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Three
    “Armaeus!”
    I swept the room with my gaze as I raced forward. I saw the drinking horn on the table, the beautiful box I’d pilfered from the caverns knocked to the floor. I reached Armaeus’s side and pushed him over, checking for vitals. I’d never seen him so pale, but he was breathing, and his heart rate was steady.
    “What the hell happened to you?” I demanded as his eyes flickered open.
    “Horn—drinking horn,” he managed, and I scrambled back to the table, picking up the Nordic horn. It was empty, but there was wine and bourbon at the sidebar, and I grabbed both bottles before returning. I dropped back to the floor, eyeing the drinking horn and the booze. Maybe water would be better. Or maybe…
    I scowled at him. “I don’t need to fill this with the blood of innocents, do I?”
    He smiled weakly and shook his head. “Wine,” he breathed.
    I uncorked the wine and filled the cup, never mind that it was an ancient artifact and probably had serious skeletal cooties on it. If it was what the Magician wanted, it was what he’d get.
    I set the wine bottle back on the table, turned to Armaeus, horn in hand—then froze.
    “Whoa, whoa, whoa. Wait a minute,” I said, my fingers spasming on the artifact. This was Mim’s horn. And the Valkyries had said… “Won’t drinking from this kill you?”
    “Not death.” He winced, his eyes almost glassy as his gaze found mine. “Life. Mortality.”
    “But you’re immortal —”
    “Now, Miss…Wilde. I don’t have much time.”
    Crap. Armaeus really did look bad, and he’d been kicking around since the twelfth century, so he arguably knew how to take care of himself. As I struggled with the idea of feeding him poison , however, his eyes slid shut. In case I wasn’t paying attention, he uttered a sort of death-rattley groan.
    “Dammit, fine.” My stomach twisted, and I dropped beside him, gripping the horn with a hand now clammy with sweat. Cradling Armaeus’s head in one arm, I disregarded the usual zing of electricity between us as he allowed his weight to sink into my body. “What in God’s name is wrong with you?” I muttered as I lifted the cup to his mouth. “Why didn’t you call me?”
    “Had to be this way,” he murmured, but his eyes drifted closed as he accepted the rim of the drinking horn to his lips and drew in the wine like he was receiving a benediction.
    I felt the shift in him almost immediately…and not merely him. As the wine from the horn of Mim seeped into his bloodstream, an answering wave of power flowed through me, steady and sure. I hadn’t signed up for a psychic oil change, however. And I’d already learned that gifts handed down by the Arcana Council rarely came without a price.
    “What is this, exactly?” I asked warily. “What’s happening here? This is a thing, isn’t it. I’m not a fan of things.”
    Armaeus ignored me, and as he drank, I glanced around again. “And why are you alone? Isn’t there some kind of Arcana Council phone tree that should have been activated?”
    “I can block the Council’s awareness when I choose.”
    “Right,” I scoffed. “You can block their awareness, but you can’t keep upright. That makes sense.” I tipped more of the wine into his mouth, mesmerized by the process as he submitted to my embrace and let me feed him. No one would ever accuse me of being nurturing, but holding Armaeus felt different. It felt right in a way I didn’t want to explore too closely. And it felt dangerous in a way I knew all too well.
    He opened his eyes, and I noted the irises were stained a dark, smoky gold. The same psychic infusion Nikki was tracking through the Connecteds—a psychic infusion I’d helped create—had affected the Magician too, though I didn’t know exactly how. That power had called to me as well, but I knew I should protect myself against it, knew I should wait until I understood more.
    “Are you really hurt bad?” I murmured as he drained the last of the