Ghastek rose.

“Mr. Stefanoff,” Landon said to him. “Your services and conduct during these events are greatly appreciated. Once the magic is down, a car will come to retrieve you.”

The familiar roar of an enchanted engine rocked through the plain. A silver Land Rover slid from behind the distant trees, heading for us. Curran and I began walking toward it. Landon caught up.

“You’ve used Kalina’s name,” Landon said. “For your sake, I hope you’re the real thing.”

17

LANDON DROVE. I rode in the front passenger seat, and Curran took the back. If things went sour, I’d get Landon’s attention and Curran would rip out his throat.

The sun had risen, setting the snow aglow. The ruins of another gas station slid past us, iced by the winter. Heat swirled inside the Land Rover. I had shrugged off my jacket before I got in and I rode in comfort, with Sarrat in her sheath across my lap. This would be my special present for my father. If I got a shot at him.

Thinking about our impending meeting set my teeth on edge. The pressure was almost too much. I wanted Landon to stop the car so I could run in circles through the snow as fast as I could just to burn some energy off. I settled for stroking Sarrat’s sheath.

I couldn’t win against my father. I knew it now. The problem was, I had no idea what choice that left me.

“Has he claimed Atlanta?” I asked.

“No,” Landon said.

So the claiming hadn’t come to pass. That meant I still had to somehow prevent it.

An old sign slid by. I-80 East.

Landon glanced at me. His smart eyes lingered on my face.

“Are you Apache?” Curran asked from the backseat.

“Navajo,” Landon said.

“I thought the tribes discouraged necromancy,” Curran said.

“They do. They didn’t like what I was doing, so I found someone who does.”

As Hugh once put it, that was my father’s greatest power. Outcasts and misfits flocked to him. He found a perfect place for each one and inspired them to greatness. Except his kind of greatness resulted in death, misery, and tyranny.

Landon was looking at me. If he kept staring, I would have to do a trick or something. “Yes?”

“You’re not what I expected,” he said.

“Who did you expect?” I asked.

“Someone with more . . . presence. You seem ordinary.”

“I’m sorry, was I supposed to arrive in a black SUV, wear a two-thousand-dollar pantsuit, and set my sword on fire for the encore?”

“You look terrible, which is to be expected after Mishmar,” Landon said. “But you’re simply not like him. There is a lot of resemblance in the face, but that could be coincidental. With him, when you’re in his presence and he’s happy with you, it’s like standing in sunshine. Your entire being is lifted. When he’s displeased with you, it’s like being in a blizzard. He freezes you out and there’s nothing worse. With you”—Landon moved his hand in front of me—“I get nothing.”

Good to know all of my magical shields were still holding.

“That’s the point,” Curran said. “You’re supposed to get nothing. Give her a chance to use her sword, and you’ll change your mind.”

Landon glanced in the rearview mirror. “You, on the other hand, are exactly what I had expected.”

“And what would that be?” Curran asked.

“An uncomplicated man who thinks that everything can be solved with a sword.”

“I think you’ve been insulted,” I said.

Curran smiled. “I’m crushed. I don’t even use swords.”

Landon ignored him and faced me for a brief moment. “If you are who he thinks you are, you change everything. If you are genuine, your presence alters the power structure of the entire continent. What can you do? What are you capable of? There hasn’t been another one like you for thousands of years. Are you going to support him or oppose him? Who will follow the daughter of the Builder of Towers? Am I driving a pretender to the throne or should I kneel? D’Ambray must’ve thought you were the real McCoy. I couldn’t understand the motivation behind his odd political machinations in Europe over the spring and summer, but now I see—he was building a trap, which apparently failed. But Atlanta? What he did in Atlanta was rash even for him. Contrary to all of his chuckling and ‘aw, shucks, I’m just a simple soldier’ declarations, d’Ambray is intelligent and ruthless. Something must’ve happened between him and Roland to push him into . . .”

“Do you call him Roland?” I asked.

Landon’s eyes narrowed. “I’ll answer one of your questions if you answer one of mine.”

I’d played this game before. It never turned out well. But why not. “Fine. Do you call him Roland to his face?”

“I call him Sharrum.”

King. Well, that wasn’t exactly surprising.

“But yes, in public, I refer to him as Lord Roland. That’s the name he has chosen for this age.” Landon’s eyes lit up. “My turn. Do you carry Voron’s sword?”

“No.”

The excitement died in Landon’s eyes.

“Hugh broke Slayer,” I told him. “I loved that sword. It was a part of me for over twenty years.”

“A convenient excuse,” Landon murmured.

Oh screw it. “I mourn my sword, but that’s alright. Grandmother gave me another one.” I pulled Sarrat out of its sheath.

Landon spun the wheel. The Land Rover nearly careened, turning off the road. Landon parked and bolted out of the car, slapping the driver’s door closed behind him.

Awesome. I’d terrified the Legatus of the Golden Legion just by showing him my sword. If I waved it around, he’d probably explode.

Sarrat smoked on my lap. Its magic wasn’t subtle, like Slayer’s. No, this sword emanated power. It coiled around me. It liked me.

Landon paced back and forth, his eyes a little wild.

“Well, he took it worse than I did,” Curran said.

“I don’t see what the big deal is.”

“It’s a sword made out of your grandmother’s bones, Kate.”

I shrugged.

Landon stared at me through the windshield, turned around, paced back and forth, and stared at me again.

“Do you know what most people have from their grandmother? A tea set. Or a quilt.” Curran smiled. “If your family had a quilt, it would be made out of chimera skin and stuffed with feathers from dead angels.”

“Are we talking Judeo-Christian angels, because those don’t exist, or pagan angels like Teddy Jo?”

“Kate,” Curran said.

“Hey, I warned you from the start it would be weird. I sat in that bathtub with you and told you that this was a really bad idea. You said you loved me and stayed in the tub. As far as I’m concerned, you’ve made your bed. You have to lie in it.”

“I’ll lie in any bed as long as you’re in it, but this is still weird.”

I turned back to look at him. “We’re going to see my dad, who’ll probably crush me like a gnat, and you’re weirded out by my sword?”

Curran nodded at Landon. “I’m not the only one.”

Landon peered at me again.

“Did you name it yet?” Curran asked.

“Yes. Sarrat Irkalli. It means Great Queen of Irkalla, the Land of the Dead. My grandmother was occasionally confused with her, and now that she’s dead, it’s fitting.”

Curran spread his arms. “I rest my case.”

This was ridiculous. I leaned over the driver’s side, swung the door open, and yelled at the top of my lungs, trying to outscream the enchanted water engine. “Are you done?”

“What?” Landon said.

“Are! You! Done?! If you want, you can stay here. Just point us where to go, and we’ll drive ourselves!”

Landon slid back into the driver’s seat and pointed at my saber. “Put it away.”

“Say the magic word.”

“Please,” Landon squeezed out.

I slid the blade back into the sheath and petted it. “It’s okay, Sarrat. If he insults you, I’ll cut his head off and you can drink his blood.”

Landon shut his eyes for a long moment, exhaled, and steered the Land Rover back onto the highway.

Trees slid past my window, draped in snow and ice. Inside the heavily insulated SUV the world was quiet save for the low hum of the engine. Landon watched the road. Some complicated calculations were no doubt taking place in his head. Probably trying to figure out how my presence affected his little kingdom within Roland’s empire.

The road wove its way through the woods. The snow ended and asphalt began, seeded with large stone blocks. “Why the stone?”

“His magic degrades modern roads,” Landon said.

The woods continued. The trees grew thicker and taller, spreading their mighty branches to the sun. The snow sparkled in the weak winter light, pure white in the sun, blue in the shadows. The magic must’ve fed this park the way it fed the parks in Atlanta, and what began as a carefully managed spot of green had rioted and turned into a dense old forest. How odd it must’ve been for my father to go from ancient Mesopotamia to this winter wonderland.

Voron had dedicated his life to bringing me to this point. If he were still alive, he would know I was riding to my death. I now realized that he never expected me to win. All of his plans always ended with me confronting Roland. There was never any discussion of what to do after. He didn’t expect me to have an after.

The woods parted. A building loomed in the distance, surrounded by the spiral of a wide iced-over moat, curving around the structure like a snake of frosted glass. The building rose, all but floating, above the snow-covered lawn, oblong, its walls a gathering of delicate white panels that looked suspiciously like giant feathers. They thrust from the main mass in perfect imitation of a bird. The road turned, circling the building, and I saw the whole structure.

A swan.

The building was constructed in the shape of a giant swan, its tail sitting on the ground, its chest caught in the ice of the lake, while its proud neck curved five stories above the water. The sun bathed it and it glowed slightly, as if the entire palace had been painstakingly carved by a genius sculptor out of an enormous block of glossy alabaster. Each feather stood out, distinct, its vanes and shaft clearly visible. The swan looked ready to push off from the shore and swim out onto the lake. If it had been life-sized, I would’ve thought it was real. The beauty of it took my breath away.

How could the man who’d built Mishmar build this?

“Why a swan?” Curran asked.

“He’s fond of them,” Landon said, bringing the car to a stop. “We get out here.”

He stepped out of the car. Curran and I followed him toward three ornate bridges. One after the other, we walked across them and through the concentric rings of the moat. Snow crunched under my feet.

I was walking into the heart of my father’s power, while the magic was up. This wasn’t how I had pictured confronting him. But at least Curran was with me. So we could die heroically together. Okay, that wasn’t the best thought to have right about now.

It didn’t matter. I would walk in there and I would walk back out with Christopher and Robert. Or at the very least, I would see Roland’s blood on my new sword before he crushed me.

Maybe I should just stop thinking altogether.

The bridges ended. I wasn’t ready.

Curran paused and examined the swan. “What the hell . . .”

“Just go with it,” I told him.

A wide arched door waited for me in the swan’s side, right where the legs would’ve been tucked under the body. A stairway of white marble stairs led to the door.

He’d killed my mother. He was going to claim the city I called home. He’d stopped a horde of undead vampires in Mishmar.

This was happening.

Every nerve in my body tensed. My breathing deepened. My muscles became loose and pliant, like I had spent half an hour warming up before a big fight. It felt like my blood was boiling. Next to me Curran rolled his head, stretching his neck and loosening his shoulders.

The stairs ended. The arched door swung open. I walked through the open doors into my father’s palace.

• • •

I HAD EXPECTED a sterile monochromatic space. I couldn’t have been more wrong. Warm, sand-colored tiles lined the floor. An indoor garden, lush with green plants, spread on both sides of me in curved, raised beds, bordered by a gently winding pond, where fat lazy koi floated under the lily pads. The air smelled of lotus and roses. Tiny insects, blue and green and ruby-red, floated between the flowers, like a scattering of weightless jewels carelessly flung by the handful into the air.

In the center of the garden, a round mechanism of golden and silver gears rotated, balanced on a thin spike. Hair-thin wire rings wrapped around the mass of gears. The rings spun and turned, hypnotic in their beauty. Magic emanated around it. Was this an atomic model of some sort?

I made my mouth move. “What does it do?”

“I don’t know,” Landon said. “He built it one afternoon on a whim.”

A giant door waited at the other end of the room.

I reached forward with my senses. Vampires.

My hands were trembling. Hell no. I’d had twenty-seven years to prepare. I wouldn’t lose it now. I inhaled the air, letting it out slowly. My hands steadied. My pulse slowed.

“You can’t go any farther than that door,” Landon said to Curran.

“Fine,” he said. “I’ll wait in the doorway.”