Rehv hadn’t moved. Even though he’d wanted to bring the box to her, he’d known that she was the one who needed to cross the glossy red cherry floor in those slippers and bring Tony the Tiger back to her bowl. Her hands had to be the ones to hold the box as another school of flakes got sprinkled into the warming milk. She had to pick up her spoon again and eat.

She had to know that there was no one in the house who would criticize her for getting seconds because she was still hungry.

Her father had specialized in that kind of thing. Like a lot of males of his generation, the piece of shit had believed that females of the glymera needed to be “kept trim.” As he’d said over and over again, fat on the aristocratic female body was the equivalent of dust accumulating on a priceless statue.

He’d been even harder on their mother.

In silence, Bella had looked down into the milk and weaved her spoon through it, making a wake of waves.

She wasn’t going to do it, Rehv had thought, ready to kill that bastard sire of hers all over again. She was still scared.

Except then she’d put the spoon to rest on the plate under the bowl, slipped from the chair, and gone across the kitchen in her little Lanz nightgown. She didn’t look at him. Didn’t seem to look at Tony’s cartoon-vivid puss when she picked up the box, either.

She was terrified. She was courageous. She was tiny and she was fierce.

His vision had run red at that point, but not because his bad side was coming out. As the second serving of Frosted Flakes had been poured, he’d had to go. He’d said something cheery about nothing in particular, walked quickly into the hall bathroom, and shut himself in.

He had wept his tears of blood alone.

That moment in the kitchen with Tony and Bella’s second-best pair of slippers had told him he’d done right: The approval for the murder he’d committed had come when that cereal box had been walked across that kitchen by his darling, beloved, precious little sister.

Returning to the present, he thought of Bella now. A grown female with a powerful mate and a young barely in her body.

The demon she faced now was nothing her big, bad brother could help her with. There was no open grave into which he could throw the beaten, bloody remains of fate. He couldn’t save her from this particular monster.

Time would tell, and that was that.

Until her abduction, he’d never once considered that she might die before him. During those hideous six weeks when she’d been kept by that lesser underground, though, the order of his family’s deaths had been all he could think about. He’d always assumed that their mother was going to go first, and in fact, she’d just now started on the quick decline that carried vampires to the end of their lives. He’d been well aware he’d go next, as sooner or later one of two things was going to happen: Either someone was going to find out about his symphath nature and he was going to be hunted down and sent to the colony, or his blackmailer was going to orchestrate his demise in the manner of symphaths.

Which was to say, out of the blue and viciously creative-

Right on cue, a musical chord came out of his phone. The ring repeated again. And again.

He knew who was calling without picking up. But such were the connections between symphaths.

Speak of the devil, he thought as he answered his blackmailer ’s call.

When he hung up, he had a date with the Princess the following evening.

Lucky him.

Qhuinn had this long, fucked-up dream that he was at Disney World on a ride with lots of ups and downs. Which was weird, as he’d only seen roller coasters on the TV. ’Cuz you couldn’t get on Big Thunder Mountain if you couldn’t handle the sun.

When whatever ride he was on ended, he opened his eyes and discovered he was in the PT/first-aid room at the Brotherhood’s training center.

Oh, thank fuck.

Obviously he’d gotten cracked in the head while spar-ring with someone during class, and that shit with Lash and the stuff with his family and his brother honor-guarding him had all been a nightmare. What a relief-

Doc Jane’s face appeared in front of his. “Hey, there… you’re back.”

Qhuinn blinked and coughed. “Where… I go?”

“You had a little nap. So I could take your spleen out.”

Shit. Wasn’t a hallucination. Was the new reality. “Am… I okay?”

Doc Jane put her hand on his shoulder, her palm warm and weighty even though the rest of her was translucent. “You did very well.”

“Stomach still hurts.” He lifted up his head and looked down his bare chest to the bandage sashing his waist.

“It would be wrong if it didn’t. But you’ll be happy to know you can go back to Blay’s in an hour. The operation was totally textbook, and you’re already healing well. I have no problem with daylight, so if you need me, I can be at his house in a moment. Blay knows what to watch for, and I’ve given him some meds for you.”

Qhuinn shut his eyes, subsumed by some kind of fucked-up sadness.

As he tried to chill, he heard Doc Jane say, “Blay, you want to come over here-”

Qhuinn shook his head, then turned it away. “Need a minute alone.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes.”

As the door closed quietly, he put a shaking hand over his face. Alone… yeah, he was alone, all right. And not just because there was no one else in the room with him.

He’d really enjoyed thinking the last twelve hours had been a dream.

God, what the fuck was he going to do with the rest of his life?

In a flash he remembered the vision he’d had when he’d approached the Fade. Maybe he should have gone right through that damn door in spite of what he saw. Sure as shit would have made everything easier.

He collected himself for a moment. Or maybe more like half an hour. Then he called out in as strong a voice as he could muster, “I’m ready. I’m ready to go.”

Chapter Twenty-four

A house can be empty even when it’s full of people. And wasn’t that a good thing.

About an hour before dawn, Phury lurched around one of the mansion’s countless corners and had to put his hand out to steady himself.

He wasn’t truly by himself, though, was he. Boo, the household’s black cat, was right there with him, padding along, supervising. Hell, the animal was arguably running the show, as somewhere along the line, Phury had taken to following, not leading.

Leading would so not be a good call. His blood alcohol level was way over the legal limit for anything other than brushing his teeth. And that was before you added on the numbing effects of a haystack’s worth of red smoke.

How many blunts? How much hooch?

Well, it was now…He had no idea what time it was. Had to be close to dawn, though.

Whatever. Trying to get a tally on the bender would have been a waste of time anyway. Given how fogged-out he was, it was doubtful he could count high enough, and besides, he couldn’t really recall what his hourly rate of consumption had been. All he was sure about was that he’d left his room when the Beefeater had run out. Originally, he’d planned to get another bottle of gin, but then he’d hooked up with Boo and started on this walkabout.

All things considered, he should have been passed out on his bed. He was polluted enough for the lights-out routine, and it had, after all, been his goal. Problem was, even with all the self-medicating, his head was suffering from the 4 Cs of heebie-jeebies: Cormia’s situation. The Chosen responsibility. The clinic’s infiltration. And Bella’s child.

Okay, the last one was a human term. But still.

At least the wizard was relatively quiet.

Phury pushed open a random door and tried to figure out where the cat had led him. Oh, right. If he kept going, he’d hit doggen territory, the vast wing where the staff stayed. Which would be trouble. If he was found wandering there, Fritz would pop an aneurysm on the assumption that the servants had somehow not discharged their duties properly.