He stepped out of the car. Curran and I followed him toward three ornate bridges. One after the other, we walked across them and through the concentric rings of the moat. Snow crunched under my feet.

I was walking into the heart of my father’s power, while the magic was up. This wasn’t how I had pictured confronting him. But at least Curran was with me. So we could die heroically together. Okay, that wasn’t the best thought to have right about now.

It didn’t matter. I would walk in there and I would walk back out with Christopher and Robert. Or at the very least, I would see Roland’s blood on my new sword before he crushed me.

Maybe I should just stop thinking altogether.

The bridges ended. I wasn’t ready.

Curran paused and examined the swan. “What the hell . . .”

“Just go with it,” I told him.

A wide arched door waited for me in the swan’s side, right where the legs would’ve been tucked under the body. A stairway of white marble stairs led to the door.

He’d killed my mother. He was going to claim the city I called home. He’d stopped a horde of undead vampires in Mishmar.

This was happening.

Every nerve in my body tensed. My breathing deepened. My muscles became loose and pliant, like I had spent half an hour warming up before a big fight. It felt like my blood was boiling. Next to me Curran rolled his head, stretching his neck and loosening his shoulders.

The stairs ended. The arched door swung open. I walked through the open doors into my father’s palace.

• • •

I HAD EXPECTED a sterile monochromatic space. I couldn’t have been more wrong. Warm, sand-colored tiles lined the floor. An indoor garden, lush with green plants, spread on both sides of me in curved, raised beds, bordered by a gently winding pond, where fat lazy koi floated under the lily pads. The air smelled of lotus and roses. Tiny insects, blue and green and ruby-red, floated between the flowers, like a scattering of weightless jewels carelessly flung by the handful into the air.

In the center of the garden, a round mechanism of golden and silver gears rotated, balanced on a thin spike. Hair-thin wire rings wrapped around the mass of gears. The rings spun and turned, hypnotic in their beauty. Magic emanated around it. Was this an atomic model of some sort?

I made my mouth move. “What does it do?”

“I don’t know,” Landon said. “He built it one afternoon on a whim.”

A giant door waited at the other end of the room.

I reached forward with my senses. Vampires.

My hands were trembling. Hell no. I’d had twenty-seven years to prepare. I wouldn’t lose it now. I inhaled the air, letting it out slowly. My hands steadied. My pulse slowed.