Chapter 1

Twenty Years Ago

There are countless ways to kill a man with a blade, but only one is an instant death.

I pulled my dagger from the back of the man's neck. Blood trickled from the wound as he slumped forward onto his desk, no writhing, moans, or spurting gore. It was clean and silent.

I stepped back, my pulse drumming steadily in my ears. I could count the minutes by the beat of my heart, as accurate as my wristwatch. Time was everything tonight and the only factor left that could sabotage me. I'd accounted for everything else, but time… time might ruin me.

Seconds slipping past, I turned to the locked filing cabinets along the wall of my target's spacious office.

My knife scraped against the C1 vertebrae as I slid it into the target's spinal column just below the base of his skull. My arm was locked around his throat, and as he went limp, I lowered him silently to the floor of his hotel bathroom.

Blood had smeared on the sleeve of my leather jacket, but it didn't matter. Everything I wore tonight would be burned to ash, along with the car I'd stolen for transportation. My body was covered from head to toe—gloves on my hands, a mask over my face. I would leave no biological evidence. The potion I'd taken would hide my psychic trail, and the light I was bending around myself obscured my presence. I would leave no fingerprints, fibers, or witnesses.

Moving silently out of the bathroom, I glanced at the floor-to-ceiling windows of the suite's sitting room. In the distance, the illuminated Statue of Liberty guarded the water like a lonely sentry.

The night was advancing, my time slipping away. I wasn't finished yet.

My third target was asleep in his bed, on his back, with snores rumbling from his open mouth.

I covered his mouth with my gloved hand and slit his throat.

I folded the thick bundle of papers in half and slid them into the black leather pouch buckled to my right thigh. Closing the filing drawer, I turned.

My fourth target was slouched in a wingback chair in front of a fireplace, coals glowing behind the grate and a half-empty glass of brandy on the table. He could've been sleeping if not for the pallor of his wrinkled skin and the stench of released bowels.

I ghosted through the opulent penthouse to the front door. A quick glance at my watch warned that I'd spent too long searching his office. I would have to rush now.

Urgency flitted through me before I calmed my thoughts. I couldn't be hasty. Hastiness led to mistakes.

I bent the light around me and opened the penthouse door. Fatigue washed over my muscles and weariness dulled the sharp edges of my focus. I steeled myself against them. I had no time to rest.

A woman slept beside my fifth target. She was half his age, and she definitely wasn't his wife.

She hadn't stirred yet, but I needed her to stay asleep. I slipped a tiny vial from my pocket, pulled the cork, and dribbled it over her sleep-parted lips. Her tongue darted out, catching the liquid out of reflex. Most sleeping potions were a telltale shade of yellow, but not this one.

Pocketing the vial, I circled the king bed to my target's side. He'd shoved the covers half off in sleep, his naked abdomen fuzzed with frail white hair. He faced the edge of the bed, and the back of his neck wasn't easily accessible to my blade.

In the scant seconds during which I considered my options, his eyes opened.

I clamped my hand over his forehead, holding him still. The long dagger that had been sheathed at my hip was already in my other hand. Terror had only just dilated his right pupil when the blade plunged through it.

His body spasmed, then stilled. I pulled the dagger out. Not a preferred technique. The frontal lobe of the brain could take a surprising amount of damage without it being fatal. You had to strike deep.

I stepped back, blood dripping off the dagger. Sloppy. Any moment where I wasn't in control was one moment too many. I needed to finish this before my stamina ran out.

One more target.

Invisibility made everything almost too easy. Existing outside the awareness of other people held a certain intoxicating power. They couldn't see me, stop me, or beg me for mercy. They simply died, unaware of my blade, my hand, my face, or my intent.

Too easy.

Becoming invisible, however, the act of it—that was never easy.

I drew in deep, rejuvenating breaths as I released my control over the dim light in the hotel room. It was a far less expensive or expansive space than the other five locations I'd visited tonight. A single room with a king bed, a wall-mounted TV, and a small dinette table with two chairs.

My sixth victim was in his bed. Another back sleeper. Another slit throat. The macabre stain across the white pillows and white duvet drew the eye, out of place in the quiet, clean room.

Standing at the small table, I flipped the lid of the briefcase open, its broken lock rattling. Stacks of folders formed two neat piles, and the steady drumbeat of my heart picked up its tempo in anticipation. I opened the first folder. On the topmost page was a faded drawing of a levitating man surrounded by elemental symbols, a sun emblem on his forehead.

My lips quirked down as I lifted the page. This wasn't what I'd expected.

I checked my watch. It was late. I had no time left. I almost set the paper down and closed the folder—I was taking it all with me, so I had no need to sift through the documents here—but then I saw the page beneath.

It was a photo of an artifact. My gaze darted across it, jumping from the concentric circles to the minuscule lines etched into its metal surface.

Still holding the first page, I reached for the second.

The briefcase jerked out from under my hand. It flew into the air, the lid snapping closed with a thunk that shattered the silence, and soared across the room.

Its handle smacked into the palm of the woman standing in the short hallway leading from the hotel suite's entrance. She clutched the briefcase, but she wasn't looking at it. She wasn't looking at the dead man in the bed either.

She was staring at me. Because I wasn't hidden. I had released my magic to conserve my near-depleted stamina. Every inch of my skin was covered except for the two holes in my mask for my eyes. But it didn't matter how I disguised myself. She would know me anywhere.

"Darius."

Aurelia.

I didn't speak her name. I didn't utter a sound, even though the hoarse, agonized rasp in her voice cut through me like my own blade. Why was she here? How?

But I knew the answer. Time. I had taken too long. At least two of my victims had been discovered, and Aurelia had guessed the connection between them. She'd figured out who was being targeted and had rushed to intercept the killer.

Judging by the fact that no other agents were gathered in the hall behind her, she had also guessed who the killer was. She knew what I did for a living. She knew my methods.

My hand tightened, creasing the paper I held. Then I bent the light around me and vanished.

"Darius!" This time she howled my name. It was neither a shout nor a scream, but a soul-wrenching symphony of anguish, betrayal, fury, and despair.

She flung out her hand and the coffee maker on the built-in sideboard hurtled through the air toward the spot where I'd vanished, but I'd already moved.

"Why?" she raged. "Why did you do this?"

A chair lifted from the floor and whipped across the room. I ducked, barely evading it, my muscles trembling as the renewed use of my power drained the last of my strength.

"The Supreme Judiciary Council," she choked. "Why are you killing them? Why?—"

Grabbing the briefcase, I tore it from her grasp and hid it with my magic as I sped past her.

An invisible force yanked me backward.

I wasn't ready for it. What telekinetic could move an invisible target? Only one as skilled as Aurelia, of course.

I slammed down on my back. My power wavered, revealing me, and she pounced. Her weight shoved the air out of my lungs and her telekinetic force pinned my arms.

Her face was twisted, her eyes glistening but no tears marking her cheeks. Her long blond hair was falling out of its messy ponytail, her blouse was wrinkled, and no makeup smoothed her skin.

"Was it for money?"

Her hoarse question might as well have gutted me. Hidden by my mask, my face contorted.

"You," she gasped, fighting hard for composure. "You always talk about responsibility. You always talk about unchecked power and how destructive it is. And you let someone buy you?"

No.

"Or do you just love the hunt too much?" Her jaw quivered and her chest heaved. "How could you choose killing over me?"

I hadn't.

"Answer me!" She grabbed the front of my leather jacket and dug her knuckles into my sternum. "You convinced me you weren't like them."

I wasn't.

Tears spilled down her cheeks. "I believed you."

I gritted my teeth behind my mask, holding back the words I wanted to say. The words I could never say.

She reached for my mask to pull it off and reveal my face. But she'd lost her focus. Her power was no longer pinning my arms.

I grabbed her wrists and threw her off me. As I rolled onto my feet, my gaze caught on the briefcase—but she was already jumping up. She was fresh and furious, and I was exhausted. I couldn't chance it.

Bending the light around me, I fled. She screamed my name as I went, my betrayal chasing me out into the night, where the false dawn tinged the eastern horizon with a faint blue glow.

Only when I reached my stolen car, my breaths harsh and muscles burning with weakness, did I realize I still clutched the single page from the briefcase in my hand. I smoothed the creases, glanced at its indecipherable drawing, then climbed into the car. My work wasn't done yet. I needed to destroy the evidence.

Aurelia knew. And the mythic world would suspect.

But no one could ever prove that the Mage Assassin had killed this night.