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“Is that how he stripped your powers? You lowered your own guard to protect me?”

“Bound, not stripped, and you had no chance with him on your own.”

In other words, yes. He let down his guard, and he was attacked.

“Because my assets were suppressed.”

“Yes. In our world, we learn from a young age to shield ourselves from intrusions. You need to learn. Now. Try to enter my mind.”

“That’s impossible. I…can’t do that.”

“Try.”

“I can’t—”

You can, he insists, and this time he’s in my subconscious, and inconceivably, I can feel him there—almost a visual path between my thoughts and his. My mind conjures the woodsy scent of shampoo and body wash, and, oh my God—my hands fly up in stop-sign fashion. “Stop. No.”

Make me, he says, or thinks, or whatever he’s doing inside my head.

“Can you read my thoughts, too?”

“I haven’t tried,” he says, this time using his verbal skills. “I won’t invade your privacy that way, but others will. Create a guard, and they’ll be locked out.”

“You say that as if it’s simple. I don’t know how.”

I’m right here with you, he says in my head. Follow the path between our minds. Shut your eyes and find me.

I squeeze my eyes shut, and this time, it’s as if little sparks of light flutter about in my mind, fireflies illuminating a path between my mind and his. It’s intimate—so very intimate. It’s as if he is with me in his purest form. The scent of him permeates my nostrils again, a flashback of him on his knees with me, our foreheads together, but that is as close as I get to a connection.

I breathe out, my lashes lifting. “I can’t,” I whisper in defeat. “Are you sure I’m even capable of such a thing?”

“You’re capable of many things, including this, but to harness your assets, you must believe they exist and embrace them as yours to wield.” He doesn’t give me the chance to reply, adding, “For now, I’m going to walk the garrison and handle a few situations.”

“What situations?”

“Nothing you need to worry about. I suggest you spend the time I’m away studying.” He walks toward the door and pauses just beyond the foyer. “If I wanted to read your thoughts, Ember, you’d be an open book. Think about that long and hard.”

I bristle at the accusation lancing his statement. “I have nothing to hide from you.”

“Don’t you?”

With that, he disappears beyond the wall, and a moment later, the door opens and shuts.

The Sacred Book of Nephilim

Magic is everywhere, in the air we breathe, in the cascading light of a new dawn, a new day. In the darkness of a midnight hour.

Chapter nineteen

Perhaps he fears the serpent.

Or maybe he simply fears me.

Time ticks by with a heavy hand, eternal hours it seems, as I’m caged in Micah’s quarters, the quarters of the Overseer, a man, a Nephilim—my captor?

Sitting at the kitchen table, I study the books he’s left for me, searching far and wide for anything that justifies a serpent as my familiar, but there’s no peace in the writings to be found. There’s only the promise of destruction, and that promise is plentiful and scattered about the pages of every book I scour for answers. One such passage reads:

The serpent represents temptation and destruction.