The strategist he had been since long before he chose to wear the mask of the theatre artist surfaced fully—cold, sharp, and hungry for answers he would one day turn into weapons.
"Then how did you know she was at the seal that night, Senithe? If she is untraceable. If even the ABSOLUTE could not feel her. How?"
She smiled. Slowly. The kind of smile that had ended kingdoms and made the survivors thank her for it.
"Because—"
The Eye Demon stopped.
The orb hung mid-air, tilted at a predatory angle, and its great rolling iris dropped into a dead, unblinking lock on a single point in the empty Pacific sky. The lock held. The iris dilated until the red swallowed the black.
The pulse of the orb deepened, deepened, deepened—the long, hungry breath of a beast that had finally caught the strongest spot with the scent it had been dreaming following all night.
Senithe and the Dark Regent reined up alongside it.
