My stomach turned and tightened. I knew it. I bloody well knew it. My gaze snapped left and right and back again as we walked. I scanned the ground in front of me and the sky above us. There were eyes on us in every direction. Not that I saw eyes, but I felt them—a vampire instinct I had learned not to ignore by now.

Sam reached out and wrapped her arm around mine, her hand squeezing my bicep. “From what I learned . . . before . . . the Old Lands aren’t actually fully tethered to our realm.”

“Wait.” I looked down at her. “We’re not on Earth here?”

“It’s a gray area.” She shivered. “I don’t wanna think about it more than that.”

“Then why are we here?” The words tumbled out before I could stop them.

The Prince stopped and I braced myself for an attack. Instead, he crouched down in front of a bush of weird flowers. “Do you see these?” He gestured to a giant flower that was black with metallic-gold thorns.

“Yes,” Sam and I said at the same time.

He bent down and blew on the flower. Glittery black mist billowed from his mouth onto the flower, turning it to dust on contact. He waved his hands in front of him to push that glittery black mist over to the other identical flowers on that bush. In seconds, dozens of those pretty yet strange flowers were destroyed. I frowned. Something was not okay about that.

The Prince stood and walked a little farther until more of those flowers popped up. With a sickening grin, he went to work destroying each and every one. He moved in a line, from one plant to the next, destroying every one of those flowers he found. It was like pulling weeds in a garden. And he was only killing those flowers.

Sam tossed her long platinum-blonde hair over her shoulder and peeked up at me through dark eyelashes. Her red and gold eyes sparkled. “You okay, Pierce?”

“Yeah- . . . yes . . . yup. Totally good.” I cleared my throat and looked away, only for my gaze to land on the Prince watching her from twenty feet away. His yellow cat eyes lingered on her body and there was single-minded focus in the heat of his stare. I looked back to Sam. “You?”

“These burns are making me hot.” She fanned herself. “There’s no breeze right here. Do you feel one over there?”

I walked backwards without hesitation or looking where I was going. Her words were my command. Women like Sam were the reason human societies of the past believed in goddesses like Aphrodite and wrote stories about gorgeous monsters who lured men in with their beauty before turning them to stone. Beautiful blonde snakes. I shook myself and glanced down to a fallen log that I stepped over. A cool breeze swept over my face.

“Oh, there’s a breeze here.”