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She touched my hand, looking as shocked as I was. For a second, we just stared at each other. And then a group of fey tackled her like linebackers, and all of them disappeared through the portal.
It immediately closed up behind them and I fell to the ground, the strange light dying at the same moment. Louis-Cesare grabbed me a second later, right before I passed out, yelling things that I couldn’t hear over the pounding of my heart. Because I’d just realized something.
He hadn’t been the target, after all.
Dorina had.
And now she was gone.
Chapter Three
Dory, Cairo
I awoke in the dimness of an unfamiliar room. It was lit only by a few low burning oil lamps and the starlight drifting in through some large, floor to ceiling windows. My sleep muddled brain finally recognized it as the suite that Louis-Cesare and I had been assigned at Hassani’s court, all golden stone, cream draperies, and medieval architecture that, in the low light, could have been mistaken for a pharaoh’s palace.
That was especially true in the lamplight, with the tiny wicks dancing in the soft breeze blowing through the windows, and throwing veil like shadows on the walls. This place had electricity, as well as all the other modern conveniences, or it had for the past week. The fact that it didn’t now informed me that the main wards were online, the big boys that didn’t play well with electrical systems, even before I felt the frisson of their power brush across my skin.
Hassani wasn’t taking any chances, I thought, and felt a bolt of pure rage shoot through me. No, he wasn’t taking chances now. Now when Dorina was gone and Louis-Cesare had almost died and Ray—
Ray was in pieces.
I sat bolt upright in bed, a scream building in my throat as I remembered that scene in the alley. Ray’s face, looking startled and then horrified when he realized what was happening, his eyes going to me for help I couldn’t provide. And the blood, so much of it, like a mist coating everything. I could still taste it on my tongue, smell it in my nose, feel it gunking up my eyelashes. Ray . . .
I felt Louis-Cesare move behind me. He was naked, with the lamplight sheening all that creamy skin, turning it to gold. He had been draped over me like a weighted blanket, only even more comforting. Now I felt his arms go around me, and his body sit up behind mine, preserving the closeness.
It didn’t help.
A strange, hollow feeling lay under my breastbone, like a gaping wound. It was so real that I slid a clumsy hand down there, to see if I had been put to bed half gutted. My hand met only smooth, sleep warm skin, without a cut or flaw. Yet I could still feel it: a deep, echoing nothingness, like my soul had been carved out of my body.
Or half of it, I thought sickly.
Dorina . . .
I could see her in that alley, too, as naked as the day we were born, because whatever had happened to us had not transferred over any clothes. She had looked newborn in other ways, too. Her face had been as soft and vulnerable as a child’s, her eyes huge and dark and startled, her body hunched and small, silhouetted for an instant before the manic green fury of the portal.
And then she was gone.
I had lost both of them in one night.
“Shhh,” Louis-Cesare murmured against my hair, his arms tightening around me. “You’re safe. You’re safe and it’s all right now.”
I wanted to scream at him that it wasn’t all right, that it would never be all right again. But I couldn’t. If I did, that horrible mewling cry I was barely keeping behind my teeth might escape and I couldn’t risk that. Couldn’t let him know weak I felt, how vulnerable without my other half.
Sister, I thought, and felt my face crumple.
A strong hand cradled my head, and pulled me against a chest that was warm, hard and comforting. I’d always felt safe in Louis-Cesare’s arms, peaceful and calm, like nothing else mattered. But not tonight.
Tonight, I was about to crawl out of my skin.
I knew he could feel it, could detect the minute tremble I couldn’t control. Could hear the rapid beat of my pulse, the fight or flight response kicking in with a vengeance. Could smell my emotions on the air: sweat, adrenaline, and all the unnamed chemicals that passed humans by without notice, but to a vamp . . .
Said more than I wanted them to.
But he didn’t try to pressure me to talk. Instead, a rhythmic massage of my scalp began, by fingers strong enough to punch through a wall. But with me they were gentle, so gentle, with just enough pressure to ground me and keep me from falling over the edge. I’d always been the excitable one, the fly-off-the-handle one, the impulsive, crazy one.
Or so everyone had said. Tonight, for the first time, I agreed with them. Tonight, I wanted to scream, to cry, to savage those who had destroyed my family.
Dorina, my sister, and lately, my friend. Louis-Cesare, my lover, and brand-new husband. And Ray . . .
