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I stubbornly kept up the pressure. “Let go. I want to go back.”
“I could make you tell me why you’re here.” His tone was contemplative.
I narrowed my eyes. Actually, he couldn’t, since I couldn’t be compelled. But he didn’t know that.
“Try it,” I said between my teeth, “and Iwilltake off. First chance I get. You’ll have to watch me every second of every day.”
He ignored me to continue, “I don’t know how you engineered it, but it’s too much of a coincidence that you showed up at that auction the one night I attended.”
My gaze slid from his. I’d wondered about that, too. Had Kuro arranged for Brien to be there? But how?
Brien scrutinized me. I could almostfeelhim digging into my soul, urging me to spill all my secrets.
Anger. The most effective shield against reading more subtle emotions.
I didn’t even have to work at it. I was still furious and humiliated at what had been done to me.
I knocked his hand away from me. “They tattooed me. You think I’d have let them do that if I had a choice? It’s like a big fat target on my back. Once the word got out, all a vampire would have to do was rip off my shirt, and they’d have proof it was me. If I was still a slayer, I wouldn’t last a year in the field.”
“They threw you to the sharks, didn’t they?” He touched my cheek. “So why won’t you trust me? Tell me what’s wrong—what hold they have over you—so I can help you.”
I stared at him for a heartbeat, maybe more, so fucking tempted to tell him everything.
Why not? What’s stopping you?
Enough had changed between us that I was pretty sure he’d believe me.
He could protect my halmoni from Kuro, and if Kurowason Lilith Island, Brien could track him down. The island was Brien’s home turf, after all.
But in saving my halmoni, I’d betray her in the worst possible way. Slayers, Inc. was her life. Her only daughter had been sacrificed to the cause.
And I didn’t even want to think about what my mom would’ve said if she were still alive and found out I’d left SI to become a vampire’s thrall. She might’ve even terminated me herself.
And you’ll never be a slayer again.
Bring a syndicate prince into this, and I wouldn’t have just burned my bridges with Slayers, Inc. I would’ve torched the whole freaking city.
“Youarein trouble.” Brien rubbed the pad of his thumb over my lower lip. “I don’t have to read you to know that. Let me help, damn it. Let me keep you safe.”
Safe?I hadn’t felt safe in a thousand years, it seemed like.
I turned my face. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
He exhaled through his teeth. Then he stepped back, his expression wiped clean of any emotion.
I felt the loss like a blow to the solar plexus. In sharing those stories, Brien had gifted me with something more precious than money or jewelry or pretty clothes.
But now he’d closed back down again, and it was my fault.
“We should go back,” he said.
I hugged my arms around myself. “Yeah. Okay.”
16
BRIEN
“Where’s the prince?” Prosper’s voice.
