Magda again pulled the hand back, drawing him onward in a rush. Then, in an instant, she reversed her retreat and stepped into his charge.

Magda planted her hand in the center of his barrel chest, becoming a wall against his full weight.

In that instant, he had made the last mistake of his life: he had let her touch him.

Magda knew that it was not necessary for her to invoke the power within her. It was hers, now, always there. She had but to release her restraint of it.

She felt no pressure of his advance against her hand because the world had already stopped in the instant that she made contact. Lothain might as well have been a feather coming at her.

Time was hers.

This was the man who, along with his fellow spies, directed the dream walkers toward the minds they wanted to sneak into and snatch. This was the man, along with his fellow spies, who awakened the dead and sent them out in the night to kill people. This was the man who had sent one of the walking dead to tear Isidore apart.

This was not the prosecutor who protected the people of the Midlands from those doing evil, this was the vicious enemy who plotted against them, who planned their demise, who served evil.

And now he was hers.

The inner violence of her power’s cold, coiled force slipping its bonds was breathtaking. Unleashed, that power exploded through her, surging up from the depths of the dark core deep within, obediently inundating every fiber of her being.

It was a dead silent, pristine instant of the ignition of a fierce new power unleashed into the world for the first time. Nothing would ever be the same—for Lothain, or for Magda.

She contained no hate, no rage, no horror, no sorrow . . . no mercy. In that infinitesimal spark of time, her mind was a void where there was no emotion, only the all-consuming rush of her power through the void of time suspended.

He had no chance, none at all. He was hers.

Time was hers.

Magda could see beads of his sweat suspended in air. She could have counted every dark hair of his stubble before he moved half the width of one of those hairs.

She could see the first hint of terror in his black eyes.

She could see that, while he didn’t yet comprehend how, he was beginning to realize that he had just made the biggest mistake of his life. Even as he wanted to draw back from her touch, there was no chance. He might as well have been carved from stone.

Magda could see the gift in his eyes, too, but it would do him no good. His mind would be gone before he had time to begin to form a thought of how to defend himself.