“What?” Caine asked through gritted teeth. “I’m the General of your army. I just won a victory for you against the hellhounds in Uffern. And you want to put me in charge of minding a pedestrian girl?”

Asshole. It wasn’t like she wanted to spend time with him either, but his tone was more than a little insulting.

Ambrose studied him. “If you don’t like your new role, Caine, you shouldn’t have brought her here.”

Aurora didn’t speak, but the rage contorting her face told Rosalind that she didn’t like this plan any more than Caine did.

Rosalind narrowed her eyes at the Vampire Lord. “What do you get out of this?”

“Clever girl.” Ambrose studied her. “Let’s just say I’m protecting a personal interest. A mage with your powers could be useful to me some day. I trust Caine will be able to break your faith in the Brotherhood.”

Apparently, Ambrose wouldn’t be on board with her plan to exorcise the second spirit. Best not to mention it now.

Caine’s gaze was pure ice. “She’s impulsive, completely unprepared to practice magic, and deeply committed to the Brotherhood. It will be a long time before she becomes a functioning mage.”

“You know she’s not just any girl.” Lifting Rosalind’s hand, Ambrose examined her ring. “What happens when you take it off?” he asked her—but before she had the chance to respond, he slipped it from her finger.

She gasped, and her body exploded with an earthy, vernal aura. An ancient creature stared out from her eyes. A thing, taking over her body, one vein and muscle at a time. An overpowering scent of rotting leaves filled the air, and she stared into Ambrose’s emerald green eyes, his skin pale in the flickering candlelight. Such a strange, perfect beauty, life and death in one vessel.

She wanted to crush him. The thing inside Rosalind made her reach for his face, but the Lord slipped out of her grasp.

Rage ignited her body, and her legs trembled. Someone screamed in her skull—a wild, unquiet mind inside her own, and it said only one word. Ambrose. Ambrose. It was the only word in her mind now, and the thing inside her drowned out her own thoughts.

The mage inside her wanted to touch his cool, pale skin, but he kept slipping away from her. His retreat only stoked her desire. The spirit wanted to rip his clothes from his body. Ambrose would burn with her, would feel her lust and her wrath stoking the flames of the funeral pyre. The mage forced her hand to Ambrose’s neck, and some part of her screamed at herself to stop.

But that was the weak part.

Ambrose. She would shatter his bones, drink his blood, grip his pulsing heart in her fingers, she would glory in ripping out his entrails—

Someone else stood before her now, his hand on her waist, face gleaming like moonlight on water. His shocking beauty struck her dumb. The spirit didn’t know his name, but lust and rage screamed in her skull, splintering her thoughts. Her body burned white-hot like a dying star, blazing from the inside out. Her skin blistered and cracked from the heat. She wrapped her arms around the stranger’s body, quenching her blazing agony—