He was able to get the tiger away from her, but how do you wrestle with all that muscle? At least he was vampire-strong, but in this Greaves-controlled space, he had no power to finish the beast off with a hand-blast. All he could do, as the claws shredded his arms and legs, was jab the dagger in repeatedly searching for the heart.

* * *

Greaves held Grace in his arms. He hovered outside the cage and watched the show. He had cloaked himself and the entire battle in mist.

He felt dizzy with pleasure on so many levels. It was hard to pinpoint which felt the best: that he was watching the formidable Thorne being overcome at last by a creature he couldn’t subdue—or maybe it was the sight of Marguerite lying facedown in the straw, bleeding out.

“And there goes obsidian flame,” he said quietly, smiling.

He heard Thorne’s grunts. He vowed he would savor the sound as long as he lived.

He wanted to wait for the exact moment of death, but he needed to be back on the platform since the cameras were still rolling.

He folded with Thorne’s sister, however, into the bunker below the stage where Casimir waited. His servant deserved his reward.

“I didn’t think you would return her to me.”

“I wasn’t going to, but she’s no threat now. Marguerite is dying. Thorne will not survive this attack, either. You may take your prize back to Paris.”

He held Grace out to him.

Casimir took her. Before Greaves had even blinked, the pair vanished.

But a chill went through Greaves, a prescience that all was not well, and suddenly he wanted his act of generosity undone.

Well, too late for that. He shook off the uneasy sensation, dismissed his concerns, and returned in a swift glide through nether-space to his preeminent throne-like seat on the platform.

As he stared down the long avenue, as his well-trained troops marched in rigid formation, as the handlers drove their squadrons of DNA-altered swans and geese along the route, and as the fireworks boomed, oh, yes, life could be magnificent.

Even as he watched, however, he used his voyeur window to keep tabs on what was going on in the cage. He kept his power-block intact. The tiger was dead now, not unexpected since Thorne had brought his daggers and sword into the cage, but he was near death, as was Marguerite.

Quite perfect and yes, magnificent.

* * *

Marguerite heard a strange cacophony of sound; the faint flapping of wings, the roaring of a crowd, and in the distance the boom of thunder.

Oh. The military review spectacle.

She had one thought: Why wasn’t she dead? She hurt in so many places, all at once, that she couldn’t focus on anything. And she was so weak.

She opened one eye and saw a beautiful bank of black-striped white fur.

Oh, God, the tiger, but she couldn’t move. Neither could the tiger, apparently.

Where was Thorne?

Thorne? she sent.

No response.

Another roar of the crowd and shouts in what must have been Russian.

She pushed up on her elbows and shifted her head the opposite direction. She gasped. No.

Thorne leaned up against the side of the cage, shoulders slumped, head rolled forward, barely breathing, unconscious. Blood seeped from deep wounds down his chest, his arms, his legs. His usually golden skin was very pale. Too pale.

She felt that he was near death, almost gone.

Again?

Thorne.

Warrior.

Invincible.

She was close enough to reach out with her hand and touch his ankle. A tremor seemed to pass through his body, up his leg, abdomen, torso, which forced a deeper breath, a slight movement of the head, then nothing.

“You can’t die,” she whispered. “You can’t die. Not now. Not like this.”

In the distance, another round of thumping hit the air. Fireworks. Of course.

She was cold. She had on a sweatshirt, but the air was frigid; nighttime in Russia in March.

Thorne needed to get warm.

She tried folding the comforter from Thorne’s bedroom, but she couldn’t—as though she was blocked somehow. Of course she was blocked. Greaves would have had enough power to do that. She’d tried a hand-blast on the tiger and had failed.

Greaves seemed to have blocked most of their powers.

Awareness dawned. She would die here in minutes, from the cold and from the loss of blood. They would both die.

She laid her head down and stared at the bottom of Thorne’s bare foot, smeared with blood. She closed her eyes.

How had it all come down to this, lying in a filthy cage, blood leaking out of her from a dozen wounds, and the man she loved dying? How had this become her life? Why was this her life?

Her mind flashed back and back, to her father’s barn, the place where the animals shifted around uneasily while he laid the strap over her bare back and made her bleed.

She was still covered with wounds and bleeding.

Why?

Through her years at the Convent, sister-bitch had done the same thing.

So why was she still here—only this time she was about to die?

Why?

She opened her eyes again and watched Thorne’s chest rise and fall in soft, almost panting breaths. She didn’t want him to die. Of all the things that could happen in this situation, she didn’t want him to die. He didn’t deserve death, this beautiful warrior who had fought so hard, for so long. He didn’t deserve to die.

Second Earth needed him. Deep into her bones, this is what she felt, what she knew.

Hell, she needed him. She caressed his ankle. “Don’t die, Thorne. Not like this. Not ever. Stay with me. Please.”

Her eyes burned but like hell she was going to cry. Fuck that.

Creator help me.

Odd to be praying, but shit, if she didn’t get some kind of guidance or wisdom or strength or help, her man would die and Second Earth would fall to that monster.

She closed her eyes again. With her hand still resting on Thorne’s ankle, she reviewed the past several bizarre, incredible days. She had started out on a man-hunt, looking for sex and enjoying her freedom; then the visions had started, all that emerging power that she hadn’t asked for.

The need to whine about it rose up within her but she suppressed it quickly. She was pretty sure that her whining about how powerful she was had gotten her into this mess.

She had some chops, some serious chops, so why had she failed in this situation? After all, she’d gotten Grace out of the Convent without getting either killed or abducted by that freak, Casimir.

But why had that worked?

She thought back to how she’d gotten there in the first place and a very simple truth settled into her brain: pure vision.

She winced. Oh, God, she’d been arrogant, seeing only that she’d helped rescue Grace when in fact what had made the situation doable at all was that Brynna had connected with her and made the impossible, possible.

But when Thorne had asked just minutes ago whether she thought she should repeat the process, she’d insisted it wasn’t necessary. The truth was, she hadn’t wanted to connect with Brynna again, or any other Seer for that matter. She had come to view these kinds of connections, or any kind, as a stumbling block to her freedom.

She rubbed Thorne’s foot. His skin was in that halfway place between cold and warm, not quite gone. Almost.

Okay, so a tear leaked from her eye, maybe two.

She drew in a deep breath.

She’d really fucked up. She’d been so stubborn and willful, so intent on living how she pleased, on pursuing her freedom, that now she had no freedom at all. Just death. And Thorne’s death as well.

She opened her eyes and looked up at him.

She loved Thorne. She really loved him. She’d said those words before, but she’d qualified them saying that she loved him as much as she was able.

But now she understood something about herself: She was capable of love and worthy of love. That part of her that had been broken began knitting together, as though two parts of her soul reached across the chasm of all her past pain and began forging something strong and powerful. Her chest swelled as healing came to her and a couple more tears leaked out of her.

So what was she going to do now to get herself and Thorne out of this completely impossible situation? Was there anything she could do?

The thought ripped through her so fast, that her whole body jerked: Obsidian flame.

Hope flared.

She reached deep into her mind and released her power. It flowed through her in a heavy rush, then evaporated as though in this cage it had no power.

She heard laughter within her mind then Greaves’s voice. Did you think I would permit you to release your power? How absurd.

Marguerite slammed her shields in place and felt the bastard leave her mind.

She was really sick of all these assholes having control, but dammit, what was she supposed to do now?

* * *

Thorne floated among the galaxies, so at peace, just like before yet not quite. He didn’t seem to be as aware as he had been earlier in this state after Marguerite had split open his obsiddy power, which had in turn launched him into a true out-of-body experience.

James had been with him then.

Now he was just alone, as though he was neither here in this space, nor there, in his body.

But he was at peace.

Oh, yes, that much he could feel.

He waited for Marguerite, his wildcat, to start punching at him, send lightning bolts into his obsidian flame power, forcing him to rejoin his body.

But nothing came, as though she were dead as well.

Yet he knew she wasn’t.

Just him, in this floating place of peace.

No more responsibility.

No more war.

No more making love.

He would miss that.

Something moved inside his spirit at thoughts of Marguerite, of making love to her, of loving her. She had been his light, his sanity, his beacon. She didn’t deserve to die in that cage, bleeding to death because Greaves was a monster.

He didn’t deserve to die, either, yet how peaceful it was just floating among the stars.

His spirit moved once more: Marguerite.

He didn’t want to leave her.

A wrestling began, a struggling between two worlds deep in his soul: a longing to remain, a need to go back and to finish what he had started.