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“It’s how I keep from saying something worse.”

“Such as?”

Marcus looked at her mouth. “That I’ve wanted to do that since you ordered me to sit down and eat bread in your workroom.”

The honesty warmed a place inside her that had been cold since she left Rosalind’s house. Del rested her hand against his chest again, then let it fall before desire became another way to avoid what waited outside the clinic.

“I should go home,” she said.

“I’ll walk with you.”

“You have work.”

“It will remain here until I return.” Marcus put her coat around her shoulders and picked up his own. “You don’t have to belong anywhere tonight, Delphine. You only have to avoid walking home alone.”

This time, she let him.

Chapter 15

The lamps in the corridor burned low. Luca stood at the end of the hall with his shoulder against the wall and his arms crossed. It was the third night in a row. His jaw was tight. The nest had that hollow sound it got when too many rooms stood empty, the Sable attack two weeks back still echoing in the spaces where people used to live.

He had been waiting an hour. Maybe more. The window at the far end of the hall was unlatched. Cold air pushed through it in slow drafts. Luca hadn’t moved to close it. The chill kept him awake. The quiet did the rest.

A door opened downstairs, and boots sounded on the entry mat. The sound was familiar: measured, deliberate, the same unhurried tread four hundred years had worn into him. Luca straightened. His arms stayed crossed. His weight shifted from one foot to the other. The floorboard under his heel creaked.

Sebastian Croix came up the stairs. His dark hair was silver at the temples. His coat was still on, collar turned up against the night air he had just left. He set his boots just inside the doorframe with a precision that never varied, motion for motion, every time. His gray eyes found Luca at the end of the hall and held. He neither smiled nor frowned, and his face gave Luca nothing.

Sebastian moved to pass.

Luca stepped into his path with one step, his shoulder leaving the wall and his boots planting flat on the floorboards. He kept his arms crossed. His height wasn’t an advantage here. Sebastian had a good three inches on him and eighty pounds of muscle built in an era when men worked with their hands. Luca held his ground anyway.

“Where have you been?” Luca asked.

“Out.”

The word landed between them, flat and final. Sebastian’s voice carried that old-world stillness he brought to everything: no excess, no decoration, nothing offered that wasn’t required.

Luca’s jaw tightened. “Out where?”

“It doesn’t concern you.”

“That’s what you said last night. And the night before.” Luca uncrossed his arms. His hands dropped to his sides. His stance widened without him thinking about it, the old reflex that showed up whenever he was getting ready to stand his ground. His voice stayed level. He’d learned that from watching Sebastian: volume wasn’t authority. Authority was in the words themselves. “Three times now. I’m done accepting it.”

Sebastian didn’t raise his voice. His gray eyes held Luca’s across the hallway, the low lamplight and the space between them that had grown colder each night.

“Then stop asking,” Sebastian said.

He stepped around Luca. His shoulder brushed Luca’s as he passed, deliberate contact, the kind that said move and Luca moved because two centuries of instinct still responded to four centuries of command. Sebastian walked down the corridor without looking back. His boots were quiet on the floorboards. His coat made a soft sound against the wall as he turned the corner toward his own rooms.

Luca stood in the hallway. His hands were loose at his sides. His jaw was tight enough to hurt. The unlatched window at the end of the hall let in another draft of cold air. It pushed through the corridor. The lamps flickered. One of them guttered and caught itself.

Down the hall, a door opened and closed. The sound was soft and final, the kind of sound someone made when he was done with a conversation that had never been a conversation at all.

Luca didn’t move. He stood where Sebastian had left him, in the corridor with the low lamps and the empty rooms and the cold air coming through the window he hadn’t bothered to close. The nest had been quiet before. Now the quiet had weight. It pressed against the walls. It filled the spaces where people used to live. It found Luca where he stood and didn’t let go.

He turned toward the stairs. His boots echoed on the floorboards, and the sound died against the walls of the empty corridor. He didn’t run. He walked, one foot in front of the other, exactly as Sebastian had taught him: the walk of someone carrying a decision through to the end.

The lamps burned. The window stayed open. The cold air kept coming.