“After everything calms down, we should test your theory.”
“Alessandro . . .”
“We can pick up right where we left off. We’ll pick a night when everyone is away from the house. We’ll climb into the pool, and you can do your best to drown me. I promise, you can have me all to yourself. All of me.”
“You’re not going to take this seriously, are you?”
His voice lost all humor. “The woman I love was attacked last night. Her mother was injured, we have a Russian royal locked in the armory, and my father’s killer declared open war on us. I’m taking everything seriously.”
“Did you see Gunderson’s face after I screamed?”
He nodded.
“When Grandma Victoria cracks a human mind, there are pieces left. They glow in my mind’s vision. Very weakly but still there.”
“Gunderson’s mind didn’t glow?” he guessed.
“No. It was a black hole. It’s like I snuffed him out of existence.” I pulled my knees to my chest. “I’m scared.”
He wrapped his arms around me. I leaned into him.
“What did you feel just before you screamed?”
He wasn’t asking just to comfort me. His grandfather was a terrible person, but he’d made sure that Alessandro had a superb education when it came to magic theory. He was an expert in all aspects of mental magic.
“Mom was hurt and bleeding. I knew that the next hit would kill her and Cornelius. I just . . . I wanted to shove Xavier and Gunderson.”
“To shove?”
“Have you ever seen little kids fight? Eventually one of them loses it and just shoves the other to the ground to make them stop.”
“Were you angry?”
“Yes. Mostly I was scared that Mom and Cornelius would die.”
“And Konstantin? Did you want to shove him, too?”
“He forced this confrontation on us. Did you see all those bodies? Arabella had to kill nine people. We all take it for granted, but she is probably the most sensitive of all of us. Things bother her deeply. She thinks about them for days. I don’t even know how deeply this damaged her. She’s my little sister, and I was supposed to protect her from this crap, except that I can’t.”
“I think we’re safe,” he said.
I glanced at him.
“You’re worried you might hurt us, but you are still you even when your black wings are out. You didn’t hurt me in the pool. Your magic was pouring out like a flame, but you never targeted me. You just flirted and tried to seduce me, and then pouted.”
I pushed away from him. “Pouted?”
“Mhm.”
“I was hissing in your face. How is that pouting?”
“Your hissing was endearing.”
I put my hands over my face. He was impossible.
“The point is, you don’t blindly lash out, Catalina. You’re striking out at people you perceive as a threat to your loved ones. Whatever it is breaking through, let it. It needs to come out.”
“You really think so?”
He nodded. “I’m not saying this in my capacity as your devoted fiancé but as an antistasi Prime. You hold yourself on a very tight leash. It is atypical for a mental Prime to be that controlled constantly. The threat level has escalated, and so did your response to it. I don’t think you can effectively suppress it, but you do need to recalibrate.”
And the only way to recalibrate would be to practice this new power until I could learn to control it.
“So what, choose a target and hope for the best?”
“Yes.”
“What if it gets out of control?”
“I will help you. I promise.”
“Okay,” I said.
We sat together for a few moments.
“I suppose we have to sort out the mess with Konstantin,” I said.
Alessandro grimaced. “Unfortunately, we can’t keep him in a cage indefinitely. As much as I would enjoy it.”
I scooted off the bed. “Why does he call you Sasha?”
“He knows I don’t like it.”
“And how does he know that?”
“Because he is my fourth cousin,” Alessandro said. “He keeps reminding me, as if I will forget. Family. Can’t live with them, can’t strangle them. It’s terrible.”
Someone, probably Patricia, set up two chairs in front of Konstantin’s cage. I took one. Alessandro sat in the other, tossing one long leg over the other and looking every inch an Italian aristocrat.
We had briefly stopped at the office to write a contract. I had asked him about the cousin thing on the way, but he avoided it. He didn’t refuse to answer, he just changed the subject. That was okay. He would tell me eventually. I could recite his genealogy down to his great-great-grandparents. There were no Russians there anywhere. It was all Sagredo and British mental mages.