Ruby Fever

Chapter 9

I woke up in my own bed.

The bedroom was shrouded in a comfortable gloom. The newly installed roller shades blocked most of the light, but the morning sun slipped in around their edges, setting them aglow. I checked the clock. 6:34 a.m. Barely past sunrise.

I raised my head. Shadow padded over the covers and licked my hand. I hugged her to me and sat up.

The covers next to me were rumpled, but Alessandro wasn’t there.

The memory of me smiling in my vision popped in my head like a soap bubble. I petted Shadow’s furry head. What if I hadn’t really blacked out? What if . . .

The door swung open, and Alessandro walked in.

“Hey,” he said.

“Did I do anything to you last night? Are you okay? Did I hurt you?”

He crossed the room, leaned one knee on the bed, dipped his head, and kissed me. A few months ago, I had tasted artisanal mead at a medieval fair. It was sweet with notes of berries and honey without a trace of alcohol taste in it. I kept sipping it, and after I drank half a flagon, I tried to pick up my fork and missed. My body wasn’t my own anymore. That kiss was just like that, deceptively light, but intoxicating. He had hijacked me.

I opened my eyes and gently pushed away from him. “Did I hurt you?”

He sighed. “No. To my greatest regret, you didn’t do anything at all to me last night. You did pass out and scare the hell out of me, but the doc said you were fine.”

I landed back on my pillow. He sat on the bed, feet over the edge.

“What’s happening with everything?” I asked him.

“We are in complete lockdown. Linus hasn’t woken up, the prince is safe in his cage, and I’m keeping track of Arkan’s movements. He is funneling his operatives into Houston but so far, he hasn’t moved. Your USB is with Bern. He thinks it will still work once it dries out.”

“Mom . . .”

“Is recovering well and she asked me to pass on a message. She would like you to stop worrying about it and drive on.”

I rolled my eyes. Driving on. Right.

I didn’t always understand what motivated the people around me. I didn’t even understand my own emotions half of the time, but I knew my magic. I knew how it worked and what it could do. Last night it betrayed me. How the hell was I supposed to drive on after that?

“Bug found surveillance footage from the parking lot,” Alessandro said. “I watched it. It’s . . . interesting. I particularly liked the black wings and the screeching.”

His tone was light, but his eyes told me he plotted murder. If he ever got his hands on Xavier, he’d tear him apart.

“Something is happening to me. I don’t understand it. I almost drowned you in the pool last night.”

“Not even close.”

“Alessandro, you don’t understand. A part of me wanted to keep you in that pool no matter what it took. I think I’m dangerous. I . . .”

“I wasn’t in any danger last night.”

I blinked at him.

“Your magic doesn’t work on me. Also, I’m big and strong, and an excellent swimmer.”

“You don’t get it,” I told him. “How were you not afraid?”

“Oh I was. I was mortally afraid of being caught by your entire family while having sex in the pool.”

“That’s not what I mean.”

“After everything calms down, we should test your theory.”

“Alessandro . . .”

“We can pick up right where we left off. We’ll pick a night when everyone is away from the house. We’ll climb into the pool, and you can do your best to drown me. I promise, you can have me all to yourself. All of me.”

“You’re not going to take this seriously, are you?”

His voice lost all humor. “The woman I love was attacked last night. Her mother was injured, we have a Russian royal locked in the armory, and my father’s killer declared open war on us. I’m taking everything seriously.”

“Did you see Gunderson’s face after I screamed?”

He nodded.

“When Grandma Victoria cracks a human mind, there are pieces left. They glow in my mind’s vision. Very weakly but still there.”

“Gunderson’s mind didn’t glow?” he guessed.

“No. It was a black hole. It’s like I snuffed him out of existence.” I pulled my knees to my chest. “I’m scared.”

He wrapped his arms around me. I leaned into him.

“What did you feel just before you screamed?”

He wasn’t asking just to comfort me. His grandfather was a terrible person, but he’d made sure that Alessandro had a superb education when it came to magic theory. He was an expert in all aspects of mental magic.

“Mom was hurt and bleeding. I knew that the next hit would kill her and Cornelius. I just . . . I wanted to shove Xavier and Gunderson.”

“To shove?”

“Have you ever seen little kids fight? Eventually one of them loses it and just shoves the other to the ground to make them stop.”

“Were you angry?”

“Yes. Mostly I was scared that Mom and Cornelius would die.”

“And Konstantin? Did you want to shove him, too?”

“He forced this confrontation on us. Did you see all those bodies? Arabella had to kill nine people. We all take it for granted, but she is probably the most sensitive of all of us. Things bother her deeply. She thinks about them for days. I don’t even know how deeply this damaged her. She’s my little sister, and I was supposed to protect her from this crap, except that I can’t.”

“I think we’re safe,” he said.

I glanced at him.

“You’re worried you might hurt us, but you are still you even when your black wings are out. You didn’t hurt me in the pool. Your magic was pouring out like a flame, but you never targeted me. You just flirted and tried to seduce me, and then pouted.”

I pushed away from him. “Pouted?”

“Mhm.”

“I was hissing in your face. How is that pouting?”

“Your hissing was endearing.”

I put my hands over my face. He was impossible.

“The point is, you don’t blindly lash out, Catalina. You’re striking out at people you perceive as a threat to your loved ones. Whatever it is breaking through, let it. It needs to come out.”

“You really think so?”

He nodded. “I’m not saying this in my capacity as your devoted fiancé but as an antistasi Prime. You hold yourself on a very tight leash. It is atypical for a mental Prime to be that controlled constantly. The threat level has escalated, and so did your response to it. I don’t think you can effectively suppress it, but you do need to recalibrate.”

And the only way to recalibrate would be to practice this new power until I could learn to control it.

“So what, choose a target and hope for the best?”

“Yes.”

“What if it gets out of control?”

“I will help you. I promise.”

“Okay,” I said.

We sat together for a few moments.

“I suppose we have to sort out the mess with Konstantin,” I said.

Alessandro grimaced. “Unfortunately, we can’t keep him in a cage indefinitely. As much as I would enjoy it.”

I scooted off the bed. “Why does he call you Sasha?”

“He knows I don’t like it.”

“And how does he know that?”

“Because he is my fourth cousin,” Alessandro said. “He keeps reminding me, as if I will forget. Family. Can’t live with them, can’t strangle them. It’s terrible.”

Someone, probably Patricia, set up two chairs in front of Konstantin’s cage. I took one. Alessandro sat in the other, tossing one long leg over the other and looking every inch an Italian aristocrat.

We had briefly stopped at the office to write a contract. I had asked him about the cousin thing on the way, but he avoided it. He didn’t refuse to answer, he just changed the subject. That was okay. He would tell me eventually. I could recite his genealogy down to his great-great-grandparents. There were no Russians there anywhere. It was all Sagredo and British mental mages.

Konstantin studied us through the bars. He looked stunning. If the night in the cage affected him, he would never let us know.

“I’m glad we’re finally in control of ourselves,” the prince said.

I didn’t take the bait. I just looked at him.

“Shut up and listen,” Alessandro told him. “I’ll keep it brief, and you can fill in the gaps.”

Konstantin gave him a go-ahead wave, a gesture at once elegant and dismissive. Arrogant jerk.

“We know that as of last year, Arkan refined the last two samples of the Osiris serum, achieving a stability rate of twenty percent,” Alessandro said.

Linus had been livid when he’d found out. Up until last year, Arkan’s modified serum killed the majority of his volunteers. Now they had a roughly one in five chance of surviving with their bodies intact and new latent powers activated.

“Arkan is building a network of allies by secretly supplying the serum to Houses with failed vectors and duds. He had been very careful in his selection, but last summer he got greedy. He gifted a sample to House Dolgorukov. Aleksei Antonovich Dolgorukov is the current Minister of Defense. Arkan wanted to buy a future favor.”

Arkan was screwing around with a family in the highest strata of Russian society. He must have been sure the serum wouldn’t kill its recipient, except his chances of success were still only twenty percent. It was a huge risk. His arrogance was getting the best of him.

“House Dolgorukov has two magic bloodlines,” Alessandro continued. “Pattern and precognition. The two work together, making the Dolgorukovs excellent strategists. Inna Dolgorukov, the eldest of three scions of the House, was born without magic, a fact House Dolgorukov went to great lengths to hide for seventeen years. How am I doing so far?”

“Wonderfully,” Konstantin told him, his voice dry.

Of course they would hide it. Primes married for magic, and they liked the guarantee that their children would be as powerful as their parents. Without powers, Inna’s odds of marrying someone in her social circle were nil. She’d spend her life on the sidelines, pitied and feeling useless, while her relatives wielded power and influence.

Not only that, but her very existence put the future of her family in doubt. In the eyes of the magic elite, she was an indicator that something went terribly wrong with the genetics of House Dolgorukov. If her parents could produce a dud, so could her siblings. Instead of a sure bet, marrying into House Dolgorukov would suddenly become a gamble.

“But that’s not all there is, is it?” Alessandro said. “You like genealogy, Konstantin. Remind me, how are your family and House Dolgorukov connected?”

“Inna’s mother is my aunt,” the prince said in a flat voice.

“On which side?” Alessandro crooned.

“On my father’s,” Konstantin said.

Oh shit. Inna’s mother was the sister of the czar. Inna’s lack of powers didn’t just mar her House. It tainted the Imperial dynasty.

“At seventeen, the odds of her manifesting powers are basically nonexistent,” I thought out loud. “Sooner or later, she would have to get married, and the Imperial family would likely kill her to keep her lack of powers secret. That’s why her parents went to Arkan for the serum. They were desperate.”

“You think the worst of us,” Konstantin said. “Inna was going to have a quiet life away from the public eye.”

“No.” I shook my head. “No matter how quietly she lived, her genes would always be a threat. The dynasty must appear bulletproof. One carefully worded article during a time of crisis, and suddenly there is a fatal flaw in the bloodline of House Berezin. Killing her would be cleaner. A convenient accident during this quiet life, in some remote place—a wrecked car, an unfortunate fall from a horse, a drowning. Nobody can prove that she had no magic by examining her corpse.”

Konstantin leaned forward. “That’s the second time you surprised me since we’ve met, Ms. Baylor.”

Oh, you haven’t seen anything yet.

I glanced at Alessandro. “What happened? Did Arkan’s serum kill her?”

“Not right away. She survived the exposure and got her magic.”

“What was she?”

Alessandro smiled without any humor. “Prime venenata. A very strong, very unstable venenata.”

Dear God, the serum had given her Runa’s talent. She could poison an entire city block in minutes.

“Nobody in House Dolgorukov knew how to handle a venenata,” Alessandro continued. “Especially since Inna had no training. They tried to find the right tutor. Meanwhile, Inna had to hide her powers and pretend that everything was fine. The Dowager Empress is fond of socials. Inna, one of her favorite grandchildren, was always invited. During the last Spring Social in March, Inna took offense to something Duchess Minkina said to her. Her powers spun out of control.”

Oh no.

“She killed three women on the spot, critically poisoned seven others, and would have killed everyone present if Konstantin’s mother hadn’t put a bullet into her niece’s brain two seconds after the first victim hit the ground.”

Yep, that was about the only way to stop a venenata. When they got going, you killed them, usually from a distance, or you died.

“The Dowager was grateful but most displeased,” Alessandro said. “We all know how much she enjoys her get-togethers.”

Konstantin’s face displayed all the emotion of a stone wall. “You seem remarkably well-informed, Sasha. I see the charming Italian orphan thing still works for you.”

He’d put an emphasis on the word orphan.

Alessandro’s eyes narrowed. This was about to get ugly.

“How is your mother?” Alessandro asked, his voice light. “From what I’ve heard, the murder of her niece was traumatic for her.”

“Quite well and fully recovered. It was regrettable but necessary. Her quick thinking and actions saved many lives. Unlike some mothers, she always puts the welfare of children, hers and others, before her own needs.”

Alessandro’s mother had done nothing to take care of him and his sisters or to protect him from the wrath of his grandfather when Alessandro tried to become the breadwinner. He had to pretend to be a rich Prime while his family secretly suffered in poverty, so he could marry a rich heiress. His entire adolescence was a giant marital advertisement, and his mother had encouraged him to put himself out there. It was a source of pain to him.

Alessandro smiled. “Aunt Zina was always very caring unless the matters of state dictated otherwise. It’s a rare mother who could murder her oldest son’s fiancée with her own hands. Poor Liudmilla. She never saw it coming.”

Ouch. Who the hell was Liudmilla, and how many women had Konstantin’s mother murdered? Was it a hobby of hers?

Konstantin leaned forward. His face changed somehow, his features sharpening, his jaw growing more square. His eyes lost their warm glow, turning uncaring and frightening. He stared at Alessandro with the unblinking focus of a predator sizing up his next meal.

“See that?” Alessandro told me. “Remember that. That’s his real face. He isn’t mad that I know. He’s angry because I said it in front of you. They get touchy when their dirty laundry is aired in front of outsiders.”

The fury in Konstantin’s eyes vanished. In a blink, he was charming again. The tiny hairs on the back of my neck stood on end.

“Like I said,” the prince quipped, “our aunts take pity on him because he is handsome and impoverished. I’ll plug that leak when I get home.”

“You called your Russian aunts?” I looked at Alessandro.

“Oh, he hasn’t told you.” Konstantin smiled. “He’s my third cousin.”

“Fourth,” I corrected.

Konstantin frowned, counting on his fingers. “Oh well. Your English genealogy is confusing, and blood is blood. How is my many-times-removed Aunt Lilian, by the way? Still cowering whenever your grandfather raises his voice?”

Orange sparks flared in Alessandro’s eyes.

The tension was so thick, you could cut it with a knife and make a sandwich. I raised my right index finger. “Question: Does Arkan realize that the Imperium knows that he supplied that serum?”

Konstantin leaned back. “No. He had taken pains to cover up his tracks. Even the Dolgorukovs didn’t fully realize who they were dealing with until the serum changed hands.”

All this time I was wondering what would cause a man as cautious as Arkan to suddenly attack us on all fronts without any regard for the consequences. He was terrified that once Smirnov started talking, the Russians would realize who was behind Inna’s death. He was willing to risk a fight with the Wardens, the FBI, and the State of Texas just to avoid facing the Russian Imperium. Well, that mystery was solved.

“The Imperium sent you to dismantle Arkan’s murder club,” Alessandro said to Konstantin. “They already had issues with some of the assassinations he sanctioned, and the Inna incident was the last straw.”

“He crossed the line,” Konstantin said. “He was a tame wolf we released back into the forest. As long as he stayed there, we wouldn’t hunt him. He took it upon himself to break into our pasture, kill our sheep, and crap all over our yard. Now we will put him down.”

Wow.

“When did you kill Smirnov?” Alessandro asked.

“Three months ago.”

And he had assumed Smirnov’s identity and strolled right into Arkan’s inner circle.

“How did you compensate for not being a pattern mage?” I asked.

“Patterns are logic,” Konstantin said. “I was trained in logical thinking from a very young age. Call it the benefit of an excellent Russian education.”

“Also, Arkan is paranoid,” Alessandro added. “He compartmentalizes a lot of the work. Smirnov was in charge of his cybersecurity. Since the network is set up, it pretty much runs itself. Smirnov’s main value was in being Arkan’s sounding board. They play chess and bounce ideas back and forth.”

“Which I quite enjoyed,” the prince said. “Playing chess with a rabid tiger while plotting to topple governments and kill important people. I’ll remember that bit fondly.”

Konstantin had managed to impersonate one of Arkan’s closest associates, a man Arkan knew for years. He lived in Arkan’s compound, he talked to him every day, he played chess with him, and Arkan never had any idea that one of his oldest friends was counterfeit. It wasn’t just crazy impressive, it was deeply disturbing.

Konstantin looked at Alessandro. “Arkan is a popular man. Everyone wants his head on their wall. The Imperium wants him because he presumed to meddle with us. Your National Assembly wants him because he stole their serum, and now he’s peddling it like a kolachi vendor, embarrassing them further. Linus Duncan wants him because Arkan outplayed him and wounded his pride. You want him because he killed your father. Ms. Baylor wants him because she is secretly afraid he might kill you.”

The hidden fear deep inside me woke up and clawed me. I had no idea how Konstantin had seen through me, but somehow, he had. Yes, Arkan was ruthless, unstoppable, and powerful. He inspired fear, and it was well earned. Only an idiot wouldn’t be afraid of him. But that’s not what created that hot knot inside me. If Alessandro had a choice of killing Arkan at the cost of his own life or walking away, I wasn’t sure which path he would take, and that terrified me more than Arkan himself.

Konstantin leaned back and I saw the flash of his true face for a split second. “I don’t want to take down Arkan. I want to dismantle everything he’s built. I want him to lose his security, his position in society, his money, his people, and finally, his life. He dared to upset my mother.”

Not “he caused the death of my cousin.” He dared to upset my mother. Inna was only seventeen years old, a victim as much as she was the villain in this story, yet in Konstantin’s mind her death was regrettable but almost incidental, while the anguish of his mother had to be addressed. When people showed you where their priorities lay, it was a good idea to keep it in mind.

“Funny you should mention it.” The voice of Victoria Tremaine’s granddaughter came out of my mouth on its own. “Right now, my mother is resting upstairs because Arkan’s pet telekinetic impaled a two-foot-long spike in her thigh. You caused this.”

Konstantin raised his eyebrows. “I nudged you out of your complacency. Your conflict with Arkan was inevitable. You haven’t taken overt action so far because Arkan never gave you an excuse. Now you have it.”

“It wasn’t your nudge to make.”

A muscle in his cheek jerked. I was looking at him as if he were a cockroach to be crushed under my feet and my face was wearing the trademark Tremaine arrogance. He clearly wasn’t used to being on the receiving end of a sneer.

“I’m here to offer you the assistance of the Imperium. You won’t get a better chance to win this.”

I tilted my chin up slightly, so I could look down on him. “I don’t need your assistance. In a minute I’ll open my wings and then you’ll fall to your knees. You will crawl across your cage to me, begging for me to keep talking to you. You will tell me all of your secrets. You’ll follow me around like a gentle lamb, and when I’m done with you and we dump you in front of the Russian Embassy, you will weep and try to end your life because I’m no longer in it.”

I let my green wings out and let him see a tiny hint of them. Konstantin stared and shook his head.

“Shall we begin?” I asked.

“I’m not easily broken.”

True. Illusion was a mental discipline.

I channeled Victoria and scoffed. “You’re not the strongest illusion mage I’ve met.”

Technically, it was hard to tell who would win between him and Augustine, but he didn’t need to know that.

“The Imperium will retaliate.”

“I don’t care. You hurt my mother. I’m a Baylor, Your Highness, but I am also a Tremaine. We do not forgive.”

Konstantin glanced at Alessandro. “You should tell her that it’s not in her best interests or yours, Sasha.”

The Artisan tilted his head with clinical detachment. “I’m the Sentinel of the Texas Warden. I evaluate threats and eliminate them. You are a threat, Konstantin. Your presence here endangers the Warden. Handing you off to the embassy solves all my problems. As long as you’re alive and uninjured, they will do very little. You will recover. It will take you a long time and you’ll keep trying to kill yourself out of sheer desperation, but you will recover.”

“Let’s see what you’ve found in Arkan’s files.” I fluttered my feathers.

“What are your terms?” Konstantin asked.

I took the folder and passed it to him together with a pen. He opened it and scanned the contents and read out loud:

“The Russian Imperium surrenders all claims on the life and freedom of Ignat Orlov, otherwise known as Arkan, to Alessandro Sagredo. Alessandro Sagredo will have the sole, exclusive right to kill Ignat Orlov. A breach of this clause nullifies this contract.”

“Which part isn’t clear?” I asked.

“You have a guardian angel,” Konstantin said to Alessandro. “Too bad she is wasted on a sinner like you.”

“The angel can be kind, but the sinner is not,” Alessandro told him.

“I’ll keep that in mind.”

“You do that.”

Konstantin tapped the contract with his fingertips. “To summarize, I’m confined to the grounds of this estate. I’m forbidden from taking any action against Arkan myself or through my subordinates without the express consent of one of you. I’m precluded from endangering any member of your family. And finally, I’m expected to render aid to the best of my ability at your request. And I can’t kill Arkan, even if an opportunity to do so presents itself.”

“Yes,” I told him.

“And you want me to sign it?”

“No. I want you to seal it.”

I had done some research of my own. Members of the Imperial family tasked with special missions carried a seal which they affixed to formal documents. This seal put the reputation of the entire family behind the contract. It wasn’t foolproof, but it was as close as we could get to the Emperor’s word. According to Alessandro, Konstantin would have one.

“This will require a phone call,” Konstantin said.

Alessandro passed a cell phone to Konstantin through the bars.

“I’ll need a bit of privacy.”

“You have the whole cage.” It was petty but I enjoyed it.

Konstantin shook his head, rose, and walked to the far side of the cage. He dialed the number and spoke in a quiet urgent Russian. We waited. Minutes crawled by. In the ensuing pause, my brain finally started working to full capacity.

“I think we need help,” I murmured to Alessandro.

“Who do you have in mind?”

I told him. “Just in case.”

He laughed softly under his breath. “Your mother is going to love it.”

Konstantin disconnected the call, reached into his shirt, and pulled a necklace from around his neck, a simple rectangle of silver hanging on a matching chain. The rectangular pendant slid apart under the pressure of his fingers. He took the top half and pressed it under his signature line. A red stamp with Cyrillic script winding around a double-headed eagle marked the paper. He signed his name with a flourish and grinned at Alessandro.

“Congratulations, Sasha. You will have your revenge. I get his body though. After you’re done with it, of course.”

Alessandro smiled like a wolf grinning at the moon in the middle of a dark forest and keyed the code into the cage’s lock. “Agreed.”

My phone rang. An unlisted number. I took the call.

“I’ll be brief,” Arkan said on the other end. “Release Trofim Smirnov, and your sisters will survive the day.”

I went right back to my Tremaine voice. “What a coincidence. I’ve just finalized the contract spelling out what happens to your corpse. So good of you to call after it was done.”

Konstantin slipped out of the cage, moving in complete silence. Alessandro grabbed the manila folder, scribbled something on the back of it, and held it up.

Provoke.

Yes, yes, I know.

No matter how many operatives we took out, as long as Arkan remained at his base in Canada, he was unreachable. Going into Canada to get him required cooperation between the two governments and an international warrant. Linus had tried, but nobody wanted to tell Canada the real reason we were going after Arkan. The moment news of the stolen serum reached the Canadian government, there would be a diplomatic explosion of international proportions. The United States couldn’t afford to lose face. Without the serum, our reasoning for arresting Arkan was thin, and Canada wasn’t wild about letting a team of dangerous combat Primes across their borders to apprehend one of their citizens.

We had to make Arkan come to us.

“This is your last chance to save your family,” Arkan said. I knew what he sounded like from videos but hearing him over the phone sent shivers down my spine. He had a voice that cut across your senses like a knife.

“You seem to be under the impression that you hold a trump card in these negotiations,” I said.

Konstantin grabbed the folder and the pen, wrote something on it, and held it up. Get him out of Canada.

Thank you, Prince Obvious, I would’ve never thought of that.

I kept going. “You are mistaken, Mr. Orlov. You are not even invited to the table. We have reached an agreement with Mr. Smirnov. He’s proving exceedingly useful. We have secured the cooperation of the federal government. Your threats are hollow.”

Konstantin started writing something else. Alessandro grabbed the folder and tried to pull it away from him. They struggled over it in a silent tug-of-war.

“The FBI won’t help you. The Wardens won’t help you. After my people walk away from the burning ruin of your home, they may show up to recover the bodies.” He was hammering each word in like nails into my imaginary coffin.

Alessandro grabbed the middle of the folder and ripped it in half. The prince and my fiancé frantically scribbled on their chunks.

“You’re driven by patriotism. You think what you’re doing is noble because you’re still a naïve, arrogant child. Your country will use you and throw you away when you no longer serve a purpose.”

I needed to convince him that the only way he could win would be by showing up himself. We had seriously thinned his ranks over the past year. He was suffering a heavy personnel shortage. I’d hit him on that.

“Your reward will be a row of headstones. You’re fond of Sagredo. Think of what it would be like to never hear his voice again. How will you fill that ragged hole where your mother used to be?”

Alessandro and Konstantin jerked their folder up at the same time like judges raising their scorecards at a figure skating competition. Alessandro had written 5 Primes left, and Konstantin’s paper said Lost 1/3 of his operatives.

I reached over, plucked the two halves of the folder from their fingers, and threw them over my shoulder.

“That was a splendid speech,” I said into the phone. “Mr. Orlov, we both know why you’re wasting your air and my time. You’re down to five Primes, Malchenko, Sanders, Krause, Buller, and Xavier, who, as we both know, is a potential liability. Your roster of Significants suffered heavy losses. Even if you field everyone at the same time and Sanders brings his sons, I still have no problem countering you. Since you and I started this little dance, you haven’t won a single skirmish, and that was before I had access to Smirnov. When all of your agents are gone and you have no one left to hide behind, killing you will be easy like swatting a fly.”

Konstantin and Alessandro stared at me.

“Let me be blunt: I’m not doing this because I’m trying to keep my country safe. I could ignore that you murdered my fiancé’s father. I could even ignore your little serum scheme, but you had the audacity to send killers into my new home. You’ve made yourself into an obstacle. I will remove you from my path, the way I would remove a pile of crap a stray dog left on my lawn, and then I will live happily ever after, content that nobody will remember your name.”

He hung up.

Konstantin laughed, his eyes sparkling. “You called him a pile of dog shit to his face. I love it.”

Alessandro gave me an odd look. “‘You sent killers to my house’?”

He was asking me if it still bothered me. “If he thinks we’re doing this ‘for God and country,’ he’ll keep trying to intimidate me to knock me off course. I had to make it personal. He knows people with a personal vendetta are difficult to stop. You taught him that.”

An alarm wailed outside. We were under attack.

The two men charged to the door. I grabbed the Imperial contract, tossed it into Konstantin’s cage, and locked it. I didn’t want to take any chances it would get ruined in whatever fight I would run into. I wasted another precious second on keying the code into the nearest gun cage. The lock turned green, I pulled the door open, grabbed a DA Ambassador, slapped a magazine into it, and sprinted to the door.

Both Alessandro and Konstantin were already gone.

The alarm cut off in midnote.

The grounds were eerily still. The north gate was to my right, the main house and a long driveway leading to it to my left. There should have been people running to their stations, noise, even gunfire, but there was nothing. The Compound was silent. I was alone.

What the hell was this?

Magic shifted high above me. I looked up. A black hole gaped above the north gate and another, identical hole punctured the air above the main house. Twin summoner portals.

The two holes writhed in unison and collapsed on themselves. Whatever had been summoned must’ve already crawled out.

A shot popped, echoing through the buildings. Mom just sniped someone from her crow’s nest atop the main house’s roof.

They were going after my family and Linus.

I ran toward the main house.

Another shot.

A third rifle shot.

Mom was a one shot–one kill sniper. Either she was killing multiple targets, or she was shooting at something huge.

I moved off the main driveway onto a side path, hidden by the decorative shrubs, and sprinted, the Ambassador heavy in my hand.

There was no return fire. No screams, no growls, nothing. Every hair I had stood on end.

The path curved and spat me out into the open right by Leon’s tower. The main driveway widened here, connecting to a huge paver patio. At the other end of the patio, stairs led up to the main house.

People sprawled on the stairs, unmoving. Our guards, Patricia . . . I saw a wave of blond hair. Arabella lay at the top of the stairs, curled into a fetal ball, her blond hair fanning over her face.

Panic stabbed me.

I forced myself to stand still and look carefully. A faintly fluorescent indigo dust shifted on the pavers, like very fine glitter. It covered the entire patio. The front of Leon’s tower shimmered with it. If he was alive, he was trapped in the tower.

I had seen this before.

I took another step and saw it, an eight-foot-tall plant in the center of the patio, anchored by a twisted mass of dark green roots. A tire-size flower bloomed atop the braided stem. It resembled a monstrous mum, with rows and rows of indigo petals rimmed in cornflower blue at the edges. A whirl of tentacles, flashing with the same pale blue, stretched from the plant, trying to wrap around Runa. She stood with her feet apart, arms bent at the elbows, palms up. The air around her was emerald green. Sweat drenched her forehead.

The flower pulsed. The outer whorls of petals rolled down and into the stem and the new whorls opened at the center, sending a burst of indigo pollen into the air. It touched the green air around Runa, turned grey, and fell to the ground. The tentacles slid, trying to wrap around her and failing.

The nightbloom, a strange creature midway between a plant and an animal. They grew in the arcane realm, crawling across the landscape and sending puffs of poisonous pollen in the air. The pollen put their prey to sleep, slowly killing them, and eventually the nightbloom would make its way to them and root in their bodies, sucking up the nutrients.

We had about forty minutes to administer the antidote or everyone affected would die.

Don’t think about Arabella. Focus on the flower.

I raised my gun. The flower and Runa were intertwined. No clear shot except at the blossom. I sighted the flower, and squeezed the trigger, sending a two-shot burst at the bloom. The flower didn’t even jerk.

“Run!” Runa squeezed out. “Run now!”

Something shiny winked at me through the gaps in the flower’s roots. Something tall.

I took a step back.

A man emerged from behind the nightbloom. Over seven feet tall, he was built like a linebacker. Thin strands of nacre crystal wrapped over every inch of him, forming a semblance of a medieval suit of armor. He looked like he was wearing full plate shaped from long sheets of chopstick-thin, multifaceted icicles. The crystal mesh sheathed him from head to toe, thickening in some places, woven and braided in the others. Even his face was completely protected, the nacre strands twisting into a barbute helmet with a single slit of clear crystal over his eyes. The armor fit him like a glove.

Dato Buller. Prime armamagus, the Crystal Knight. Arkan had thrown one of his precious five at us. Oh shit.

Buller saw me.

I fired, squeezing the trigger. The bullets smashed into the helmet and slid to the ground.

He flicked his arm. A thin razor-sharp blade made from a single crystal slid from his forearm. Death was coming for me.

A sniper rifle cracked. I saw the bullet strike—it smashed into his head, jerking him a bit, and fell to the ground, flattened.

A firestorm erupted from Leon’s tower, a weird noise halfway between a deafening vacuum cleaner and a high-powered drill—the M134 minigun. Leon was trying to help me.

The stream of bullets staggered Buller. He leaned into it like a man fighting a strong wind.

I dashed around the clump of greenery. Singing would do no good. My wings wouldn’t work. Within his armor, Buller was deaf and impervious to mental magic. It was ballistic resistant, it maintained a temperature of exactly twenty-four degrees Celsius, and it somehow generated its own breathable air. It was a bulletproof spacesuit he could alter on the fly, and he was about to murder me.

The bushes went flying. A crystal blade emerged. Buller bore down on me like a nightmare come to life.

I scrambled through the brush to the main driveway. He was only feet behind me.

I burst through the hedges onto the main driveway and straight into Alessandro. He grabbed me by my shoulder and shoved me behind him. An unfamiliar man who was probably Konstantin in a new shape caught me and pulled me out of the way.

Buller carved his way through a hedge and loomed in front of us, a faceless knight ready to slaughter.

Orange sparks flared around Alessandro’s hand and coalesced into a short sword.

Buller struck. The crystal sword sliced through the air. Alessandro leaned out of the way and sliced across Buller’s forearm. It wasn’t a lash. He’d planted the knife onto the crystal bracer and rolled his wrist, cutting a half crescent through it. Before Buller moved to counter, Alessandro caught the knife on the other side of his arm and sliced upward. Buller whipped around, but Alessandro clamped his hand on the bracer and ripped it away.

How?

The Crystal Knight howled, his voice muffled. Blood drenched his right arm from mid-forearm to his fingers. Muscle glistened under the blood, as if Alessandro had skinned his hand.

Buller flicked a second crystal blade onto his left arm and stabbed at Alessandro, crystals flowing over his injured right hand. Alessandro dropped under the thrust, sliced at Buller’s leading leg, and tore another bloody chunk of crystal free.

Buller screamed and kicked at him in a frantic frenzy. Alessandro had nowhere to go. He braced, took the kick, rolled across the driveway, and sprang to his feet. A trickle of blood wet his lips. He flicked it off and started toward Buller.

The armamagus took a small step back.

The crystal armor was like a ballistic vest—it stopped a fast projectile but not the comparatively slow knife.

I needed a blade.

I whipped around and saw a boot knife in Konstantin’s hand. It looked like one of ours. He must’ve taken it off somebody.

“Knife!”

He blinked at me.

“Give me your knife!”

He held it out to me. “This is unwise . . .”

I grabbed it off his palm.

Buller was a whirlwind of crystal blades. Alessandro floated around him, carving pieces off.

I was a siren through my father but also magus Sagittarius through my mother. I only got a little bit of it. She never missed while my magic helped me stab my opponent in the most vulnerable spot. It required two things to activate: a blade and a target. I had both.

Magic zinged through my palm and pulled me toward Buller. I swayed from foot to foot, looking for an opening.

Buller slashed at Alessandro. Sparks pulsed, and a heavy modern replica of a falcata on my sword wall popped into his left hand. Instead of dodging, Alessandro blocked the vertical slash, knocking the arm aside, and carved a cut on Buller’s helmet. Blood swelled.

My magic pulled me. I darted behind Buller and lashed across his back. It was like slicing through a thick bunch of fiber-optic cables. The blade sank in with an odd crunch. Buller whipped around toward me. His crystal sword grazed my arm, drawing a hot line of pain across my shoulder, and then Alessandro carved a three-inch ribbon off his side.

We moved around him, slicing, slashing, cutting, just as we’d practiced hundreds of times against every conceivable practice construct and mech Linus could throw at us. We bled him cut by cut, like two wolves fighting a bear.

Buller raged. He had been invulnerable for so long, and now we hurt him again and again, and the pain and fury had driven him mad. Blood drenched his crystal armor. He kept trying to regrow it, but we had ripped too much of it away. Chunks of raw muscle wept blood through the gaps. The crystal crawled, trying to seal the gashes, but it was slow, and we kept opening more.

My face was splattered with blood, and I didn’t know whose. My arm was getting tired, the exertion of making deep cuts gnawing at it. He couldn’t keep this up forever, but neither could we.

Buller charged Alessandro, throwing everything into his assault. Alessandro dodged. Our eyes met for a quarter of the second, and I knew this was my shot.

Alessandro let go of his falcata. The orange glow dropped a riot shield into his hand, and he jerked it up. Buller hammered at it. The sword cut through the reinforced polycarbonate like it was butter. Instead of shying back, Alessandro braced. Buller smelled blood in the water. In a strength vs strength clash, Alessandro would lose, and Buller knew it. He rained blows onto the shield, hacking off chunks of it, locked onto Alessandro with the instinct of a predator sensing wounded prey.

Alessandro stumbled.

Buller pounded on the remnants of the shield.

I slipped my knife through a narrow gap into his liver.

He didn’t notice.

I pulled the blade free and stabbed him again, fast, driving the blade into his flesh over and over like an icepick, flinging blood each time I pulled it out.

Buller jerked, arching his back.

Alessandro dropped the stub of the shield and leaped up. A ten-inch karambit knife shaped like a double-edged tiger claw flashed in his hand. He sliced at Buller’s throat.

The Crystal Knight fell to his knees. A muffled gurgle escaped his mouth, the sound of his last moments skittering away. He collapsed on his side. The crystal armor melted, leaving a dead man on our driveway. He was large, muscular, and pale, with sparse light brown hair cut short and a weak chin he’d tried to cover up with a goatee. His body was a patchwork of gaping wounds and missing skin.

I heaved a long breath. Konstantin was looking at me like he had seen some alien monster.

Alessandro’s right shoulder was bloody. I rushed to him. He met me halfway.

“Are you hurt?” I asked.

“It’s a scratch.”

A strange hissing noise came from the main house.

Runa.

I turned around.

The nightbloom flailed as if stabbed with a high-voltage wire. Its roots sagged. Its bloom drooped backward, toward us, its petals turning a dull brown and going limp. The flower shuddered. Green fuzz sprouted on the petals. The nightbloom swayed and collapsed, sagging into a liquefying mess of vegetation and rotting fluid, revealing Runa, her right hand extended, her fingers covered with plant gore.

She stared at her fingers in disgust, shook her hand, and said, “Twenty-three minutes since full bloom.”

We had seventeen minutes to administer the antidote. I turned around and sprinted to the infirmary.

The family was back in the conference room. Everyone was in the exact same seats they had taken twenty-four hours ago, but nobody looked the same. We looked like we had gotten caught in an air raid and hadn’t quite made it to shelter in time.

Alessandro sat on my right and Konstantin, back in his Berezin persona, on my left. The fight with the Crystal Knight had come at a cost. Both Alessandro and I were cut up. Once the adrenaline wore off, the pain set in. I must’ve taken a hit to my back, because everything from the left shoulder blade down to my waist felt like one giant bruise. Alessandro must’ve gotten hurt as well, but he showed no signs of it.

Bern had bags under his eyes, and they weren’t clutches, they were totes. He was chugging a Red Bull and staring at his laptop. Next to him, Runa nursed an iced coffee, her expression grim. Halle, her sister, slumped in the chair next to her, with her face on the table. Past Halle, Ragnar had the pinched look and wide eyes of someone who was trying his absolute best to stay awake.

Arkan had hit us with a two-prong attack. It started with three armored vehicles pulling up to the house. Buller got out of the first one and generated his armor. We had expected Buller to show up sooner or later, and the plan always was that Arabella would deal with him. No matter how indestructible he was, there was still a human being in all that armor and after my sister was done venting her frustration, he wouldn’t pose a threat. Predictably, once he popped up on the security feed, Arabella ran out of the main house heading to the front gate.

Unfortunately, Arkan’s Prime summoner, Maya Krause, had opened two portals, one right above the main house and the other at the north gate, and dropped two nightblooms. The sentries at the north gate went down instantly and so did my sister and her strike support team.

Runa happened to be in her siblings’ casita. She heard the siren, accessed the security feed, saw Arabella asleep and Buller strolling in, told her siblings to stay put until the fight was over, and ran out there to fight. Halle and Ragnar obeyed her precisely, meaning the moment she killed the nightbloom, they raced out of the house to help detoxify everyone.

Venenata mages detoxified by either poisoning their patient with something that would kill the pathogen or by drawing the poison into themselves and metabolizing it. Even though we had cans of nightbloom antidote, time was a factor. The Etterson kids exhausted themselves trying to save everyone. Poor Ragnar looked like he wasn’t sure where he was or what he was doing here.

To my right, Arabella watched Konstantin with silent hatred. I had brought her up to speed as soon as she woke up, and she zeroed in on Konstantin as the reason for Mom’s wound and everything that followed. That’s when Arabella was at her most dangerous, when she didn’t say anything and just seethed.

Konstantin and Alessandro had run to the north gate during the attack, missing Buller by moments. Alessandro torched the first nightbloom with his favorite tactical flamethrower. Konstantin changed shape into one of our guards and went after Krause, but she had fled as soon as she dropped those portals. Once the nightbloom was dead, Alessandro doubled back and ran into Buller and me.

Grandma Frida tapped her fingers on the table, watching Mom who sat across from her. Mom looked paler today, her bronze skin tinted with grey. Grandma Frida told me Mom wasn’t taking her pain medication. The attack had caught Grandma Frida in the motor pool, up to her elbow inside her latest mobile artillery project. The security protocol dictated that she and the three-person guard team protected the south gate, which was exactly what she did.

Leon sat by Grandma Frida. His arms, exposed by his T-shirt, sported hair-thin pale slashes that looked like old scars. Whatever attacked the FBI had gotten him after all. Dr. Patel told me he wasn’t sure they would go away or when. It was definitely making him sick, which was why he’d been asleep in his tower when the nightbloom seed landed on our patio. He’d tried shooting it and Buller, and none of it did any good, not even the minigun. Now he brooded, heartbroken because he felt useless.

The door swung open, and Cornelius entered, his expression grave. Matilda was next, her long dark hair gathered into a ponytail. She was carrying a fluffy Himalayan cat, whose full name was Go Mi Nam and who usually answered to “Kitty.” Patricia Taft was the last to enter, carrying a trash can. Some people had a stronger reaction to nightbloom than others.

Matilda walked over to Ragnar and deposited the cat on his lap. Ragnar blinked at her, startled.

“Comfort,” Matilda explained.

Go Mi Nam dutifully purred like a runaway bulldozer.

“Do I not get comfort?” Leon asked sadly.

Matilda walked around the table, hugged him gently, and patted his hair as if he was a dog. “It will be okay. You can shoot people next time.”

Everyone was finally here.

First things first.

“Family, Prince Berezin.” I nodded at Konstantin.

“Konstantin, please,” Konstantin said with a charming smile.

The family glowered back.

“Konstantin represents the Russian Imperium. He will be helping us with this matter,” I said.

Arabella took the metal spoon out of Runa’s drink and bent it.

I explained the prince, the contract, Smirnov, and everything surrounding it.

Nobody said anything.

“Do you know who attacked Linus?” Arabella demanded.

“Yes,” I told her.

“Did you do anything about it?”

“No.”

The outrage on my sister’s face was so stark, I almost asked Alessandro to summon a shield for me.

“Catalina!” Arabella snarled.

“It’s Kaylee Cabera, and I don’t know how she fits into this yet.”

“I do,” Konstantin volunteered.

I pivoted to him.

“Kaylee was a dud,” Konstantin said. “Luciana was facing a lot of pressure from the family to select an official successor and it couldn’t be Kaylee. Of course, you are already aware of the connection between Arkan and Luciana.”

Alessandro waved him on.

“Luciana contacted Arkan to fix the problem and so he did. Kaylee survived and became one of his mutant Primes. Unfortunately, someone alerted Duncan to the matter, and he went after her. Luciana realized the Warden was making circles around her daughter and getting closer with every pass, so she appealed to Arkan to kill him. He refused.”

“Why?” Leon asked.

“The Warden of Texas is a risky target,” Alessandro answered. “He probably wasn’t sure he could handle the fallout.”

“Luciana took her monster child and did it anyway,” Konstantin said. “And to top it off, she failed to seal the deal. Arkan went into a rage, threw some things, and once he calmed down, decided that he needed to do damage control. He ordered Xavier to kill her and to make it public.”

“And he had her killed at Linus’ restaurant,” I thought out loud. “As a kind of peace offering. ‘Look, she tried to murder you, and I punished her in retaliation.’”

“Exactly.” Konstantin nodded.

In Arkan’s mind, this probably made Linus and him square somehow. And the Russian prince had seen an opening to bring Arkan down. This matter put the Wardens and Arkan on a collision course, so he gave us both a little push. I had put most of this together already, but it was nice to have a confirmation.

“I want her dead,” Arabella stated, her voice flat.

“Not as much as me,” I told her. “I’d like to rip her throat out.” I made the squeezing motion with my hand. “Then she couldn’t hurt us anymore. It would be reassuring.”

Everyone looked at me. Apparently, I must’ve said something surprising.

“Unfortunately, there is the small matter of the oath of office,” I said. “I’m the Acting Warden. I have . . . obligations.”

“Screw obligations.” Arabella punched the table. It quaked a little.

“We will arrest her,” Alessandro told her. “If she resists, we will neutralize her one way or another.”

Arabella pinched her lips together, her mouth a hard flat line.

“We are on full lockdown going forward,” I said. “Arkan is coming. Do we need to get the kids out?”

“No,” Ragnar said.

Halle raised her head off the table. “Absolutely not. We’re not leaving. This is our home.”

I looked at Cornelius.

“I will remain here,” Matilda announced.

“It seems like the most prudent course of action,” Cornelius said.

Patricia grabbed her trash can, stepped out into the hallway, and shut the door.

We all silently looked at each other until the retching sounds stopped and she came back in.

“Sending the children out creates an opportunity for hostages,” Patricia said.

“Then the kids will stay,” I said. “What about Regina?”

“My wife is still with her cousin in Lyon,” Patricia said. “She isn’t due back for another week. I’ve let them know about the situation and asked her to not cut her trip short.”

I could imagine how that had gone. Knowing Regina, she would’ve wanted to be on the next plane to Houston.

“Where are we with our phones?” Mom asked.

Everyone looked at Bernard. He reached under the table and produced a large box filled with neatly stacked phones, each labeled with a name. Leon took his phone out and passed the box around the table.

“This won’t happen again,” Bernard said.

“Is there a plan for this Arkan situation?” Arabella asked.

“Konstantin provided us with a breakdown of Arkan’s finances. He has squirreled away a big chunk of money stateside. We take it away from him,” I said. I knew an FBI agent who would be overjoyed to help.

Alessandro spoke, his voice tinted with detachment, as if he were discussing a chore. “He has a mole in the Harris County DA’s office.”

Leon whistled.

I’d cursed when I found out.

“There are other informants as well, but that one is the most important,” Alessandro said.

“Are you going to expose him?” Arabella asked.

“No. I’m going to take care of him personally,” the Artisan said.

There was an awful finality in his voice. I had forgotten how angry he was.

Arabella smiled. “I like that part.”

I turned to Leon. “What exactly happened with the FBI?”

Leon shrugged. “Nothing much.”

I waited.

He sighed. “I followed them to the Caberas.”

“I didn’t see you.”

“You weren’t supposed to see me. You said ‘shadow.’ You didn’t say ‘make yourself seen.’”

He had a point.

“Arkan’s people hit us on the Justice Park Drive,” Leon continued. “Literally forty-five seconds from the FBI field office. An enerkinetic and some other weird shithead. The enerkinetic lit up their vehicle with projectiles. It blew up a little bit . . .”

“Define a little bit,” Mom said.

“Driver’s side door blew off and the engine flew out and landed on their SUV’s roof. It crushed the top of the car but didn’t fall all the way through.” Leon raised his hand and tilted it side to side. “Halfway in, halfway out type of thing. Of course, the windows shattered because the roof came down.”

“Cheap-assed armored glass,” Grandma Frida opined. “That’s government contract work for you.”

I killed a groan.

“I dropped the enerkinetic, but the other asshole snuck up from the opposite side. He shot bursts of this glowing crap, looked like seaweed, stung like a jellyfish, and things got serious when it wrapped around the car and the metal started smoking.”

“Where were the FBI agents at this point?” Mom growled.

“Inside the car.”

Oh no.

“It took me a second to find him,” Leon said. “The car was smoking, and the fumes made it difficult to see and breathe, and then the seaweed kind of contracted, and there was a crunchy noise, so it was hard to hear.”

Arabella put her head on the table, face down.

“Then he tried to shoot that shit at me, and I saw the direction it was coming from, and the rest is history.” Leon grinned.

“What happened to the FBI agents breathing in toxic fumes while trapped in a car that was being crushed?” Alessandro asked.

“I pulled them out. Agent Garcia was mostly okay. Wahl wasn’t breathing, so I did CPR until the FBI guys ran out of the building and helped.”

“That’s my boy!” Grandma Frida said.

I stared at him.

“What?” He raised his arms. “He was breathing fine when I left. They put one of those masks on his face and he kept taking it off to curse. All is well that ended well. And now I’ve got cool scars. Chicks dig scars.”

“Such a fascinating family,” Konstantin said.

He didn’t know the half of it.

“Okay,” I said. “We all know what we’re doing. Arabella, you are guarding, I’m going to deal with Arkan’s accounts, Alessandro and Konstantin will go after the mole.”

“What about us?” Ragnar asked.

“You recuperate. We don’t know when we will get attacked again.”

“Before we adjourn,” Cornelius said. “Has anyone seen the spider?”

“There is a spider?” Konstantin asked.

Arabella opened her eyes wide. “Yes, very large, very venomous.”

Bern tapped his laptop. The security feed from the office hallway ignited on the screen on the wall. On it, Jadwiga leisurely made her way across the carpet and scurried into Arabella’s office. The timestamp said 03:41 a.m.

“Well, she’s still alive,” Cornelius said.

“She’s in there.” Matilda pointed at the side wall. “I will try to coax her out when it’s quiet.”

“I want to stress that an attack can come at any time,” I said. “He will throw everything he can at us. Nevada and Connor are dealing with Matthew Berry and his PAC mercenaries. The government is pretending that this problem doesn’t exist. The National Assembly is trying to manage the death of its Speaker. We are on our own.”

Everyone nodded. Nobody seemed alarmed or surprised. They just accepted it. Somewhere along the line in the last three or four years, House Baylor had become a combat House. If Arkan thought his blitz would break us, he was in for a lot of disappointment.

“You should make some of those little sandwiches with Hawaiian rolls and leftover pork tenderloin,” Grandma Frida told me. “So your mother won’t starve in her crow’s nest.”

The conference room emptied.

Leon paused by Alessandro on his way out. “How did you know about Buller being vulnerable to knives?”

“Watched a recording of him fighting a praelia once,” Alessandro said.

Mages with the praelia talent summoned weapons and amplified them with their magic. They were usually called warrior mages and they were hell in a fight at close range.

“The praelia had a glowing katana,” Alessandro said. “It did nothing. Toward the end of the fight, he ran out of juice and his sword disappeared. Buller grabbed him by the throat, and the mage pulled out a knife and tried to force it through the armor. He was pushing it in and it looked like it hit home, because Buller went berserk and stomped the guy to death.”

“Nice find,” Leon said and left.

It was just Arabella, Alessandro, and me.

“Are you okay?” I asked her.

“How much time did I have left when you revived me?” she asked.

“Twelve minutes,” I told her. “You were the first one Halle detoxified.”

Arabella gave me a brooding look.

“I’m sorry,” I told her.

“I’m tired of bad shit happening.”

“Me too.”

She sighed and pushed to her feet. “I’m going to go . . . do things.”

She left the room and shut the door behind her. Alessandro and I looked at each other.

“Explain the Cousin Sasha thing to me, please. How are you involved with the Imperium?”

He sighed. “How much do you remember about the change of the Russian dynasty?”

“Not that much. In 1916, the power balance in the First World War shifted in favor of Russia. The German Empire suffered heavy casualties and decided to assassinate Czar Nicholas II. I think they bombed his family’s motorcade during Easter. Only Anastasia and Alexei survived because they were not in the two front cars.”

“That’s right.” Alessandro nodded. “The murder created a vacuum. Alexei was too young and too sick to take the throne. The Imperium was in the middle of a war and required a strong hand. They offered the crown to a half-dozen people, but everyone refused.”

I had no idea the Russians had to play musical chairs with the throne of the largest empire on the European Continent. The history textbooks I’d read glossed over that part. Of course, in Texas the history of Texas took up more space in the textbook than the entirety of the rest of Western Civilization combined.

“What happened then?” I asked.

“Russia scrambled to find someone who was both suitable and willing to accept the crown. They chose Michael Berezin, who’d spearheaded the Russian offensive against the German Empire. Michael Berezin became Michael I, and his entire family rallied around him to make sure he survived. The country depended on it. They faced a war from the outside and civil unrest from the inside. Communists were still agitating the workers in large cities. They were mostly failing because by killing Nicholas II, Germany made him into a martyr. The Russians wanted a new monarch and they wanted payback.”

“That explains volumes about how Konstantin thinks. Family against the world.”

“Exactly. Michael I had a younger brother, Boris. He was an antistasi mage, like his mother, and a Communist sympathizer. He thought that Russia would be better off without the monarchy, so he conspired with his Communist cell to assassinate his brother. The Okhrana, the Imperial secret police, had planted an operative in the cell to keep an eye on him. The plot was exposed.”

“Plots often are.”

“Michael I couldn’t bear to kill his baby brother, so Boris was stripped of his titles and holdings and exiled instead. He ended up in the UK, where he bought a false identity, and married into a merchant family, the Winstons, who were willing to look past wobbly birth certificates and passports to add an upper-range Significant to their gene pool.”

“Your mother’s family.”

He nodded. “My great-grandfather was a very bitter man. He spent his life trying to regain his titles and status.”

“I thought you said he was a Communist.”

“That was before he became poor.” Alessandro laughed softly. “My grandfather was obsessed with titles as well, which is why my mother ended up in an arranged marriage to my father.”

His mother was a lower-level Significant antistasi. He’d told me before that she had the magic, but not the power or the training to use it.

“My maternal grandfather arranged that marriage for the title, my mother went along with it because she liked my father and wanted to escape her family, my father thought she was beautiful and they would make powerful children, and my paternal grandfather got a dowry out of it. Everyone benefited.”

His eyes were dark. Eleven years after his parents walked down the aisle, Arkan murdered Marcello Sagredo, and Alessandro’s life would never be the same.

I stood up and wrapped my arms around him. He sighed, quietly exhaling tension.

“Does the Imperium want you back?” I asked.

“It’s not me I worry about. Konstantin is dangerous.”

“I know. I will be careful.”

His phone chimed. He took it out of his pocket and looked at it. “Arkan pulled Sanders out of Alaska.”

Sanders was bad news. Of all the Primes in Arkan’s arsenal, he gave me the biggest dollop of anxiety.

Alessandro got up and kissed me. “I have to make a call.”

“I have to let a Russian prince know exactly where he stands.”

He held up his hand. We gave each other a quiet high five and headed out of the conference room, he to his office and I to the front door.

Konstantin sat on a stone bench outside our office building, exactly where I asked him to be after the meeting. A line of our guard dogs stretched from him. They approached one by one, led by their handlers, so they could memorize his scent. I wanted him properly tagged before he and Alessandro went out.

The sky couldn’t decide if it wanted to be overcast or flooded with sunshine, and the wind kept pushing the clouds back and forth. As I stepped outside, the clouds overhead slid aside and a ray of golden sunshine broke through and spilled onto Konstantin, setting his hair and skin aglow. He looked like an angel. Not one of those untouchable regal angels, but one suffused with warmth. It truly was a movie moment. I half expected him to turn to me in slow motion as a sappy soundtrack kicked in.

Konstantin held out his hand as Ranger, a huge German shepherd, sniffed him. “Kakoy horoshiy pios.”

“Do you like dogs?”

He nodded. “They are honest creatures. Unlike us.”

He would know.

The prince turned to me and smiled.

Wow.

“I didn’t realize you were good with a blade,” he said.

“There are many things about me you don’t realize.” And I would keep it that way.

“I am beginning to see that.”

The way he was looking at me . . . It was a little much.

“Why didn’t Arkan target Smirnov? He knew we had him. It was logical that he would be in the armory, and yet Buller walked right past it.”

Konstantin regarded me with his stunning aquamarine eyes. “Arkan lacks objectivity. He is sentimental, and he places value on friendships. Let’s take Xavier. He is undisciplined, volatile, and impulsive. Everything Arkan detests. But for reasons known only to him, he likes Xavier. He sees him as an apprentice of sorts. He lets him get away with things that would get most of his other agents terminated. In American terms, he plays favorites. Smirnov was the favorite. They met in basic training. They were both plucked out of it by Imperial Security, and they went through Miasorubka together. The Meat Grinder. Intense combat training. I suppose your SEAL program might be similar, except that SEAL candidates can quit and rarely die in training. People fed to Miasorubka die quite often.”

“What will happen when Arkan realizes you killed Smirnov?”

Konstantin grinned. “I imagine he will face the sky and howl like a wolf. I wish I could see it.”

He could call Arkan anytime and tell him that his best friend was dead. Yes, that would change the nature of the bait, but I was sure when Arkan found out that Konstantin murdered Smirnov, he would move heaven and earth to punish him. Konstantin was saving it for just the right moment.

The dog pack retreated, led away by their handlers.

“You are out of dogs.”

“Not quite.”

I clicked my tongue. The bushes to my left rustled, and Shadow emerged into the open. My dog did not like strangers. She was very good at not being seen when she didn’t want to be.

The prince blinked.

I scooped her up and pointed to Konstantin. “Bad.”

Shadow let out a quiet woof.

“Yes, we don’t like him. Bad, bad.”

“Is that a dachshund mixed with something? Scottish terrier, perhaps?”

“That’s not important,” I told him.

Shadow growled, picking up on the hostility in my voice. I set her down. She woofed one more time to let him know she meant business and wagged her tail. As I straightened, I saw two big shapes coming down the shaded path between the trees, a slender, short human between them. A fourth shadow trotted alongside, almost comically small in comparison. They moved silently, the shadows of the tree canopy sliding over their fur.

Amusement sparked in Konstantin’s eyes. “Now I have met everyone. Am I free to wander?”

“Not yet.”

“Is there more? Perhaps a miniature attack poodle or a valiant chihuahua?”

“Something like that.” I nodded in the direction of the path.

Konstantin turned to see and clicked his mouth shut.

Several years ago, the military attempted to apply magic and genetic engineering to make hyperintelligent bears. They planned to use them in combat, how or why I could never understand. The program had been discontinued but some of its animal combatants remained. Sgt. Teddy was one of them. An enormous Kodiak, he stood at five feet three inches tall on all fours and ten and a half feet tall when he reared. He weighed over fifteen hundred pounds. His paws were bigger than my head and could crack a human skull like a walnut with one swipe. His claws were almost six inches long and his teeth would give you nightmares.

Despite all of that, Sgt. Teddy was a pacifist. He preferred human company to living in the wild, and he liked kids. Next to him ten-year-old Matilda looked tiny, like a waifish toddler. The sixty-pound golden retriever trailing them was like a six-week-old puppy.

The creature strolling on the other side of Matilda was anything but a pacifist. The first thing you noticed was his color. His fur was a striking indigo blue, so vivid, it seemed unreal, a color that should have belonged to some exotic bird, not a massive feline predator. Two and a half feet tall at the shoulder, six and a half feet long, he strode forward on huge paws hiding sickle claws. His muscular body was reminiscent of a tiger, but the fringe of tentacles around his neck left no doubt that Zeus was not a creature born on Earth.

The two beasts approached. Zeus halted two feet from Konstantin, leaned forward, and sniffed, his eyes flashing turquoise.

The Russian prince held very still.

His face realigned itself very subtly. He was almost impossibly beautiful now.

“We haven’t been properly introduced,” he said to Matilda. “I am Prince Konstantin Berezin. Who do I have the honor of addressing?”

“I’m Matilda Harrison, of House Harrison.”

“It is a pleasure, Matilda.” He bowed his head. “I’m very sorry my actions led to your father being injured. It was not my intention to include him in this affair. I ask your forgiveness and hope you will allow me to make amends.”

Wow. He read Matilda in a split second. Most people wouldn’t talk to a ten-year-old that way, but somehow, he figured out that Matilda was an adult in a child’s body.

“Are you a real prince?”

“Yes. My uncle is the emperor, and he often tells me that I’m his favorite nephew.”

Matilda considered this. “Are you?”

“I suspect my uncle tells that to all of his nephews when he wants us to do something for him.”

She raised her chin. “I accept your apology. Sgt. Teddy thinks you smell like a bear.”

He nodded. “My House has a long affinity with bears. You might say we’re practically family.”

And what the hell did that mean?

Matilda squinted at him, then turned to me. “The scent has been acquired.”

“Thank you, Matilda.”

“Clearly, I’m in The Jungle Book,” Konstantin said. “I have met the wolves, the bear, and the panther.”

“Don’t worry, there’s no python.”

He gave me an odd look. “I already met her.”

“What?” I asked.

“Never mind. I was being frivolous.”

“Being frivolous is not a good idea,” Matilda said. “My father tells me that killing is an inevitable part of being a Prime. If you break the rules, I will kill you.”

“Consider me properly warned.” Konstantin nodded.

The golden retriever trotted forward and sat, staring at Konstantin with a happy canine grin.

“This is Rooster,” Matilda said. “She will be your watcher.”

“Of all the dogs available to you, you chose to assign me a golden retriever?” Konstantin’s eyebrows rose a fraction of an inch.

“Please change shape, Your Highness,” Matilda said.

Konstantin’s face blurred, and Alessandro sat in his place. It was a perfect impersonation, down to the narrow cut on Alessandro’s chin, which he got fighting Buller.

Rooster exploded into barks. She wasn’t just loud. She was deafening.

“Dear God,” Konstantin yelled over the noise, “it’s like being punched in the eardrums.”

“Change back, please,” Matilda ordered.

Konstantin reappeared. Rooster fell silent and panted at him.

“Rooster barks at 112 decibels,” Matilda informed him. “She can continue to bark for hours without straining herself. If you change shape, she will bark. If you attempt to escape, she will bark. If you try to separate from her in any way . . .”

“She will bark?” Konstantin asked.

“Yes. If she barks for longer than one minute, the electronic sensor in her collar will send an alert. Cutting the collar or removing it will also trigger an alert.” Matilda stared at him. “If anything happens to Rooster or her collar, I will know. I will come. I will bring friends. I hope we understand each other.”

“Crystal clear,” he told her.

“Please follow me now,” Matilda told him. “I’ve been asked to familiarize you with the layout of the Compound.”

“I’d be delighted,” he told her.

The two of them walked down the path, flanked by a bear and an arcane tentacled tiger. Rooster trotted after them, her gaze fixed on Konstantin.

Patricia came out of the office and stood beside me. “Is that wise?”

“We can’t contain him, and we can’t keep him locked up. Might as well let him wander, supervised.”

Patricia sighed. “We are being watched.”

“We knew that.”

“No, Arkan kept an eye on us. They’d buzz us with a drone once in a while or put some cameras on random trees just outside the property line, which we would find and take down. Now he has two active watch posts. One is on Orduna’s ranch, watching our front gate, and the other is on the Reading property, watching our driveway. They have us under 24-hour surveillance.”

“It can’t be helped. It can be an advantage in certain circumstances.”

Patricia nodded. “Also, I’ve been approached.”

“Stick or carrot?”

“The stick for now. They’re trying to blackmail me. Walk away or else.”

“Regina?”

Patricia nodded again. She was our knight in shining armor, who made sure our guard force acted as a unit. Without her, we would be dead in the water. Her wife was hiding a secret. Regina was Patricia’s weakness. Of course they would zero in on her.

“Have you told her?”

“Yes.”

“How do the two of you feel about that?”

Patricia smiled, her light British accent crisp. “We are not in the habit of rolling over.”

I let out an internal breath.

“We didn’t meet under the best of circumstances,” Patricia said.

“True.”

When Patricia had walked into our office two years ago, our defenses were in shambles and her reputation was in tatters. She was practically unhireable by most House standards, but we were desperate, and she came highly recommended by Sgt. Heart, one of Connor’s veteran operatives, a scary and competent man whom everyone held in a very high regard. Especially Mom. In the past year their romance had progressed from discreet meetings and Mom casually mentioning that “Benjiro called” to full on dinners in public and chilling together in the pool. They were on the cusp of making it official, and all of us were in favor of it. Patricia couldn’t have come with a better recommendation.

Patricia faced me. “This is home now. We like it here.”

“I’m glad.”

Patricia laughed softly.

“If we do survive this, you will be in high demand,” I said.

She raised her eyebrows at me.

“A security chief who held off Arkan. Whatever stains and blotches are on your record will be wiped clean. Houses will fall over their feet trying to hire you. You could write your own ticket.”

“You realize it’s not in your best interests to point this out?”

“Yes, but it is fair.”

“Then you better think of a way to keep me here, Prime Baylor.” Her tone suggested it wouldn’t be very hard.

“I’ll put it on my list,” I told her.