I tried to pull back, but I couldn’t. The magic continued to rush out of me, as unstoppable as a flood, more, more, more . . . I struggled to contain it, but it refused to stop. It ripped me out of Curran’s arms and jerked me off my feet into the air. My blood armor crumbled into dust. Words appeared on my hands and arms, strange words written in dark ink. The air around me turned red. The ceiling above me exploded. My body bent back, my arms opened wide, my back arched. The building swayed, shaking. Below me, people crouched by the walls, trying to hide from my power.

The magic inside me erupted. My voice rolled like the sound of an enormous bell.

“HESAAD.” MINE.

A pulse of pure red shot out of me, spreading in a ring over Atlanta. The blast wave rolled with a sound like thunder. I felt it slide over the city all the way past the outskirts, past the Keep until finally it dissipated. The magic soaked into the ground and it responded, sending a surge of magic back to me.

Oh no.

I had claimed the city. I had marked Atlanta as my dominion.

My father smiled and disappeared.

I plunged down and landed on the hard floor in front of Curran, still in his warrior form. The two of us looked at each other. Chunks of something that probably used to be the roof rained down around us.

Curran unhinged his monstrous jaws. I braced myself.

“Show-off.”

I just stared at him. My brain couldn’t string any words together.

He grinned at me. “Come on, baby. We’re going home.”

• • •

WALKING DOWN TO the bottom floor of Lakeside and then to the Pack Jeep was a lot harder than anticipated. Someone had already started the enchanted water engine for us. I got in on the passenger side. I was so numb. I just kept moving forward on autopilot. I should’ve felt something. Relief, fear, some sort of human emotion, but there was nothing there. Only cold detachment.

Curran pulled a spare set of sweats from the back of the Jeep Wrangler, shifted into human form, put them on, and slid into the driver’s seat. He shifted the Jeep out of park and steered it onto the street. A caravan of Pack Jeeps joined us.

The storm clouds had long since dissipated. The sunset had burned itself out, leaving a mere smudge of red in the sky, a distant memory of its dying. The sky above us turned a deep purple.

My mouth finally moved. “Don’t.”

Curran looked at me.

“Don’t take me back to the Keep. They’ll want an explanation. I can’t do it right now.”

Curran made a sharp right turn into a snowed-in lot between an office building and a ruin. The car screeched to a stop.