Page 2 of Witch Queen

“What is that?” she mumbled.

The answer, when it came, stole away the breath she shared with the demon who had possessed her.

That is a fragment of your soul, Rose. The soul Barquiel subjugated and destroyed when he took over your body…

Rose’s throat tightened as she stared at the miracle before her, Ran Soyun’s voice sounding faintly inside her skull.

“Why—why did he keep a part of my soul?!”

He needed a piece of it to take over your mortal coil. Your consciousness should have disappeared when your soul shattered, but it didn’t. That is how strong that fragment is.Ran Soyun’s voice hardened.Are you ready to fight for what is left of your soul, Rose Blake?

Hope flared inside Rose for the first time in ages. She clenched her jaw.

“Tell me what I have to do.”

CHAPTERONE

Nikolai Stanisic stoodon a rooftop terrace overlooking Manhattan. He gently rubbed the faded photograph in his hand with a thumb.

It was the picture Mae Jin had found in the palace that once served as the headquarters of the Dark Council, the prison he and his mother had been confined to for years.

The setting sun cast an orange glow on his mother’s pale face where she sat holding him on her lap. His chest grew tight with a wealth of emotions.

Nikolai still remembered Gabriela Stanisic begging one of the few palace attendants who had been tolerant of her presence to take the photograph on the day he’d turned ten. They’d had but an hour in which to enjoy a hastily arranged secret birthday party, one which only his mother and himself had attended.

She had been summoned to Vedran Borojevic’s private chambers shortly afterward, only to return late at night, her face ashen and the fresh bruises the Sorcerer King had inflicted upon her body showing above the neckline of her long-sleeved dress.

By then, Nikolai had been old enough to realize just how his father treated his mother. Even if he hadn’t been, his half-brother Oscar had relished recounting the ways in which their father regularly degraded her.

The rage that had burned in his young heart when he’d grasped the horrors she suffered to keep the two of them alive in that pit of black-hearted snakes was something he still carried to this day.

A haze of Hellfire Magic ignited around him despite his best intentions. Even though Nikolai knew it would not harm anything he cherished, he hastily suppressed his powers, worried they would accidentally scorch the precious memento he clasped.

Alastair rustled his wings and made a worried sound on his shoulder.

“I know.” Nikolai stroked the familiar, remorse a bitter aftertaste in his mouth. “I need to do something about these feelings.”

His breath shuddered out of him.Before they destroy me.

The resentment and fury festering inside him since he’d woken up from the Illusion Sorcery cast upon him had only grown with the passage of time. He still found it hard to swallow all the horrible things he had done to Mae and her bonds in that church in Concord. How he had allowed his father to absorb his and Alastair’s powers and use them against the woman he loved and their friends.

In the aftermath of the battle that had seen Mae free his and Alastair’s minds from their dark shackles and Hellreaver meet his shocking end, Nikolai had focused all of his energy on bringing solace to the witch he had betrayed.

He knew Mae had forgiven him for what he did to her. He just wasn’t ready to acquit himself of his sins yet. Especially since the Hellfire Magic Vedran now possessed gave him a distinctive advantage over them. He now had in his hands the one artifact that could lead him to the soul of the first Sorcerer King: theBook of Lightthat he had destroyed Hellreaver to obtain.

Dietrich Farago, the Immortal scientist who had worked for Barquiel and Vedran, had theorized that there was a very high chance Fire Magic could open the book. And Hellfire Magic was the most powerful of all Fire Magic.

The rooftop door opened behind Nikolai, distracting him from his grim thoughts. He slipped the photograph into the pocket of his jeans.

Mae Jin crossed the terrace and joined him, Brimstone padding silently beside her. “There you are.”

Alastair fluttered down onto the fox’s head.

Mae stopped next to Nikolai and looked at the scenery spread out before them. “Pretty, isn’t it?”

“If you don’t mind the stink of the river,” he murmured.

Mae rolled her eyes. She turned, propped her elbows on the metal railing, and studied him inquisitively.

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