She hadno ideasand it was going to ruin everything—
Someone grabbed her and Nicole whirled, struck.
Alexander.
She’d failed and he was dragging her back.
‘No!’ she shouted, kicking. ‘Wake up!’ She slammed her fists into his chest. ‘Think about what they’ve done to you!’
She wracked her mind for the words Dr Kaner had said, tangling her tongue around the sounds. She managed it, the strange approximation of a lost language.
There was a brief stilling of Alexander’s features, something like recognition in his eyes, as if for a sliver of a moment there was clarity. Pain.
Then he spoke.
But it was one word, drenched in Influence: ‘Sleep.’
There was nothing to stop it this time. Not her will. Not her power.
And no one to save her.
Not even herself.
CHAPTER SEVENTY-SEVEN
Kyan
KYAN WAS LED DOWN A LONG WHITE CORRIDOR, ITS COLUMNSsculptures of the Greek Titan Atlas. The world Atlas upheld was a circle, symbolising not just the Wake, but the supernatural and human societies. And then, of course, the straining Empyreal beneath it. Without whom, the Wake touted,our organisation would not exist.
Yet they did what they did.
Kyan opened the doors onto a marble gallery. As he strode inside, the way was promptly shut behind him.
He hated it. Standing there, clasping his hands behind his back, subservient. Pretending. He was sick of pretending. But if it kept Nicole safe, he’d keep up the charade.
A sculpted relief of the gods filled the back wall like something lifted off a temple. But this was a battle which seemed either lost or unfinished, swathes of the wall uncarved in that pale stone. Faceless, formless.
‘Art, in our culture, is so often prophecy as well as history.’
A man glided in from what must have been a door, hidden behind sculptures to the left. His regal, low tone rang in Kyan’s body like a warning.
He’d wanted to come face to face with a leader of the Wake.
Evidently, his request had been granted. And Kyan was struck with the realisation that he had met this man upon joining the Wake, and several times in Rome.
He had pale skin and hair a type of blond Kyan didn’t really knowhow to describe. An almost pure gold that added to his striking beauty. Regal energy breathed off him, aided by his expensive clothes: embroidered with details Kyan hadn’t seen in millennia.
Clothes a god might have worn, caped with a material that managed to look modern.
He looked no older than thirty, but Kyan couldn’t get anounceof a read on the being’s power or true age.
‘All the great beasts eradicated,’ the almost-stranger said, strolling past a sculpture of Laocoön ensnared with his sons by great sea-serpents. Past Hercules fighting the Nemean lion. Past Perseus beheading Medusa. Each a remorseless depiction. Each threading unease in Kyan’s chest.
Kyan followed, but could feel, under the steady weight of the man’s gaze, that this was a threat. That they sought to draw him further into their interior world with this meeting, so that the Wake’s binds could tighten.
‘As honoured as I am to be having this conversation six days early,’ Kyan said, ‘I’d prefer to oversee the new Empyreal I brought in. If I go now, I’m sure I’ll locate them.’
He’d been livid with stress since Nicole had been taken on her mission. It had been more than an hour, and every second ticked in his temple like a countdown.
