Page 8 of The Fate of Black Hearts

Once the fog Evie cast had passed, he held out his hand to reacquire his knife. It surged back to his hand from the dead, bleeding body. Again, a power he hadn’t attempted in a long time. His gaze bounced to Roman, who stared openly at him. The shocked expression on the lycan’s face pleased him. The other part of his mind detonated a resoundingoh shit. Of all the brothers, Roman would know exactly what he was. The eldest Lanzo brother had a natural gift to identify what magical creatures he faced. He’d know he was a mage, and a very old one. Maybe he’d even experience a tingle of familiarity. Roman had always been skeptical and somewhat combative toward him. That attitude persisted even after years of somewhat positive interactions.

Evie paused in buttoning her coat to glance back at him. For an instant, her cat-like amber eyes widened like they had long ago on that fateful day they met.Remember me, Evie.He sent the vision of their first meeting into her head.

Remember. You’re in danger. From me. From whatever Ian Lanzo has become.

Chapter Three

1884

The chill in the air almost equaled the ice running through Evie’s veins. Frigid gusts pierced her rain-soaked wool cape and dress to settle into her bones.

Her feet dangled over the edge of a stone bridge that crossed the Seine. How she despised Paris. Not for the streets that reeked of human refuse, but for the fact the city served as the epicenter of the elite lycan mating market. Unknown to the thousands of humans in this city, lycans, along with other non-human species, thrived among them. The nonhumans—be they vampires or witches or lycans—upheld a tacit agreement to keep humans ignorant. If discovered, memories were altered. Sometimes, lives were ended.

Two hundred yards away five black-cloaked figures appeared out of thin air. They dragged a man with his hands bound behind him to the riverbank. He struggled but made no sound. The wind gusts picked up, whipping the wet strands of his long black hair around his head.

She flattened herself on the bridge. Smart of her to have ditched the crinoline understructure of the dress. In her peripheral vision something fluttered above her on a tree branch. A falcon-like bird satvigilant in the rain, watching. What was a bird like that doing in the rain on a cold night like this?

Lightning streaked down to strike a nearby rooftop in a brilliant display of sparks. It illuminated everything about the prisoner. He was harsh, powerful, and flawless—as if an artist had carved his face in the image an ancient god. The only roughness to the planes of his face was the dark stubble on his chin.

Hair raised on the back of her neck when the cloaked figures encircled him and chanted. A fiery pentagram lit up around the captive.

The bottom dropped out of her stomach. Those were witches. Lycans had waged war against them for the past twenty-two years. Recently, witches had shifted their strategy to target lycan females for elimination to weaken her species. Already, lycan female numbers had been decimated. This made the practice of mating move away from traditional, genuine connections between pairs to selling females to the highest bidder. Evie was viewed as a vessel for a future generation.

The air crackled with a slithery sensation. Something evil had arrived. Her heart pounded a loud warning that she should bolt. Best not to get trapped by whatever magic had been cast. Instead, she remained still. If she ran, they’d see her. She wasn’t daring enough to face off with that many witches.

A shadowy, wraithlike entity appeared inside the circle of witches but outside the pentagram of fire. Their victim backed away but didn’t cower. He hit one of the edges of the fiery shape surrounding him and reacted as if burned.

The wraith cackled and muttered words in an unfamiliar language. He wielded a curved blade. Evie winced when it brutally sliced the prisoner’s throat. The wraith reached across the pentagram to toss the captive into the river. Between one eye blink and the next, all the witches and the wraith disappeared. The pentagram fire puffed out, leaving a brief haze of smoke before the rain washed it away.

The prisoner’s head surfaced. He bobbled and struggled in the water, but his movements were awkward. How could he be alive? The blade looked to have sliced so deep his head almost came off.

She sprinted to the shore and leaned over as far as she dared to see him.Should I help someone a group of witches deemed so bad they tried to execute him? Common enemies might make him a friend.

“Swim toward me. Can you hear me?”

Somehow, he kicked his way to her. Lifting him from the water wasn’t about the strength she had no trouble mustering. It was about balancing at an awkward angle to prevent taking a header into the stinky water.

Once she hefted him ashore, she untied his gag. Using her small dagger, she cut the rope around his wrists.

He sat upright. While massaging his arms he scanned around them. “How did you cut the binding? It was held by magic.” The low, gritty timbre of his voice sizzled down her spine.

She shrugged and rolled the dagger in her hands. “My father gave it to me. Nothing special.”

He should be shaking from the river’s freezing water, but he wasn’t. His gaze snapped to hers. Hiseyes were dark except for the copper flecks that appeared backlit by an otherworldly glow, as if they could shoot fire.

No injury remained where he’d been almost decapitated. This was no human.Obviously.He must heal quickly like her, but he wasn’t lycan. He also didn’t smell like a witch or vampire. Odd that all smell of the river had disappeared from him.Magic.That meant this was some species of wild magical being. She shot upright and stepped back.Friend or foe?

Her nails elongated into daggers and her teeth sharpened, a partial transition to her feral state. As a lycan, her inner creature wouldn’t change her into a small furry animal like in the mythical stories—shapeshifters were a different being entirely—but she could become something more feral and wolf-like in humanoid form. It was something bound by her instinctual animal side as regulated by the moon cycles, but also an astute strategical fighter with heightened senses and superhuman strength.

Spiral, tattooed scars visible above his shirt across his neck glowed as residual magic ebbed. How could she have missed those? The marks indicated the use of a type of forbidden magic, a practice she’d heard whispered about but lycans were barred from learning. The marks signaled him a mage and should have rendered him ugly. Instead, her inner predator roared to life and noticed him as more…everything.

She couldn’t look away from him.

Although a beautiful creature, the harshness he exuded put her on high alert. Her inner animal wanted to hunt him, not to kill but to seduce.Knock it off.

She glared at the sky where a blue moon lurked behind the clouds. Blue moons only happened once every few years as an extra full moon in the middle of the month. It made her moon craze kick to extra strength with a lust for sex.

Not thinking about how bloody gorgeous he is. He might kill me.