“Mama,” she repeated, stretching her arms up, her eyes pleading with me to pick her up and hold her close. My arms ached to hold her, finally filling the void that had haunted me for centuries. I wanted to feel her warmth against my body and to breathe her scent in so I could hold it forever in my lungs. I wanted to hold my daughter one last time.

Painfully, I took another step backward, trying to find a middle ground between Sadira’s image and the image of Calla. I wanted to grab up my daughter, wrap her tightly in my arms, and run from this place. I wanted to run from Sadira, the Coven, and all nightwalkers. I wanted to run back to the life I could have had centuries ago in the sunlight.

But that chance was gone forever. It was shredding me on the inside, leaving me trembling. My legs shook and my knees threatened to buckle. I refused to give in to Sadira. She would not have me again.

“I won’t go with you,” I growled, tensing the muscles in my legs and clenching my teeth. “Calla is dead. That life I had is dead because of you. You and Jabari. I won’t go back to you.”

“You will or I will kill Tristan now,” she calmly said, switching tactics when images of Calla couldn’t make me cave.

“Ridiculous. You won’t.”

Sadira laughed lightly, reminding me faintly of a bird’s song. “Of course I will. You are far more valuable to me than he could ever be.”

“Mira?” The voice was soft and fragile, reaching me from beyond the nightmare I was trapped in. It was Tristan. I had forgotten about him. We were really in the Great Hall, and for now Tristan was alive and still mine.

It suddenly dawned on me to fully open my mind instead of closing everything down in an effort to block out Sadira. Tristan’s pain and fear instantly flooded in. It was more than Sadira could effectively block out. The image of my home in Greece disintegrated. Calla faded away to only a ghostly memory.

I knelt on the ground beside Tristan, who was still chained to the floor. Reaching across, I took his hand and gently squeezed it as I slowly reduced our mental connection. His pain was draining me and I needed to be sharp against Sadira.

The rage from my earlier fight pumped in my veins again, and a new anger filled my trembling frame. I had packed my past away and left it to collect dust in the corner of my mind, but Sadira trotted it out as a way of controlling me. She had defiled the memory of my daughter; she sullied those precious few moments in my life when I’d felt human and whole and happy. I didn’t need the monster dwelling inside of me to fire my need for violence. Sadira had already done that.

“I’m free now,” I said, pushing back to my feet. “And Tristan belongs to me.”

You can’t have him, she snarled in my mind. I felt her pulling another veil over my mind, so I opened my thoughts to Tristan again. Trapping my mind between two realities, it stole away my sense of balance. I had no idea where Sadira was. Desperate, I threw up a ring of fire around Tristan and me.

Sadira’s screams rang through the hall. She had been approaching and got trapped in the fire. With her out of my mind, I extinguished the flames, but she was already blackened to a crisp.

With a little effort, I broke the lock on the manacle around Tristan’s neck and dropped it with a loud clang. Tristan leaned heavily on me as we moved away, his fingers digging into my forearm as he struggled to stay on his feet.

The smell of burning flesh filled the room, overpowering the scent of the Lagoon and lush gardens that wafted in through the open front doors. Tristan struggled against my hold on him, trying to look back at the creature that had spawned us both, but I wouldn’t let him stop moving forward.

Sadira didn’t die that night, but every nightwalker in Venice could feel her pain. At dawn she would fall into her deep sleep wrapped in that pain, and tomorrow when she awoke would still be drowning in it. Even if she gorged herself on blood, it would still take several nights to recover from those burns. I only needed to keep her alive until we defeated Rowe. No one had ever said anything about the condition she had to be in.

Tristan and I paused at the front doors long enough for him to feed off the two doormen. I knew they would come in handy sooner or later. Borrowing a pair of pants off one of the unconscious men, we slowly walked back to the boat. My back ached and my head throbbed from where I’d been hit with the chair. From the way my vision still blurred from time to time, it seemed that the nightwalker with the chair had cracked my skull. I needed to feed and sleep for a couple days, but I doubted I would get such a luxury.

Tristan moved more easily as his body healed with the fresh infusion of blood, but our progress was slow. We were several yards from the docks when I saw Nicolai walking toward us up the path. I pulled Tristan to a stop, my whole body tensed. If the werewolf attacked now, I knew I would kill him. My body hummed with pent-up energy from the fight. I might not intend to, but I would still kill him.

“Walk away, Nicolai,” I called to him. Now was not the time to resume our fight. Jabari had ordered him to kill me, and I could only assume that Nicolai would pursue that task until he finally completed it or was dead. The golden shifter had stopped in the middle of the path more than twenty feet away, watching me. “Turn around, get back in a boat, and drive off.”

“Why didn’t you kill me?” The question was soft and reached me on the back of the breeze crossing the island.

“My fight isn’t with you,” I said. Beside me, Tristan tightened his grip on my arm. He wasn’t so much looking for support as he was questioning me, seeking assurance. I placed my right hand over his and gently squeezed it. He had been through enough for one night.

Nicolai caught the movement and frowned at our hands. “He’s the reason I was sent to kill you,” he said, the words barely pushing past his clenched teeth. “A distraction?”

“Possibly.”

Nicolai jerked his eyes away from us as a string of Russian curses rumbled from his chest like a freight train across the desert. His fists were clenched at his sides, trembling. He had been used so another could be tortured, and now he knew it.

“Please, Nico,” I started again, hoping a nickname would get him to acquiesce to my request. “Walk away. I need to get him somewhere he can rest and recover.”

Frowning, Nicolai walked toward us. I stepped forward, putting myself between the werewolf and Tristan. His expression instantly softened when saw my aggressive stance and he halted a few feet away from us.

“I only want to help you to the boat,” he said, holding up his hands in surrender.

Nodding, I turned and put Tristan’s hand back on my left arm. Nicolai took Tristan’s other hand and placed it on his right arm. The werewolf got a glimpse of Tristan’s back and swore softly, his jaw clenched in boiling anger.

“This has nothing to do with you,” I murmured a while later, breaking the tense silence.

“But I didn’t help matters. I held you up when you could have rescued him sooner,” he grumbled.

I said nothing because it was true. He didn’t know how he was being used. He didn’t know he was aiding in the torture of another. I wondered if he would have followed orders if he’d known what the plan was. By the pained anger that filled his copper-brown eyes, I doubted it.

We didn’t speak again until we reached the little speedboat. Nicolai helped me lower Tristan in. The nightwalker sighed deeply as he lay across the bench on his stomach.

“I could have killed you,” Nicolai abruptly said, pulling my gaze back up to his handsome face. He stood on the dock with his hands shoved into the pockets of his dirty slacks. His left cheek was smudged with dirt, and a shadow of blond stubble outlined his hard jaw. A smear of blood stained his temple where I had hit him with the rock, but there was no lump or other discoloration. His stare was intense, holding me silent for a moment, unable to read the emotions that lay just below the surface.