Chapter 3

T he room is utterly silent. My breathing echoes back to me, shuddering and rippling against my ears. The room is lightless. Even with my vampire sight, I can see nothing; no light, no sight.

I try not to panic. But how can I not? Who will come through that door? What will they want? What will they do to me?

I fight hysteria—force my lungs to inflate all the way, hold it, and let it out slowly. Shakily, but under control.

How long?

Five minutes? An hour? A day? There is no way to measure the passage of time. I could count my heartbeats, but my pulse is frantic with fear, pounding so loudly in my ears that it becomes the only sound I can hear.

I reach again for Caspian and feel nothing. Not a whisper, not a hint. It's as if someone silenced my internal voice.

I hear something, at last: a door handle turning. Light blooms, sudden and blinding, a rectangle of white in the absolute darkness.

A tall male figure pauses, framed in the doorway, backlit and silhouetted. Slender. Lean. Long hair.

The door closes with a soft click, and the room is illuminated by the gentle golden-white glow of vitality—his hair, skin, and eyes radiate power. He's freshly glutted, luminous.

Ancient.

Not just by mortal appearance standards, but by fae standards. His hair is white, straight, and hanging past his shoulders. Beardless, his face is without wrinkle, unnaturally so. His eyes, god, his eyes. They betray his immense age. How old is he? A thousand years? More? If Andreas looks middle-aged at most and he's five hundred, then this man, appearing ancient yet hale, must be…I can't even begin to guess.

He wears a plain white robe, sleeveless and belted at the waist with a wide brown leather belt. Barefoot.

He sits at the table, folds his hands one atop the other on the table, and regards me silently.

I do not speak. I wait.

Then, I feel it. It's gradual at first—someone slowly turning up the heat beneath a pot on a stove. A pressure in my mind, a tendril of power slithering against the edges of my mind.

I push back against it, but it's too little and too late. He's inside my mind, a constrictor's coils crushing my defenses. I feel him searching, scanning, probing.

"Where is your prana?" He murmurs, in a voice like paper and razors and ice.

"What?" I'm dizzy, furious, struggling to push him out, but he's everywhere.

"Ah," he whispers. "I see. You partitioned it off. Clever. Who taught you that little trick?"

"No one. I just did it."

"Nonsense. It's a complex bit of glamourworking, not something someone like you—someone who is, for all intents and purposes, merely a mortal child—cannot just figure out ."

"Well, I did."

"That Bouras fellow, perhaps? Hmmm. I think not. His magic tends to be destructive. Simplistic and powerful. Not at all the delicacy required for a partitioning as thorough as the one I'm seeing."

"No one taught me." I glare at him, still fighting desperately to evict him from my mind.

It's like trying to wrestle a fifty-foot-long python with soapy, slippery hands, in ten feet of water.

He waves a hand. "Well, no matter. It's admittedly impressive, regardless of who did or did not teach it to you." He smiles at me, but it doesn't reach his eyes. "I do admire your determination and resourcefulness, Miss Sparrow, truly I do. It was in vain, however. You cannot escape, even if you have your magic. And whoever taught you to partition did you no great service—partitioning is easy, relatively speaking. It's the undoing that's devilishly difficult. Go ahead and try."

I do no such thing. Mainly because I have tried, and I'm scared he's right. I'm scared I won't be able to undo the partition. But I also refuse to try in front of him simply out of contrariness.

He grins again, and this time it does reach his eyes—but it's wicked, cunning, and almost playful. "I thought that might be the case. No matter. Fight all you wish, little mortal child. You will accomplish nothing."

I push— push …

I look inward and see his energy within me: thick ropes of golden-white magic coiled in heaps and tangles, slithering, writhing, wrapping around my vampire and the spark within the shadows that is my partitioned magic. I gather every last scrap of will I possess and push the coils out — OUT …

OUT!

The fae male rocks backward in his chair, eyes widening. "Well, that was a surprise. Very good!" His voice is condescending, patronizing. "But highly ill-advised."

I picture walls around my vampire's shadow-self within, ten feet thick, an impenetrable wall. A dome. An unbreakable barrier.

I feel him probing the wall, circling, circling, coil after coil enveloping my walls.

No, no, no.

All at once, he flexes…and my walls crumble like dust. Fast as a striking cobra, the golden-white coils of power constrict around me, tighten, tighten…

"Shall I show you true power?" He shows me that small, wicked smile. "Feel free to scream, Miss Sparrow. No one will hear you, and no one will care."

Nothing happens at first. And then the dim glow from the fae's eyes, hair, and skin brightens. Brighter, and brighter. With the glow comes heat. Just a hot day outside, at first. And then it's like standing in front of an open oven set to 450. Sweat beads on my forehead. I refuse to move. Refuse to grimace, or pant, or beg.

My skin hurts—the heat is unbearable, ramping up, hotter and hotter.

The table shimmers and begins to liquefy. My skin ignites, and the agony is bone-deep. It's real. It's killing.

Except…I am a vampire, and I cannot die.

It's a glamour. It's not real.

I stare at him through the hazy, wavering screen of superheated air, gritting my teeth and snarling, growling.

My hair catches, flickering, flames licking, heat eating at my brain, my eyes. My chains melt, but I remain restrained. The table is a pool of liquid steel around my feet.

The rock floor around my chair glows dull orange, and then red, and then shimmers and shifts and twists, liquefying.

I scream—I can't help it. My throat is raw, and the heat scorches my lungs. My face is tight, my eyes dry and aching.

No more. Stop, please.

The words lodged in my throat. I will not beg. He will not win.

The room around me glows orange and then red, liquefying into magma, and everything is killing heat. I'm at the center of a volcano, drowning in lava.

I can't breathe—the liquified rock is flooding my throat, melting my teeth, softening my bones to jelly. Killing me, but I am undying, and the suffering continues unabated.

I slip beneath the surface of the lava ocean, screaming, screaming…

The killing heat abates swiftly and the shimmering glow of boiling rock dims, and I still can't breathe but I can see.

A shape wiggles, flits in the endless dark.

Water. Everywhere, water. Brine chokes me, and I'm kicking and flailing, but the currents are powerful and they twist me, buffet me, and I can't find up, can't find the surface. My lungs scream, and I know I don't need to breathe, but it's instinct—

I taste salt water and then I cough, and suddenly I'm hacking, gagging, choking, drowning. I flail upward, but there is no surface. There is no down, no up. There is only the endless ocean, the pressure bending my bones and crushing my organs. I sink, sink, sink, and there's the surface, sunlight wavering far above. I kick for it, pull at the water, but make no progress, and I'm choking on the seawater, drowning, dying…

A dark current whips around me, spins me, occludes my glimpse of the surface with a swirl of shadows, and the water around me grows cold, and colder, and colder, and then there is no water, nothing but cold, cold, cold.

Snow flurries around me, wind-driven razor-sharp knives of ice slicing my skin and cracking my bones, wind whipping a hundred miles per hour, shoving me over, pushing me backward.

I'm nude, and the snow leaches cold into my bones and steals my breath, and builds around my feet. I surge forward and sink into a snowdrift up to my waist, and the cold is no longer just cold , it's death, it's everything, it's the darkness of outer space and the depths of the sea and the absence of all life and light, cold so perfect it cuts like a razor, bores holes in my bones, chokes my lungs with ice.

The snow rises around me, and the wind howls and rages and drives the snow against my bare skin like pellets from a shotgun…

As the snow rises and rises, the wind fades but the cold increases, and darkness swarms around me, thick and alive, and it steals the air from my lungs…

Dark and cold, cold and dark, reaching inside me, gripping me, killing me—

and then subsiding, like water swirling down a drain to empty a tub…

Leaving me shaking in the chair, chained to the table, sobbing, snot dripping down my nose, my throat raw and ragged from screaming.

"That is the Coil of Undying Death," the fae says, his voice like old parchment and bitter acid. "I could trap you there, you know. Leave you there in that very chair for all eternity, dying a thousand miserable deaths and never dying."

"Wha…" I try, choke on a sob, and try again. "What do you want from me?"

"Want? Oh, nothing. I was just making a point."

"What point?" I whisper, trying in vain to stop trembling, to stop gasping for breath. I can still feel the heat, the cold, the choking water, the driving snow, although not a mark remains on my skin.

"That you cannot hope to resist, child. You are here. Your little…rebellion…has failed, and will die without you."

"I'm bloodmated," I whisper. "Surely you know what will happen if you keep us separated."

"As a matter of fact, I do not know, and neither do you. You are not a vampire and nor are you fae. You are both and neither. Some would call you an abomination, others a scientific curiosity. I call you a threat to global peace unlike any other in human history. And I should know—I've been around for most of it."

His words make my head spin—especially when taken in context with what the immortals called me when I first arrived here: WorldBreaker.

"What do you mean? How am I a threat to global peace?"

He sighs. "You think you can change the status quo. And you are right. You can—you have , though I suspect you do not as yet realize it. You think you will bring about change for the better, for mortals, for immortals, for all humankind. An admirable ambition, I assure you. And I sympathize, truly. But you are wrong. If you were to succeed in your aims, humanity as we know it would end—society would end. You've already threatened it—the pillars of civilization tremble, Maeve Sparrow. You have shaken them. I cannot allow you to topple them completely."

I swallow hard—my throat hurts, and my voice is raspy. "You're exaggerating. You just want to maintain control."

Another sigh. "I wish that were true. Please try to listen to me, Maeve. Look at me: I am ancient. I was ancient when Yeshua, whom you know as Jesus, was born—in July, mind you. I was ancient when Khufu raised his pyramid in Giza. I was born in Sumer, the son of the first kings of men. I have walked alongside mortals through an infinity of wars, disasters, and tribulations. I know the ways of mortals. The Treaty, for all that it was and is catastrophic for immortals, was necessary. We could not live with mortals in anything like harmony—we never have. If you push our kind into the light, as you have begun in New York, you will start a war, and it will end civilization as we know it."

"God, fearmonger much? Come on. I'm one girl. How can I end civilization ?"

He shakes his head. "I fear I cannot make you understand, no matter what I say. You are too young, too naive, and too idealistic. The mortals would fear us, as they always have. Others would welcome us—as gods, as overlords, as allies. And so it would become mortals against immortals, immortal against immortals, and alliances of both against each other. Except now, in this age, the mortals' capacity for war is all but infinite. They no longer wage war with gunpowder and steel but with computers, drones, and atoms." He leans across the table toward me. "For all of our magic, Maeve Sparrow, we immortals cannot protect the earth from nuclear winter."

My mouth goes dry and my pulse hammers in my ears. "You cannot possibly think it would come to that."

"It is my deepest fear." He sits back and waves a hand dismissively. "But even should it not escalate to nuclear war, the conflict would tear apart the fabric of society the world over. Thousands, perhaps millions would die. And what would become of immortal kind? Set aside the war with mortals for a moment—the cascade effect of interbreeding alone would be a catastrophe of unimaginable proportions."

"You're catastrophizing. You don't know any of this for certain." I whisper it, not sure I believe myself…or him.

"Perhaps, but I do so with nearly seven thousand years of experience. I say again, you are the greatest threat our world has ever known. You, and the nascent life you carry." His eyes grow sad. Weary. "I am not evil, though I suspect you believe otherwise. No matter. I do what I must to protect humanity." The sad weariness in his expression deepens until I could weep from it. "I wish this burden were not mine to carry, child. Truly. I do not relish what I must do. Your existence is not your fault. But I cannot allow you to leave this place…ever. Nor can I allow the life you carry to propagate. I am sorry. Truly I am."

"Who made you arbiter and decider of the greater good for seven billion people?" I demand, yanking at the chains.

"Wisdom. Experience. A thousand, thousand lifetimes of watching humanity tear itself apart over the slightest provocation."

"Humanity always rises to the occasion. We come together. We overcome."

"I wish it were that simple." Another sigh. "I apologize for what you will endure, Maeve Sparrow."

He rises but doesn't leave, staring down at me. The sadness, the weariness, the age, it's too much. It's overwhelming. The intensity of his presence is overpowering.

He leaves, the door clicking behind him, leaving me bathed in darkness, hearing his voice, his words echoing in the black.