Page 29

The corridor beyond is dim, lit by low gold sconces and the faint red pulse of emergency wards threaded through the stone. No one stops me as I move through the Tower. Actually, no one appears at all. The whole place feels like it’s holding its breath, waiting to see whether Valentin Moretti will rise as himself or as the thing he warned me to run from.

By the time I reach the descent to the Lower Vaults, sweat cools on the back of my neck.

I’m going because he’s hurt, and I promised to stay close; because something in my blood did this to him, and guilt has claws and mine are buried deep.

I tell myself several things.

But none of them explains why my pulse leaps when his voice brushes through me again.

Faster.

‘Oh, good,’ I breathe. ‘Commands with encouragement. That’s healthy.’

The Vault doors come into view, black and enormous, carved with sigils that seem to shift when I look at them too long. Iskander stands guard, immense and pale-haired, his face carved into angles that belong on a battlefield beneath a winter moon. The other is a vampire I recognise from the edges of the last few hours: Cassian, lean, dark-skinned, with silver rings through one ear and eyes like polished obsidian.

Both turn as I approach.

Iskander’s eyes narrow. ‘You should be resting, hunter.’

‘I know. Tell him.’

Cassian tilts his head. ‘Tell who?’

Before I can answer, the command rolls through the chamber from the other side of the doors, no longer only inside my skull.

‘Let her in.’ The words aren’t loud but they don’t need to be.

Both vampires freeze. Iskander’s jaw tightens. ‘He’s awake?’

‘Let. Her. In.’

The Vault doors unseal like a giant exhaling.

I should turn around, do any of the clever, survival-positive things that kept Lyra Hannigan hidden for six years. Or even, just for the hells of it, run like my ass is on fire.

Instead, I step through. The doors close behind me.

Lock.

The command lashes through my mind and the chamber. Great slabs of black stone slam together, sigils igniting in a red ring around the room.

Then my breath catches. ‘Oh Gods… Valentin.’

He stands beside the obsidian slab. Naked, feral… alive.

For a moment, my brain forgets every language it has ever known.

He looks carved from hunger and shadow, skin gold and black hair loose around his face. His eyes are too bright, way too untamed and fixed on me.

The mark still burns, but it no longer looks like it is devouring him. It looks awake. Waiting.

His cock is a thick, hard pole against his stomach.

And to my eternal shame, my pussy floods as my mouth goes dry. ‘That is either a very encouraging medical sign,’ I say, ‘or we’re all about to die.’

His smile is slow devastation with fangs, wrong enough to make my pulse trip. ‘Come here.’

I fold my arms, mostly so he can’t see my hands shake. ‘You’re going to have to stop saying that like the universe owes you obedience.’