Cyrene whirled on Dean. “How could you do this?”

She noticed he didn’t look exactly comfortable. And how could he? Kael Dremylon was their mortal enemy. And Dean was handing her over to Kael, despite all the reasons not to. Foremost being that Kael had some kind of powerful dark magic and had tried to kill Dean the last time they were within a few feet of each other.

“Cyrene,” Dean whispered.

“Enough of that,” Kael said with a truly dangerous smile. He fixed his eyes on Dean. “I have what I came for, and you have what you came for. It’s best that you leave.”

“You’d better hold to your word,” Dean said.

“Of course he’s not going to hold to his word!” Cyrene shrieked. “Do you know who you’re dealing with? Do you know what you’re doing?”

“I promised to let you leave,” Kael said easily to Cyrene. “And I held to that until it seemed time to bring you home.”

Cyrene sneered at him. “Bring me home? Like a prize?”

The last words Kael had said to her slithered into her conscious, unbidden.

“You’ll remember and know…it’s all your fault. Everything that happens. You’ll remember, and you’ll come back to me.”

She shook her head, not wanting to think about what that meant. She remembered all-too clearly that night on the docks when he had compelled her mind. The black tendrils that had seemed to pull her toward him, the fogginess that had clouded her senses when he touched her, and the desperate need he’d induced.

Black magic.

Dark magic.

Blood magic.

It was the only thing that made sense.

Yet, as much as it terrified her, the spark was still strong between them. And the longer she stood there, the more she felt her defenses weakening.

“Ah, but you decide if you are a prize to be won. Or has that changed?” Kael asked. His eyes went to the ring she was still clutching in her hand.

She wanted to hide it behind her back, but she wouldn’t give him the satisfaction. She slid it back into place. If it infuriated Kael, then all the better. It didn’t mean anything. She and Dean were over. They had been over as soon as he ordered her to be knocked out.

Dean ground his teeth. “Just remember our deal. I have the terms in writing. Stick to them.”

Kael stuck out his hand. Dean looked down on it with apprehension before taking it in his own. Kael’s smile grew, and a shiver ran down Cyrene’s back.

“You have my word,” Kael said.

Dean wrenched back his hand, and it looked like it took considerable force not to shake it. “For all that’s worth.”

His eyes cut to Cyrene’s, and he opened his mouth, as if he was going to say something, but she turned her back on him. Betrayal was the name of the game. She didn’t have to sit back and listen to what he had to say.

“Cyrene, I…” Dean said softly. Boot steps sounded against the wood planks, and she thought that was all, but then he said loud enough for her to hear, “I am sorry.”

She closed her eyes against the sting. He was sorry. He was sorry? Creator. What good did that do me? She was still trapped aboard a Byern vessel with Kael Dremylon, bound to return to a place she had sworn off.

Sorry wasn’t enough. It wasn’t even close to enough.

She waited until she heard the signs of him and Darmian descending down the rope ladder and into their little boat before facing the facts. She was heading home with Kael Dremylon as her escort. She could see no plausible way to escape it.

Finally, Cyrene dragged her eyes up to Kael’s. The blue-gray orbs were dancing brightly in the moonlight. He seemed amused. But, as much as her magic had changed her in the time they were apart, it was clear he had changed as well. He might be her sarcastic, flirtatious prince, but there was a darkness around him now. And with the increase in his powers came the stronger call to hers.

“I assume you’ve had a trying time. Should I show you to your rooms?” Kael asked.

“I learned my lesson about allowing you to escort me to my rooms a long time ago,” she said, reminding them both of the time he had tried to take advantage of her on the night of her Presenting ball.

Kael bristled at her tone and stepped toward her. She stilled and took a quick breath, as his nearness made her want to edge toward him.

“We must be on our way.” His eyes crawled over her body. “And you require some freshening up.”

Cyrene stood ramrod straight and glared at him. Of course she looked like a wreck. Hurricanes and dungeons had that tendency. She humphed and then strode past him, in the direction from where he had originally come. Kael chuckled softly and then followed behind her. As soon as her feet hit the stairs to go below decks, the ship came to life above her. It was as if every sailor had been waiting for their cue to begin.

The one problem was that the ship was as massive on the inside as it looked on the outside. The first set of stairs led her on a long corridor, and there seemed to be many more sets of stairs to bunks and stores and ammunition and more below. She would never find her room at this rate. And she desperately needed somewhere to be alone with her thoughts.

“Are you going to allow me to help, or are you just going to walk around, dressed like that, with a ship full of military-trained sailors ogling you?” Kael asked from directly behind her.

She could sense him even before she had heard his voice. If she backed up a step, she could press herself against him and feel that electric pull take over.

Kael took that step for her, and suddenly, his solid chest was against her back. His hand fell to her waist. He seemed to breathe her in. And all she could do was stand there and shiver. Because just that one touch jolted her system, yet, at the same time, it made her completely forget where her mind had been spinning toward. And forgetting felt so nice. So wonderfully nice.

“Well?” he breathed.

“My rooms,” she said softly.

He turned her around to face him and took her hand in his own. “Ah, yes. Now, this is much better.”

Her eyes were hazy as she stared up into his beautiful face. Deadly but beautiful. “What is?”

“I do love how feisty you are, Cyrene,” he said, pressing a lock of matted hair back from her face. “But I never thought how much I would adore you…pliant.”

A voice in her head told her to say, Well, don’t get used to it, but she didn’t. She didn’t say anything. Her mind succumbed easily to nothingness.

She just followed Kael down the long hall and to the end of the row. He opened a door for her, and she walked easily inside.

The room was as immaculate as anywhere she had ever stayed while traveling with Edric. Lush and overdone, as was the Byern style. She had gotten used to the simplicity of Eleysian clothing and decorations…the simplicity of it all.

She tried to force the thoughts aside. Thinking of Eleysia was dangerous territory.

And the pain of it all snapped her out of whatever numbness she had been feeling.

She whirled to face him. What had Kael done to me?

“Is this what you want?” she asked. “Pliant? You never seemed the type.”

“I’d prefer to have you naked on my bed.”

Cyrene rolled her eyes. “Well, nothing has changed then.”

He bristled. “Hasn’t it?”

His magic filled the room, practically choking her. She could feel it all around her, touching her skin, pushing through her hair, and obstructing her vision. It cleared away almost instantly.

“Oh, yes, you have all this new dark magic now,” she said. Cold, emotionless.

She stalked toward him but found herself held in place. She had thought he had eliminated all of his magic, but she was encased in something. She couldn’t move a muscle. She couldn’t feel a thing. Her magic was on the fritz, but still, she pushed at the bounds of whatever held her. How is he even capable of this?

“Let me go,” she commanded through gritted teeth.

His fingers caressed her cheek. “Magic is neither good nor bad, dark nor light, Cyrene,” he said with that same sly grin she had grown accustomed to. “It is how you use it that defines you. Not how it uses you.”

“I’ll take that into consideration,” she said. Her eyes were on fire. “After you let me go.”

He twirled his wrist, and all restraints were eliminated. She stumbled forward into him, and he easily caught her.

“It could have been fun, you know.”

“Ugh!” she groaned. “Get off of me. That is never happening.”

She glared up at him with all the pent-up anger from her journey to Eleysia at her fingertips. She had been hunted by Indres, kidnapped by Leifs, had to rescue her friends from soldiers, escaped the Aurum court on Dean's vessel, found Matilde and Vera and finally having someone to train her with her magic. Only to have that all ripped away when Maelia had murdered the king and queen. To have Dean ripped away.

She winced and stepped away from Kael. She couldn’t—no, she wouldn’t think about Dean. Creator only knew what dark tunnel that would lead her to.

Kael seemed surprised that she’d backed down, but truthfully, she was exhausted. There was no escape from this place and certainly not in her condition. She was terrified to return home to Byern, but it made her wonder how Kael got away with it…with magic. Byern was sworn to eliminate all magic. There hadn’t been any in two thousand years after Viktor Dremylon killed the love of his life, Domina Serafina. The Doma had fallen, and magic had been wiped out.

How had Kael kept it a secret?

“I see that you need to rest. We have a long journey ahead of us, Cyrene,” he said with a small mock bow. “Perhaps I can answer all of those questions swirling in your eyes at another time.”

She reached for the wall that kept intruders out of her mind and found she didn’t have the strength for it. Creator!

She didn’t know if Kael was able to enter her thoughts, but the way he had so easily held her before without her even feeling it worried her.

He laughed, as if he could indeed read her thoughts and found what she was considering amusing. “Don’t worry. I have always been able to read your thoughts.”

“Stay out of my head,” she snapped.

“I never have to get in your head. If someone knows you well enough, Cyrene, as well as I do, they can see your thoughts clearly for themselves.”

He grasped her hand. She tried to yank it back, but he wouldn’t let her. She felt all the passion and desire and aching for him rush through her body, like she had that day on the docks. That zap and electricity that generated between them at a mere touch. The feeling she had gotten just from being near the ship he was on. It pulsed through her like a living, breathing dragon desperate to fly free.

“Stop using your magic on me,” she spat.

He grinned then, slow and purposeful. “So, you do feel it then?”

Her head felt heavy, and she realized she was leaning toward him. “Feel what?”

“Good,” he said, abruptly breaking the contact.

He turned and strode to the door, leaving her utterly clueless and a bit light-headed.

“What did you do to me?”

Kael had his hand on the door. “I will have a bath drawn for you.”

And, with that, he left the room.

She picked up the nearest object—a small, circular candleholder—and flung it at the door. It shattered into a thousand pieces on the floor. Cyrene stared down at the broken shards of glass scattered across the floorboards. Broken and hopeless and never able to be put back together.

That was how she felt. She was the fragments of glass. Her fury was there, only to mask her grief, but reaching down and touching the pain within her that mourned the loss of her best friend—no. She would never go there. She would build a brick wall with a moat around that place and raise the drawbridge. She couldn’t fall apart now.

Her very life depended on it.

Kael Dremylon saw that she was cracked. He could force her to do whatever he wanted to. And she needed to figure out how he was capable of it. Her magic was bleeding, but it was still there. When she had started the hurricane after making love to Dean and then used all her magic to stop it right after, against all odds, she hadn’t burned out.

Anyone else would have.

Her magic might be in protest, but it was still there.

She would figure out a way to stop this.