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Belatedly I realized I was in the House Orphos infirmary, not Avari as I’d first thought. The hangings on the windows were a rich shade of purple trimmed with gold. The curtains were open. Sunlight streamed in. I gnashed my teeth. “It’s been hours.”

“Days, in fact,” Lysander said lightly.

I flew out of the bed. I stood up, turned to look all about the room, ignoring how much it fucking hurt.

“You’re being an idiot. Sit down. She isn’t here.” Lysander moved toward me slowly, like one might approach a wild animal. “Her body isn’t either.”

“Body?” I whirled to look at him.

“You’re going to bleed out if you don’t sit down. You’re not invincible, despite what you may believe.”

“No,” I said shortly. “If I were, she’d be here.”

“We found you on the field. There was no one else there.”

“Regan was there. Viktor was, too. We fought him, she and I.” I shook my head. “I thought … I thought I had him.” I looked at Lysander. “Why won’t that wretched, worthless highblood prick just die?”

“A question I’m sure you aren’t the first to ask in Viktor’s very long lifetime. Now tell me what happened.” The words were mild, yet I heard the order there.

“I’m not in your blooddamned house, Lysander,” I grumbled.

“Yet you’ll do as I say, won’t you?” The words were light, almost teasing.

There it was. The familiar old rhythm. The one we fell into whenever we were alone. The private language we’d developed, the one that had gotten us through years of pretending we were nothing more than acquaintances. No, worse—nothing more than rivals, and despised ones at that.

I snarled. “Regan is missing. She is hurt. She could be—”

“But she’s not. You’d know. Even now, you feel her, don’t you?”

Reluctantly, I nodded.

“Then, sit back down on the bed, Avari.” He raised a hand and pushed gently against my chest until I did as he said. “And tell me everything.” He looked down at me. “You owe me that, don’t you? You were ripped open when we found you. You should be dead right now.” His handsome face was paler than usual. “You would have died within minutes.”

“I don’t care. I only care about—”

“Regan.” His blue eyes clouded. “Yes. I know.”

“You don’t understand.”

“Oh, I think I do.”

The edge in his voice wasn’t jealousy. I knew him too well for that. He was better than that—certainly better than I’d have been in his position. No, it was fear. The same fear he must have felt when he found me, bleeding out in that field. I knew the feeling because I’d felt it before, too. We’d spent years living with that fear. The fear of someone finding out. The fear that had made us constantly careful. The fear of losing one another before we could ever tell the world who we really were to one another.

We stared at each other for a long moment. “I’m sorry,” I said at last. “I fucked up.”

“You did. In more ways than I think you realize.” His face softened. “But we’ll find her. I promise you that.”

“There’s no time to waste,” I burst out. “Viktor has her. He has her, and she’s hurt.”

“And he will hurt her much worse.” Lysander pronounced the words with brutal slowness. “You know this. I know this. Regan likely knows it better than anyone, doesn’t she?”

I gave a reluctant nod.

“So we’ve gotten that out of the way.” His gaze sharpened. “There’s something else we need to discuss.”

I stiffened. “What?”

“When I found you, you were badly wounded. But not just wounded.” He took a deep breath as if the words were hard to say. “You were being drained. As if the life was being siphoned out of you.”