“What is she doing here?” I demanded, each word struggling up my throat and past my lips. My whole body was clenched with rage. I had thought my reaction to seeing Sadira for the first time in five centuries was bad. This was infinitely worse. The sight of the slender creature with her sharp features instantly made me want to rip her apart with my bare hands. I wanted to hear her scream and plead for her life. And then I wanted to hear her plead for me to kill her.

Nightmarish memories of my two-week captivity at Machu Picchu centuries ago came screaming back with a flawless clarity. She reminded me of the starvation and the pain that flooded all of my senses so that there was no escape. The naturi had captured and tortured me in hopes of breaking my mind. They wanted me to use my powers to destroy my own kind. As I stared at her now, the scars on my back burned anew.

Danaus stepped forward so he was standing beside me. His right hand reflexively reached for a weapon that wasn’t there. Frustrated, his hand fell back to his side, clenched in a fist.

“You asked to see her,” Macaire said with laughter in his voice.

“Why is she on the island?” My voice cracked across them like a whip snapping at the air.

Macaire stiffened and moved to sit on the edge of his chair. “We have business together,” he briskly replied.

“The only business we have with their kind is their total extermination!” I took a couple slow steps toward the naturi, my hands before me with my fingers curled into claws. I didn’t have any weapons, but I would happily have killed her with my bare hands. The naturi turned frightened eyes on me and stumbled a couple of steps back, edging closer to the raised dais and the Elders.

“Macaire!” she cried in her soft lilting voice.

“Stop, Mira!” Macaire shouted, jumping to his feet. “She has the protection of the Coven.”

Those words stopped me cold. My body froze as if my mind had suddenly lost the ability to command it, had forgotten how to work my limbs. With infinite slowness I turned my head to look at the Elders. “What?” The word barely made it past the lump in my throat.

“Stop,” Macaire commanded.

I ignored him and dragged my eyes to Jabari’s face, who sat watching me. “Say it,” I snarled, my voice harsh and rough.

Jabari rose from his chair, his head held high. “She has the protection of the Coven,” he said loud and clear. His words reverberated through my chest until I was sure I would shatter into a million jagged shards.

Wrapping my arms around my waist, I nearly doubled over in horror. “How could you betray us?” I moaned. “They killed hundreds of our kind.”

“The same could be said about the man that stands beside you,” Jabari replied. A cold smile slithered across his broad lips, stretching his dark skin to accentuate his hard cheekbones. I reached back one hand, unconsciously trying to move the hunter behind me as if it would better protect him from the Coven.

“They tortured me for two weeks in hopes of using me as a weapon.” I flung the words at him, even though some part of me knew not one of them cared about the pain I had endured to protect my own kind. “They slaughtered nightwalkers in my domain.”

“Looking for you,” Elizabeth coolly interjected.

“They killed Thorne in London,” I said, but my voice had lost some of its earlier strength and venom. I didn’t like where this was going.

“In an effort to get to you,” Elizabeth replied. Her lovely face was blank of expression but her blue eyes seemed to sparkle and dance in the candlelight. “Our Jabari and Sadira were attacked, all in an effort to get to you.”

“Times have changed, Mira,” Macaire stated, drawing my wide-eyed gaze to his aged face. “It would seem as if the naturi would have no business with nightwalkers if you were not around.”

“The naturi don’t change. Not ever,” I snarled, straightening from my wounded stance. They would not pin this on me. But even that bitter declaration seemed to carry with it a whimper of pain. I wasn’t the reason so many of my fellow nightwalkers had been slaughtered. I wasn’t the reason the naturi hunted and killed both humans and nightwalkers. This war started long before I was ever reborn, and I was sure it would continue long after my bones had been reduced to dust. I would not be the Coven’s scapegoat.

“Unfortunately, we cannot rid ourselves of Mira as of yet,” Jabari announced in a weary voice, as if reluctantly granting me a pardon.

I snapped. There was no more clear thought, just raw, horrible rage. The Coven was protecting our greatest enemy and threatening my life when I had done everything within my power to protect my own kind from the naturi.

Stretching my arms out on either side of my body, I started calling up great amounts of energy. Without making the conscious decision, I summoned enormous waves of power to me, pulling energy from every living creature within the region. I could feel it coming to me not just from San Clemente, but from all around Venice. At the same time, grim images of Michael’s and Thorne’s mangled remains crowded in my brain. Memories of my horrific nights with Nerian swamped me, threatening to weigh me down and deter me from my path. The Coven had to be destroyed. It didn’t matter that they were the Elders, or even if I had the ability to do it.

Overhead, the candles in the chandelier flared, awakening the shadows lounging in the far corners of the hall. The shadows lunged forward and back, reaching out from under the dais chairs and crawling up the cold stone walls. The flags and tapestries waved and rippled as if a fresh breeze had rushed in through an open window.

You can’t destroy me, desert flower. Jabari’s dark voice whispered through my brain, threatening to shatter my concentration. If you attempt this thing, you must be able to kill them both. Destroy the Coven, Mira. Destroy them both.

The command was little more than a faint whisper among hundreds of fragmented thoughts and painful memories. I tried to weigh the command in that second. It’s what I wanted, but now I was forced to wonder if I wanted the same thing that Jabari wanted after all his lies, betrayal, and manipulation. But I couldn’t afford to pause.

Before the thought was completely formed in my head, I was stopped by the last person I thought would ever do such a thing. Danaus came up behind me and wrapped his strong arms around me, locking my arms against my body.

“No!” I screamed, my ragged voice bouncing off the high stone walls. I already felt his power swamping me, struggling to form a cocoon around me before seeping into my skin. He was stealing away my ability to choose. Jabari hadn’t been forcing me. It was almost a test to see what I was capable of.

“Calm,” Danaus whispered, his hot breath brushing against my ear. I also heard the word repeated in my brain like a thought, blanketing my rage, suffocating the fire. He was trying to use our connection in reverse. Instead of commanding me to draw in the power and destroy, he was using his own powers to control and calm me.

“No!” I screamed again, but even my voice had begun to weaken. The power I had drawn in was seeping from my body back into the air. I wasn’t sure if he could hear me, but I tried to push my own thoughts into his brain. Help me, Danaus. Together we can crush them like we defeated the naturi. Together we can destroy them.

But all I heard was silence. I could still feel him in my brain, his will sapping my strength. “They have betrayed us; betrayed my kind,” I whimpered pathetically, feeling as if the remains of my soul were shattering into sharp shards of glass.

“How dare you say that while you stand there in the embrace of a vampire hunter!” Jabari raged, his calm finally cracking. But I knew now it was an act after his attempt to have me destroy the other Coven members.