At once, the energy that had been filling the air pushed harder against my skin, trying to gain entrance into my body. Lucky for me, the power in the air wasn’t as strong as it had been in Heraklion. Yet, I was in a dangerous situation, beyond just my baiting Rowe. If the energy from the earth entered my body as when we were in Crete, I had no way of stopping it, no way of turning off the flow. It was likely to kill me just as easily as Rowe could with his blade.

“Take a step back, Rowe,” I warned in an even voice. “I came here to talk. Let’s continue our little chat in a civilized manner, if you please.”

“Where the hell is she?” he growled. The point of his blade wavered as it penetrated the flames to come within inches of my heart. I stood still, smiling at him, daring him to plunge the blade into my chest. But I was making a dangerous wager. I was willing to bet that Cynnia was more important to him alive than I was to him dead—at least for the moment.

“Back off,” I repeated.

Rowe snarled one last time as his blade sliced through the flames and returned to his side, yet not before leaving a small cut on the side of my throat, a reminder that his patience was extremely limited. The one-eyed naturi paced away from me, his knife tightly clenched in his fist, ranting in a language I didn’t understand.

In the flickering firelight his tanned skin took on an almost swarthy complexion, while his scars stood out as white lines crisscrossing one side of his face before disappearing beneath a leather eye patch. His dark black hair swung down past his shoulders, nearly obscuring his face when he turned away from me for a second then paced back again.

“Did I do that to you?” I softly asked, bringing his pacing to an abrupt and uneven halt. He stared at me with a confused look until I touched my cheek, mirroring his, which had been brutally scarred.

“What? Why do you care?”

“I don’t, but there’s so much I obviously don’t remember about you, and when we last met, you seemed all too eager to jog my memory. Tell me, did I do that to you?”

“No, you didn’t,” he snapped, then turned his body so I could clearly see only the unflawed side of his face. “Are you surprised to find that there are more dangerous and evil things in this world than you?”

“No, relieved actually,” I said with a half smile.

“Where is she?” Rowe demanded, returning to our previous conversation. He seemed a little calmer than a few seconds earlier.

“Somewhere safe.”

“The only place that she will ever be deemed safe is with her own people,” he said, and was about to continue when I started laughing at him. My head fell back and for a moment the flames actually flickered as my laughter broke my concentration.

“I truly doubt that little Nia is safe with your people,” I mocked, purposefully using her nickname to drive the proverbial knife even deeper into his stomach. “I honestly wonder if she would be safe in your hands, or the hands of her loving sister Nyx. That’s who I saw you with back at the Palace of Knossos just moments before the seal was broken. Thin creature, dark hair, silver eyes—Cynnia’s sister Nyx, right?”

Rowe said nothing, but he began circling me again. His full lips were pressed into a hard, unyielding line of hatred as he watched me, looking for a way to get at me through the flames without risking complete immolation himself. I knew he was fast, but he had to count on me being equally fast. And then, if he killed me before he discovered Cynnia’s location, what would happen to the young naturi in the meantime?

“You see my quandary, don’t you?” I said, smiling broadly at him, loving every minute that I could let him twist in the wind. Only months ago he had tormented me in much the same fashion, and now the shoe was on the other foot. And I loved it. “She fell into my hands quite neatly. I was supposed to kill her when I found her, and yet I didn’t out of sheer curiosity. And now I wonder—just who is trying to kill this young naturi?”

“Like you care for her well-being! Give her to me!” Rowe raged. He took a reckless step closer to the flames and then back again, pacing like a caged tiger ready to leap at any second.

“Or what?” I chuckled a bit hysterically. “You’ll kill me? Torture me like Nerian did years ago on that forsaken mountain? Why should I not do the same to Cynnia?”

“Because she’s a child, damn it! She’s just a child,” Rowe shouted, slicing through the flames with his knife though he came nowhere close to hitting me.

“So was I,” I bit out, suddenly fighting back a well of tears I had not expected to spring forth. With my teeth clenched, I drew in a steady breath and strengthened the flames around me so they snapped and crackled angrily between us. “But then again, I don’t think she’s the child you claim she is. I think the main concern is that she is of royal birth, the same bloodline as your beloved wife-queen. And we’ve already seen how I treat the royal family.”

Nerian had died at my hands months ago, though his death would have come centuries sooner if I had not been so concerned with the rising sun. The only brother to the queen, he died in a dingy, crumbling basement with his throat in my hand. He had been raving madness right up until the end. I hoped I never saw the same madness light Cynnia’s eyes.

Gritting his teeth so the muscle in his jaw jumped and throbbed, Rowe stabbed his long knife back into its sheath at his side. He threw open his arms, showing that there were no weapons in his hands, but I only laughed and shook my head at him.

“You are as unarmed as I am at this moment,” I taunted.

“What do you want from me?”

“I want you to walk away from Machu Picchu.” Rowe shook his head, but I ignored him and continued. “Walk away from Machu Picchu and your plans to open the door. My people and I will reseal the doorway and there will be no more talk of freeing Aurora. Enough of your people have snuck through the weakening walls. We will stop hunting you and you will stop hunting us. Both races will endure in silence.”

“And what about Cynnia? Would you then hand her over to me?”

“I would set her free.” I carefully attempted to evade his question, but it didn’t work.

“Would you give her to me?” he angrily repeated, dropping his hands down to his sides.

“If that is where she wanted to go, I would let her go to you.”

“Why wouldn’t she want to go to me? What have you been telling her? What lies have you been spreading?”

I shrugged lightly and placed my hands into my back pockets. “None that I know of.”

“What have you told her?” Rowe demanded, once again taking a step closer to the flames. I increased the power going into the flames and a pain shot through my temple. I was wearing down, and the power from the earth was working harder now to find a way into my body. I had to end this conversation soon or there were going to be bigger things to worry about than one pissed off naturi, however powerful.

“I told her that you are a loyal soldier to your wife-queen. That you follow her direction. She told me much the same of her sister Nyx, calling her the defender of your people. Was any of that wrong?”

“No,” Rowe murmured, taking a couple steps away from me.

“Good. Now I think we have come to an understanding, or at the very least, you and Nyx have a lot to discuss during the next couple of nights,” I said, lowering the flames slightly. “I will take Nia to Machu Picchu the night of the equinox. If you’re not there and there is no sacrifice, then I will set her free. She will be free to find her own way in this world, with or without you, that is her choice. If you continue with the sacrifice, then she will die with the rest of the naturi on the mountain ruins.”

“You can’t do this!”

“You’ve left me no choice.”

Rowe shoved his left hand through his hair, pushing it out of the way of his eyes as he angrily marched away from me and back again. “I can’t turn my back on centuries of work for the life of one person.”