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I press the heel of my hand to my forehead. There is something wrong with me. My boyfriend⁠—

Is that what he is? My captor? My vampire?

My Lucien is out there trying to figure out if the world’s going to end, and I’m kissing the man he left here to keep me safe.

I’m contemplating my four-hundredth lap of the room when I hear the front doors. And then he is simply there in the doorway of the study.

Lucien stops when he sees me.

Actually stops. Surprise flickers over his face, and I realise I have never surprised him before. He always knows where I am. He always knows where everyone is.

“Luna.” His voice is rough. “You should be asleep.”

“So should you.” I nod at the thin line of grey light sneaking beneath the blinds. “It’s nearly morning.”

He doesn’t answer. He crosses to the desk, leans over me, opens the top drawer, and takes out the flask. When he lowers it, his eyes are darker than I’ve ever seen them. The little crimson freckles aren’t dancing tonight; they’re still, like drops of blood in black water.

Something is wrong.

My confession about Kim dissolves on my tongue.

“Lucien?” I stand up but he moves around me and sits down heavily in the desk chair.

Lucien Thornfield does not do anything heavily.

I move behind the chair, and put my hands on his shoulders. Beneath my palms, his muscles are like concrete. I dig my thumbs in the way he does for me, small circles, either side of his spine, and for a moment he lets me. His head tips forward.

It occurs to me that in all the time I’ve been here, he has carried me, healed me, fed me, held me – and I have never once been the one doing the holding.

I like it. Being the strong one. Even for a minute.

“Where have you been?” I ask quietly.

A long pause. Beneath my hands, his shoulders rise and fall. “I went to see him,” he says. “The one who’s looking for you.”

My thumbs stop moving. “You found him? How? You said you didn’t know for certain who⁠—”

“I knew.” Lucien reaches up and covers one of my hands with his. His skin is cooler than usual, as if the night got into him. “I just didn’t want it to be true.”

I come around the chair so I can see his face, ignoring the fact that he’s been keeping things from me again because, frankly, who am I to judge anymore about secrets?

“Who is he?”

“His name is Nix.” He pauses. “And he’s my brother.”

“Your—” I blink at him. “You have a brother?”

“Not by blood. Not human blood, anyway.” His jaw twitches. “We share a maker. The vampire who turned me turned him first. In our world, that makes us brothers.” His eyes flick away from mine.

I sit down slowly on the edge of the desk, because my legs have opinions about this and none of them involve standing.

“Our maker joined us – my blood in his veins, his in mine. It never fades. If I reach for him, truly reach, I can feel where he is. Even now. Like a rope tied somewhere behind my ribs.” His lip curls, and I can’t tell if it’s disgust or grief. “I have spent a long time trying not to feel it. But as soon as I let it back in, he was there. Waiting.”

My mouth is dry. “What does he want?”

Lucien meets my eyes. “You. Nix cannot access The Covenant without you, and he believes it is the key to the kind of world he wants to live in.”

The shadows under the sideboard shiver. I feel them do it – a cold ripple across the back of my neck,