

My knee-jerk reaction is to argue with him, but I can begrudgingly admit he has a point. I literally just showed him a memory of two supposed friends betraying him. I fought them both, and if I hadn’t been able to hurt them, I would be long dead.

“You are not to hurt my friends unless there’s a reasonable cause for it,” I amend.

Shit, there’s definitely room for Memnon to abuse that rule. Whatever. I can fine-tune the command later.

I draw in a breath. “Now that you know what happened between us long ago, I want to talk about the other reason I called you here.” The real reason.

He waits, arms casually slung over his knees, watching me again with that look in his eye as dusk bleeds into darkness.

“You told me not so long ago that I have enemies,” I say.

Memnon watches me carefully. “I did.”

I think back to the threatening note left in my journal. “Those witches, the ones who were after me the night I saved the shifter girl—when you lent me your power—they are still out there.”

My mate’s expression darkens. “Not all of them.”

Right. Because between me, Nero, and Memnon, a few of them definitely kicked the bucket that night.

Okay, so at least he knows what I’m referring to.

“There’s also the murdered witches,” I say. “The ones whose deaths you framed me for.” I don’t mean for the bitterness to enter my voice, but there it is. And it’s going to be there for a long time, regardless of Memnon’s efforts to repay his debt. “I’m linked to these two separate issues. And I know you know more about the murders than I do.”