A groan escaped me as I shifted in my chair, pulling my knees out from under his touch. “Please don’t say that it’s Amanda,” I muttered as I shoved one hand through my hair in frustration.

“What’s wrong with Amanda?” he demanded.

She’s dangerous, Tristan. She has a violent temper and she’ll eat you alive. She’s the Alpha among the fledglings.”

“Then why do you keep her around if she’s so dangerous?”

“Because she’s good at keeping the fledglings in line. She knows better than to cross me. I’ll stake her out in the sun.”

“So you’re not going to let me see her,” Tristan said.

I stared at him for a moment, frowning. I briefly wondered if he would see her behind my back if I did say no, and mentally shook my head. After surviving nearly a century at the hands of Sadira, I had no doubt that he would do exactly as I said, even if it made him miserable. Of course, I had no doubt that Sadira would have denied his request in the name of protecting him from a bad influence.

“Has there been no one else since Violetta?” I asked, my voice barely drifting over a whisper. We had never talked about his wife, from when he was a human. She’d died more than a century ago during childbirth. Of course, we didn’t have to talk about his past because I already knew it. The moment I claimed him as my own, I took his blood and mind, drawing in his essence and all of his memories. At one time Tristan had been married to a beautiful young woman. That happy life crumbled when she died, allowing Sadira to easily move in and stake her claim over the weakened man.

“Only Sadira. And now you,” he replied.

“Wouldn’t you want to start with someone more…”

“More like Violetta,” he supplied, his voice crusting over with ice. “There is no one like her. There never will be. I know that. It’s something that will always haunt me throughout this long existence.”

“I was thinking someone more considerate, gentler. Someone more like you.”

A tender smile lifted the worry and pain from his large eyes as he stared up at me. I got the feeling that on the inside he was chuckling at me. “I don’t think there is anyone like me either.”

Reaching over, I ran my fingers through this brown hair, pushing it away from where it was starting to crowd his eyes. “True.”

“If you don’t want me to see her, I won’t,” he volunteered.

“I can’t do that. I can’t take all your freedoms away from you. I might not be happy about it, but I can’t stop you from seeing Amanda if it’s what you want,” I said, dropping my hand back to my side. Despite my reluctance, I knew that Amanda was a good person and might prove to be a valuable teacher. She knew how to take care of herself, and I secretly hoped she would pass some of that knowledge on to Tristan.

“I may see her?” he asked, unable to hide his shock.

“Yes, if she’s willing to put up with you,” I teased.

Tristan leaned forward and brushed a quick kiss across my temple, his joy rushing through me in a quick burst of energy. I couldn’t help but smile as well. After more than one hundred years, he was finally getting his life back. My only hope was that I wasn’t giving it back to him in time for the naturi to steal it away.

As he stood, he stretched his arms above his head and blinked a few times. Night was giving its last straining gasps of life as he and I prepared to settle in for the day. The nightwalker lay down on the bed and then turned on his side so he could look at me.

“Do you think they will join the family?” he inquired.

I frowned, releasing the warmth and happiness that had filled the room just seconds earlier. “Yes,” I whispered. “I think they will.” Establishing a family would benefit me, as it would help strengthen the control I had over the nightwalkers in the city. Of course, this came at a high price. It would put a target on the chests of both Knox and Amanda, and I was worried about my ability to protect them from the Coven and the naturi.

Danaus found me the next night standing barefoot in my backyard with fire swirling around me. A thick bank of trees encircled my house, blocking the show I was putting on from the view of my closest neighbors. And a show it was. For the past hour I had been conjuring up balls of flames and streaks of fire so that it looked like my body had attracted its own comet. I was trying to replicate what happened on Crete, but to no avail.

At the Palace of Knossos the swell of power from the earth had been so great it pushed into my body and I was able to use it to create fire. That had been different than my usual fire manipulation. Before, the power came from within me, and with time it became exhausting. On Crete, the power came from another source—the earth.

I needed to learn to tap this power source if I was going to have any hope of defeating the naturi. Unfortunately, I was having no luck so far.

I could feel Danaus’s eyes on me as I went through dozens of different martial art stances I had learned over the long centuries. I struggled to find a center of peace while calling on my ability at the same time. But there was no peace within the fire. It was pure energy that jumped and burned, full of passion and barely controlled excitement.

“If you move your hand fast enough, I bet you could write your name,” Danaus said when he was only a few feet away from me.

Smirking at him over my shoulder, I folded my hands over my chest while my name flared to life in jagged, flickering letters before me. It hovered in the air for a full five seconds before it finally went out.

“Show-off,” he muttered, threading a lock of hair behind his ear as the wind picked up.

My long black skirt swayed in the breeze and I let all the fire I had called up dim and then finally go out, plunging the backyard into complete darkness. Only a little light drifted down to us from the house where Tristan was sitting at the computer up on the second floor. Last I had checked, the nightwalker was exploring the world of iTunes with my credit card.

“Practice?” Danaus asked.

“Not quite,” I said, looking down at my empty hands. Frustration beat at me until I was nearly clenching my teeth. I couldn’t do this alone. I needed help. “Do you remember what happened on Crete? When I used my ability?”

“Yes, the power from the earth consumed you.” Danaus cocked his head to the side as he looked at me, taking in my bare feet for the first time. “You’re trying to replicate it. Mira, you couldn’t control—”

“I know, but I have to learn how to. There has to be a way.”

“I thought you said that nightwalker couldn’t do earth magic or even sense the earth because your human form died.”

“Yeah, well, nightwalkers aren’t supposed to be able to control fire either,” I said, snapping my finger so that a little teardrop of fire hovered in the air for a second before I extinguished it. “It seems that I’m the exception to more than one rule. I’m a conduit for the powers of the triad, and I can also be a conduit for the powers of the earth. I have to learn to control one of them. As long as Jabari’s alive, I don’t see it being the powers of the triad, so that leaves me with learning how to control the power I receive from the earth.”

“Are you getting anything now?”

I shook my head, causing my red hair to cascade around my face. “Nothing.” It was true. I felt nothing whatsoever. There was only the cool grass beneath my feet. There wasn’t even the pulse of life.

“Maybe you can only use the power when it is near its height,” Danaus said.

I gazed out at the blackness of the yard, staring out toward the trees. For a moment I wondered if there were any naturi watching us, but then released the thought just as quickly. Danaus would have told me. “If that’s true, this power won’t do me much good even if I learn to control it.” I started walking back toward the house with him at my side.