His face rippled. Ha! Direct hit. I sank his battleship.

The ma’avir opened his mouth. “Say what you wish. Fight with everything you have. Struggle, kick, bite, none of it matters. He wants you and you will come to him. You will dedicate yourself to him, and when that moment comes, you will beg to bring him your mother’s head on a silver platter. You will weep tears of gratitude when he devours her eyes.”

“That’s beautiful. You should write that down. If my journey is so inevitable, what are you doing here in Atlanta? Why not just wait for me?”

He leaned forward, the flames inside him flaring. “I will carve you into pieces and bring them to my god. The drop of power you stole will keep you alive, and when you awaken half a century from now in his fiery embrace, we will speak again.”

Fear hammered a cold spike through my heart. I could see it in my head, my body in pieces, clinging to life, aware, watching, but powerless as everyone I cared about died one by one. I had to kill him. If he won, what kind of world would I wake up to?

The high priest showed me his teeth, blood-red fangs made of fire. “I can hear your heart flutter. I watched you walk around this city you used to call home, wearing pretend arrogance like armor. Now you understand. He is a god and you are still an abandoned child craving approval and shivering in the dark.”

The fear crystalized into a new emotion and I let it fuel me. “Fear isn’t the only thing that can make a heart flutter.”

“What else is in your heart, orphan child?”

“Rage.”

I spat power words, a command from a language so old, it shaped magic itself. “Sert ranam girreh!” Bar the city gates.

Magic pulsed from me in a flash of blinding pain, splashing against the boundaries of the room, and burst into an invisible wall, cutting us off from reality. My grandmother used this spell millennia ago when enemy armies besieged Shinar cities.

The ma’avir recoiled.

I leapt over the desk, Dakkan in my hands, and stabbed at the priest, aiming just under the breastbone. The spearhead shone with red as it sliced the air. I had brought two canteens full of vampire blood primed with my own. An hour ago, when I took up my post behind the desk, I had coated Dakkan in the blood mix and solidified it, turning the metal spearhead into a razor-sharp blood weapon.

The ma’avir turned to smoke. The spear pierced him and passed through with no resistance.

The swirl of smoke surged to the window and rammed the invisible magic wall, turning solid for a micro-second. The magic tolled in my head like a giant bell being struck with a hammer.

I stabbed at him and he went ethereal again. My spearhead shredded smoke.

The high priest streamed toward the door and slammed into my wall again. I thrust at him before the sound of the impact rolled through me. Dakkan met only air. Missed again. Damn it. I couldn’t stab smoke, and he couldn’t break the wall unless he turned solid. Fine. I could keep this up until he got tired or I got lucky.

We danced across the room, him throwing himself at the boundary and me trying to nail him with my spear to it. The world shrank to the clump of smoke and the tip of my spear.

Where was the fire? Absorbing Moloch’s eye granted me some immunity, but it had limits, and a high priest would burn through them in a single blast. Why wasn’t this room a sea of fire?

Using the language of power took a hefty chunk of my magic. I could hit him with another one—I had a whole arsenal at my disposal—but there was no guarantee it would work. He was holding back, and until I knew the full extent of his power, so would I. The blood spear would work just fine.

Stab. Stab. Stab.

My spear sliced through solid flesh. Fire splashed the magic wall, and then the ma’avir was smoke again. Nicked him. I just had to be a hair faster.

The smoke turned into fire. A glowing nebula of light and heat splayed out near the ceiling and contracted, like a star collapsing into a tiny white-hot spark. It shot across the room like a bullet, shrinking into a blinding mote of light, and bit into my wall.

A scalding hot needle of pain punctured my skull from one temple to the other and vanished. He was through. Shit.

The fire exploded outside the window, snapping into the ma’avir. I spun to the desk, dropping the wall as I moved, grabbed my bow, turned, and fired. It took less than half a second. The arrow tore through the ma’avir and streaked into the night.

No damage.

The high priest laughed. “Chase me, daughter of Shinar. Catch me. Drive me from your city. Try to take my life before I feast on the eyes of your loved ones. Show me what you can do.”

I let out a shrill whistle, swiped my spear off the desk, and ran downstairs. He dared me to chase him, which meant he had a trap prepared and would lead me to it. That was the plan all along, and I would follow him into the trap. I had no choice. He had seen Ascanio and probably Luther. If his rant wasn’t a bluff, he might have seen others. Stella. Marten. Nick. My family.

I had to kill him no matter what it took.

I burst out of the front doors. The ma’avir hung above the lawn, fifty feet in the air. Too high. I unscrewed Dakkan and slid its halves into its sheath on my back.

Tulip came running, and I sprinted to her and jumped into the saddle. Above us, the ma’avir surged across the sky, an ink-black swirl of magic that blotted out the stars as it passed. Turgan took to the air, and I sent him high, out of the reach of the priest. I chased the shadow in the sky heading west.