I station him outside the door, dropping the staff on the carpet the moment the locks seal behind me. My hands are blistered where they gripped the handle and I gingerly prod the angry, raw skin. I don’t remember Lyon’s hands being scarred when he’d reached for the staff during our meeting last week. And I never saw a single blemish on Michael’s manicured fingers. So why are mine being destroyed? Is this some kind of test?

I set the orb on the desk, bracing it between a few hardback books to keep it from rolling off. Gaia’s magic thrashes inside it, sparking and hissing whenever I get close to the glass. My throat starts to hurt again just looking at it.

My head pounds and a persistent pain has been spreading in my chest. Denver once confided to me that acute panic can feel like a heart attack. I dig frantically in Lyon’s desk drawer for Xanax or antacids, kicking myself for my stupidity when I find absolutely nothing. This place is shrouded in magic. Heartburn and myocardial infarctions don’t exist here, so why do I feel like I’m dying?

Determined to ignore the nagging burn, I rummage through Lyon’s cabinets, searching every drawer and niche for the missing eye, certain I’ll feel better once it’s in my hands. The crystal will show me how to control Gaia’s magic. It will show me where to find Jack. And how to get the staff to stop burning the crap out of me every time I touch it.

I sling open a cabinet door, muscles tensing when a prismatic rainbow dances over the wood, but it’s only the light bouncing off a crystal decanter. I swirl the amber liquid inside. The pungent whiff of alcohol stings my nose before I even break the seal, and my eyes water at the burn as I greedily swallow some down. Falling into Lyon’s leather chair, I tip my head back and wait for the liquor to hit my blood, begging for it to numb the pain and wrap me in a hazy layer of gauze. But it only makes the burn in my chest worse and exacerbates my headache.

I rub my sunken eye socket. Maybe Kai was right about stolen magic being cursed. But if that’s the case, then why didn’t Lyon lose an eye when he stole the magic from Michael? What was his curse? Lyon didn’t even want the power of the eye. He put a blinder over the most powerful tool he’d stolen from his predecessor. Maybe that was Lyon’s curse—he was too fearful of it, too weak to wield so much power. He hadn’t even bothered to take Ananke’s. Instead, he’d left it trapped in a cage in his office. But then, so had Michael. . . .