My stomach twists at the orders, and I grimace, opening my eyes. This is how Kasey picked me out, and now I’m being forced to perpetuate the cycle.

“You will call me once a week and keep me informed of potential witches as well as what’s going on in the coven,” Lia says. “I will call you from time to time, and if I do, you will answer. If you see a missed call from me, you will call me back as soon as you can. Once a month, we will have in-person meetings, which will take place either here in the city or in the tunnels beneath the coven. Those meetings will be followed by spell circles—you remember how that goes—and I will expect you to recruit at least one witch per circle.”

I want to hurl all over again.

“If at any point I need something from you,” she says, “you are to immediately—and discreetly—stop what you’re doing and come to me. Got it?”

I don’t have the energy to glare at her. I barely have the energy to listen over the pain.

“And,” Lia continues, “if you hear anyone asking questions about the recent murders, I want to know about⁠—”

BOOM!

A wave of magic ripples across the room, shaking the walls, toppling boxes, and causing more debris to fall from the ruined ceiling. Lia staggers, and my vision darkens as my injuries are jostled. The whole building quakes from the distant explosion.

“What the fuck is happening now?” Lia says.

Despite my pain, I smile.

It’s not what but who.

Memnon has arrived.

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CHAPTER 35

I begin to laugh, though it sounds a bit like a sob. I sound like I’ve lost it, which maybe I have.

Lia’s eyes find mine. “You think this is funny?” She steps on one of my legs, causing me to scream all over again.

From the other end of the bond, Memnon’s warmth has iced over, and I feel his cold-blooded wrath.

There are no more words between us. It’s more primal than that. All that’s left is pain, rage, and vengeance, and it swirls together until I’m not sure what’s mine and what’s his.

BOOM!

The door to the room blows clear off its hinges, flying across the space and crashing into the pile of boxes.

Filling up the open doorway is my mate.

Memnon’s eyes are glowing like hot coals, and his hair has lifted from his shoulders, rippling like he’s swimming underwater.

I want to sob at the sight of him. As it is, my heart leaps, and Goddess, the things I’ll forgive this man for simply because he showed up.

His eyes immediately find mine, and even distant as they get when his power takes over, I swear they burn brighter.

“Selene.” He growls my name possessively.

His gaze scans my broken body, and that rage that whispered down our bond now consumes him. Memnon’s power burgeons around him, sparks of it lighting up the indigo plumes like it’s all a miniature storm cloud.

A split second later, his power is there, slipping down my throat and into me, reaching for my injuries and attempting to heal them from a distance. But because healing usually requires pressing hands to flesh, his magic doesn’t do much besides setting my broken bones. The action causes me to scream through my teeth.

I’m sorry, love. His voice has an otherworldly edge to it as his magic rides him. Memnon begins striding toward me, likely to finish healing me.

“Don’t come any closer,” Lia warns.

Memnon pauses, his gaze flicking to the woman.

As soon as he sees her, he stills. “Juliana.”

Juliana?

I glance up at who I thought was Lia. Seven hells.

It all comes together fast. Lia must be a nickname. As in Ju-lia-na.

This isn’t just some random witch gone rogue. This is a sorceress and one of the heirs of Ensanguine Enterprises.

Juliana Fortuna.

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CHAPTER 36

I stare at Juliana Fortuna with new eyes as she takes in Memnon, whose power is crackling off him. I can practically hear the gears in her head grinding together as she tries to piece together the situation from her end.

“Put your magic away,” she finally commands.

I’m sure she’s expecting him to do as she says. She believes he’s bonded to her after all.

Instead, Memnon continues to stare at her, his expression growing colder and colder as his power gathers.

“You touched my mate.”

“Mate?” I hear the surprise in Juliana’s voice. “You’re her bond?”

She glances down at me, reassessing, before returning her gaze to Memnon. I can’t move with my injuries, but I imagine she’s taking in his glowing eyes and rustling hair.

“Who are you really?” she asks. She must realize she’s been played.

“Your executioner.” He says it without malice, as though it were simply a fact, and that makes the words truly ominous.

The sorceress murmurs under her breath, drawing her magic in her hands, then she throws a spell at my mate, the thick mass of it streaked through with oily black lines.

Dark magic.

Memnon lifts a hand and catches the curse. I’ve never seen that done. I can hear it sizzling against his flesh as he closes his fist around it. With a final hiss, it snuffs out like a blown candle.

“Creature, attack him!”

The clay monstrosity charges toward Memnon, and its clay lips peel back, revealing sharpened gray canines.

Right as it’s nearly on Memnon, my mate reaches out and rubs away a portion of the Hebrew word truth from the creature’s forehead.

All at once, the creature’s form stiffens, losing its animation. It falls to the ground, shattering apart, the sound like a clay pot smashing. I stare at what remains of the thing’s head. On its forehead, I can just make out what remains of the Hebrew word, which is now missing one letter. What remains reads as a different word entirely.

Death.

“Creature, repair yourself!” Juliana commands.

I wait for the bits of dried clay to cobble themselves back together, but they remain where they fell, still and lifeless.

Memnon returns his attention to the sorceress, his magic rapidly folding inward, toward his form.

For the first time, I see a flicker of misgiving in Juliana’s eyes, even as they begin to glow⁠—

BOOM!

Memnon’s magic explodes out of him, ripping through the room and throwing Juliana and everything else back. The only thing Memnon’s magic doesn’t touch is me. The hair on my head doesn’t so much as stir.

The sorceress coughs as debris falls and dust kicks up. Through the haze, I see a set of glowing eyes as Memnon strides forward.

“There is one thing I hold holy in all this gods-forsaken world,” Memnon says, closing in on Juliana. Goose bumps break out along my skin. His voice still has that unsettling otherness to it. “And you hurt her.”

The sorceress sits up enough to lob a curse at Memnon. He bats it away like it’s a fly, but when it hits the wall behind him, it melts a section of drywall.

She throws another and another. He doesn’t bother knocking them all away, and he doesn’t react at all, even when the curses eat away at his clothes, and bits of his flesh smoke.

“You cannot hurt me,” Juliana insists. “I bonded you to me. I remember.”

He doesn’t respond, but when he bends down and grasps her by the neck, it’s clear he can in fact hurt her. His magic closes in on her, the indigo swathes of it stained with dark, oily streaks.

Juliana begins to writhe and scream.

“Selene,” she gasps out between cries, “kill him.”

I suck in a sharp breath as my broken limbs tense at her command. She had ordered something similar of me earlier⁠—

Your first true task once I release you tonight will be to sever each of those bonds.

That command hadn’t taken root because she hadn’t released me, but now, now her insidious magic is pressing in on me, forcing my body to move.