"No, I'm not going with you," I spat.

Her silvery eyes sparked with amusement as she waved her hand over me, holding my wavering form rigid, helpless, and totally incapable of fleeing from her as I so wished to do. I tried to open my mouth and scream for help but found my voice a ghost in the caverns within me. I had to do as my mother said, whether I liked it or not.

"Cat got your tongue?"

Her taunting features were an insult to everything else in the world that possessed physical beauty or prowess or anything worthwhile or wonderful. What a terrible creature, she was. If I could have become a solid thing I would have punched her or kicked her or something. I would have let her have it for sure.

I didn't dare to try and use telepathy to let Phillip know with her so close. He had warned me that, in close ranges, it could be detected by another powerful daemon; Lilith certainly fit that bill. I couldn't even call my father or a guard or anyone. I was doomed.

"Well, now that I've got your attention, why don't we start toward the tower where I'm keeping you?"

I blinked. Bring me to the tower? Why would she do such a thing? My tongue loosed itself from its prison as she dragged me forward by an invisible reel. We were floating across the gardens as though this were a comforting, evening stroll rather than a march toward my destruction. What was she going to do to me? I couldn't break free; nor did I have the strength to do anything to stop her. I was weak.

"Why would you bring me to where my body is being kept?"

"Well, you see, I realize now that you're more of a miserable whelp than I could have first surmised. You have no interest in marrying Phillip, as I thought you might. You're in it for yourself. I have a deal of sorts to strike with you, actually... But we have to get to your body first. Shall we gamble together, my dear?"

I shook my head.

"Last time I gambled, I found out you'd marked the cards, Lilith. You can't fool me with that tactic again. You either tell me the deal now or there is no deal. I can find my body alone."

Could I, though? I was terrible at bluffing and Lilith could see right through my façade of toughness. I was crumbling beneath the weight of terror on my veins and she knew it. But I held fast. There were things to be accomplished and I couldn't let her trickery snap the strings to our carefully built marionette. We would pull her about like a little doll, so long as we didn't mess this up. So long as I didn't mess this up.

"Why, how ever did I cheat last time?"

Her smirking sneer was enough to make my soul boil within the blood of my veins. I couldn't stand this beast. But I had to keep playing face.

"I don't think it's fair to lie about where you're keeping me, make an illusion to sway me from actually reaching the castle and to tell me that I shouldn't marry Phillip when you want to marry him yourself. I mean, sure, they want to use me, but why should you let yourself be used if that's all they're after? A larger kingdom?"

I was continually amazed at my capacity to be deceitful under pressure. To keep playing the game when it had long been over on my side of the court.

"I won't be used," she smiled, a dangerous fire lurking beneath those white, sharp teeth that could tear flesh, bone, and any resolve against her. But I wasn't budging. I was just as much of a threat as she was.

That was a lie, but I had to believe it to stand up to her with any measure of success. I had to keep telling myself lies like that to push forward.

"How do you know? I mean, sure, you'll probably murder my father but then what? You marry Phillip? He's a daemon, too, Lilith. You'd have an adversary if you tried to move against his wishes. And think of this: what of his kingdom? You haven't even bothered to calculate the response of Archon, let alone Layun. What will you do when they rise against you?"

"I have an army," she whispered. "And I am far more powerful than Phillip could ever hope to be."

"Are you?"

A hiss escaped her lips and she whirled my helpless form about in a funnel to chastise me for daring to say such realistic things. She was deluding herself in a story that I couldn't read. The words were indecipherable to any but herself. But why?

"Lilith, what are you after? Just when it seems that I have an idea that figures you out, you go and change the game again or I learn more and am left with even less understanding than when I first started."

She chuckled. Her range of emotions was frightening. Angry, happy, deceitful, alluring... she wore them all like masks but never settled on one. As if she were missing the ability to land on one and stick with it. What was the matter with her?

"I don't think you understand."

I didn't. What was she dancing around? Why go through all this trouble to take a kingdom—to get married, to endure through all of these dark plans as though they might change something for her. Had she lost something? Was something amiss in her life that we just didn't see? Phillip and I knew she was crazy, but we couldn't quite understand why or how. I hoped that I would gain some insight.

"I loved your father," she sighed. "We were going to rule this kingdom together. I was so happy to have you and keep you and... then he started talking of building broader kingdoms and... and..."

"What?"

"I fell in love with someone else."

I gasped. Murderous rage filled my gut. So she'd loved my father, been married to him? Had she been the queen? I didn't care. Disloyalty made me want to puke.

"So you cheated on my father?"

"Well, I mean..."

"And then, when he didn't like that and demanded that I should stay with him, you decided to take some petty little revenge on my family, on my kingdom... because he wouldn't tolerate disloyalty like that."

She slapped at my face but her hand passed through me.

"I loved Phillip's father. And your father killed Phillip's father as payback. His mother has hated me since and everything about me has been shamed everywhere I go. The witch. The whore. The cheater and the liar and I thought why not?"

Realization thundered through me.

"So you want Phillip to replace what you lost?"

"It's as close as I can get. And since you won't have him, I'll make you a deal," she hissed desperately.

Her responses were growing more scattered along with her capacity to think straight. Was this another lie? Was this another trick? How could I trust anything she had said when it had all been a lie? And everything she had said just now was so vague—so easy to figure out. It was too simple. Before she could even offer me the deal, I had figured it out. Whatever she had just said was a lie. This wasn't the cause for her madness. She had never loved my father and Phillip's father was not the man—daemon—she loved, if she loved anyone at all. This still wasn't making sense.

Instead of calling her out on it, I chose to put my neck in the noose and give her the idea that all she had to do was pull to hang me on her fiendish words. I watched her carefully and that's when it hit me: this wasn't Lilith at all. It was a decoy. Something about her had seemed all wrong and I knew it to be true the moment she had shown up in the garden. Her sweeping gestures and mismatched emotions... this was a carefully crafted spell.

Pushing my hands together, I summoned a force to repel this thing. To let it know that I wasn't falling for anything. That's when I glimpsed it—the raven was back. Its head was cocked to the side and it was watching everything with suppressed brilliance. It understood what was going on. Was it merely a familiar? Or was it Lilith? Could she shapeshift? Was that even possible?

But that didn't matter to me anymore. I wanted her to know, either way, that I didn't appreciate being sent a decoy rather than the real thing. As if I were a second-hand mission of hers.

The fire broke free from my hands and I engulfed the spell with something I hadn't known I was capable of, let alone in Traumwanderung form. I had found the symbols for incantation in my head—it was a sister symbol to that of telepathy's. It had been stored in the back part of my head on some unseen shelf, carefully catalogued within my genetics, waiting for the right time to be used.

The mirage melted and in its place was a shuddering imp, coiled of the blackest sands and oil and terribly sorry for what it had done. I couldn't blame it. It was under her control. I could see the binds that held it—how had I not noticed them before? I reached out and severed those ties and the blackness receded from the pink flesh that lay beneath it. It mirrored the image of a tiny human with stark blue eyes that contrasted jet black hair. Before I could say anything, it scuttled away, whooping and cheering for its freedom.

I gave a warning glare to the raven.

"Don't you think about hurting him. He's free now. If you want to talk to me and not risk losing more of your minions, be a woman and talk to me in person you witch."

Except now there was one more problem: I had no idea where I'd been taken to. I was lost.

Why did I think it was smart to antagonize her now? I slapped a palm to my forehead and groaned. I just had to make things more difficult.