“I don’t know how to sleep anymore,” I admit.
The words fall out before I can catch them.Knox goes very still again, but this time the danger is different.Quieter.Sadder.
I press my lips together, furious with myself.“Forget I said that.”
“No.”
My eyes snap to his.“No?”
“No.”
“Do you always answer people with single syllables, or am I getting special treatment again?”
His mouth twitches.It’s not a smile.But it could be the ghost of one, if ghosts had muscles and bad attitudes.
“You keep asking if you’re special,” he says.
My breath catches despite myself.Damn him again.
“That wasn’t an invitation to get poetic.”
“I don’t do poetic.”
“Shocking.”
His gaze drops to my throat.Not in the way the vampires looked at it.Not like hunger.Well, not that kind of hunger.
His eyes pause where the bites used to be, and something murderous passes through them.I should hate it.I should tell him I don’t need another man’s rage, that I have enough of my own.But there’s a dark, ruined part of me that likes his fury.That wants to cup it in both hands and ask what he plans to do with it.
“Do they know?”he asks.
“Who?”
“The ones who took you.”
The room seems colder.I wrap both hands around the water bottle.“Know what?”
“That you survived.”
Something moves through me.Slow.Unsteady.Do they?
The vampires who held me are dead.I know that because Korvin told me after I broke a mug against the kitchen wall and demanded the truth.The ones in that room are dead.The ones who drank from me.The ones who smiled.
But there were others.
Voices in hallways.Footsteps beyond doors.Names whispered when they thought I was too weak to hear.Money changing hands.A woman laughing behind a red curtain.
A symbol carved into the wall.I remember that more clearly than I want to.A circle.A slash through it.Three drops beneath.
My breathing speeds up, and Knox sees it.
“What did you just remember?”he asks.
I shake my head, not wanting to say the words.
“Briana.”
“No.”
