“Yes, we’re alive. I have to take you to a safe place, though, and it’s going to hurt.”

She nodded. He gathered her up in his arms. Searing pain sliced through her. She started to cry.

Then she was flying and the pain sharpened so badly that she passed out.

She awoke again on a soft mattress, on her side. She heard sucking noises and felt pulls on her arm. Lucian. She smiled. You’re feeding. Good.

The madness came back so feeding was necessary, but the serum I’m releasing will rebuild your supply.

I know.

Focus on healing. Try siphoning more of my power straight to your wound.

Okay. She glanced around. But where are we?

My home in Uruguay.

She turned her mind toward Lucian’s power. With what was left of her pain-and-drug-riddled thought process she funneled Lucian’s power. The sensation of a warm wave rolling down her back eased her, and she floated away once more.

When she woke up, she rolled onto her back and stretched. She tensed up, expecting pain to grip her all over again, but nothing happened. Working herself slowly to a sitting position, she reached around as far as she could and she felt as much of her back as she could.

Nothing. No pain. Nothing.

“Lucian?” She glanced around. So this was his South American home. Opposite the bed was the most beautiful modern mural composed of red, yellow, and blue crystals with splashes of green. She stared at it for a long time, marveling all over again at the world she’d entered.

Lucian appeared in the doorway, sipping a mug of coffee. He leaned against the polished stone wall. “Feeling better?”

“Yeah, and you’re not dead. How the hell did that happen? Your father, the sweet man that he is, gutted you.”

She glanced at his abdomen. The vampire wore the bottoms only to a pajama set and looked sexy as hell, but there wasn’t even a scar on him. “Wow.”

“Thank you.” His lips curved.

“I meant only that you should have a scar and don’t.” Her amusement bubbled.

“Ah, I see.” He moved into the room, smiling fully now, a nice look for him. “I’m glad you’re okay.”

She shook her head, arching her back once more, which made her suddenly aware of her bare breasts beneath the sheet so she let go of the provocative position. “I don’t hurt at all. I take it Daniel cut me pretty bad.”

“He could have killed you but didn’t. Instead, he flayed you open, one of his specialties.”

Claire had seen the thin scar that ran the entire length of Lucian’s spine. Only a repetitive injury in the exact same location could leave a scar on a vampire.

He sat down on the side of the bed. Without asking permission, she took the mug from him and sipped. He smiled again. “You’re not afraid of me, are you, not even a little?”

“No, never, Lucian. Not even with my ankles and wrists shackled.”

He shifted toward her and met her gaze. His gray eyes glimmered. He stroked the back of his finger down her arm but didn’t say anything. Not that he had to: The chains vibrated, letting her know what he felt.

Desire sparked, but she didn’t want to fall down that rabbit hole, not yet. She had some processing to do.

After taking another sip of his coffee, she handed the mug back, but he held up his hand.

“Is it to your taste?”

“Black is perfect.”

“I’ll get another mug for myself, then. Be right back.”

She watched him leave, enjoying the sight of his muscled back and tight butt as he moved. She wondered if she had more chores she could give him that would bring him in and out of the room, just like that, another hundred times or so. Watching could be fun.

She chuckled, but just as swiftly her amusement dimmed. She scooted back up to what turned out to be a leather-upholstered headboard, then bunched her pillows up behind her.

She drew the sheet up and settled in to think about the trip to the River of Lights. She could have started at the end of the trek, but for just a moment she contemplated the beginning and all those extraordinary sculptures, the music, the moving lights.

For some reason, her mind got stuck there and she couldn’t let go, but she wasn’t sure why.

When Lucian returned, however, her mind connected the dots. It was because of him, because she’d once thought of him only as a vampire and the world he lived in as monstrous. But that ride, including the level of organization, the Tunnel of Love nature of the experience, the absolute beauty, spoke of something she could relate to implicitly as a human.

Which meant that her views had been so wrong about Lucian’s world. Initially, because of Daniel, she’d landed in the filth-end of a culture that had the same spectrum as her human world, ranging from scum to saints, and she’d judged his world by her extremely limited experience.

“You look so serious, Claire. What’s going on?”

She shook her head and sipped once more. She felt absurdly vulnerable right now and took comfort in hiding behind the small black mug with a four-diamond pattern on the side.

“Just thinking about last night. It was last night, right? Or have I been out longer than that?”

“Just last night.”

“And we’re both healed.”

“Welcome to my world.” He fingered the double-chain at his neck.

He sat on his side of the bed this time, angled away from her slightly. She turned in his direction, finally allowing her thoughts to travel farther, to leave the ride itself and move into the separate, hidden cavern, what had happened there, what she’d learned.

“My friend is dead.”

He didn’t look at her. This time he sipped his coffee. Maybe they both needed to hide a little. So much had happened, so much grief.

Her throat constricted, but she didn’t want to cry, not now, not yet.

“I’m sorry about Zoey.”

“And I’m sorry about Marius.” She drew a deep breath. She’d been grieving Zoey’s absence from her life for two years, but her death would change things. The loss of all hope was a terrible thing.

“Hey.”

She shifted her gaze to Lucian.

“Would you like to go home now?”

Claire at first didn’t understand what he was saying to her. She shook her head. “Sorry?”

He looked away from her and licked his lips. “Your journey is over, isn’t it? Daniel finished things with you last night when he told you about your friend. You have closure now.”

But even as he spoke these words, Claire sensed a small ripple of his doubt vibrate through the chains. “What is it, Lucian? What are you not saying?”

He shot his gaze back to her. “You could feel that?”

She chuckled and touched the chain at her throat. “Of course. What’s going on?”

He looked away again. Glancing upward, his brow creased once more, he said, “I don’t know. I guess I’m questioning what Daniel said about Zoey. I don’t trust him on any level, especially not to tell you the truth.”

“You think she’s alive?”

He shrugged and shook his head. “I don’t know. Probably not. Forget I said anything. What would Daniel have to gain to tell you that Zoey died? Nothing. Sorry, this is just me never trusting my father. I want you to have closure.”

“Closure.” The word had no meaning—or maybe it was more apt than she wanted to admit: The door had closed, so it was, therefore, “closure.” She wished she could reach for a small piece of hope through Lucian’s doubt about his father’s statements, but Lucian was right: Daniel would have nothing to gain by killing off her hopes.

No, she needed to face the hard truth that Zoey was dead. “When you’re ready, Claire, I’ll take you home. Just say the word.”

She frowned as she met his gaze. “I won’t leave yet, Lucian, not until we’ve found the weapon.”

He seemed genuinely surprised. “No, you only needed to stay long enough to find out what happened to Zoey, and now that you have, you can go home, which is where I know you want to be. I can keep hunting for the weapon, or I can find some other means of trapping Daniel and ending his reign of terror.” He rose to his feet, mug in hand. “But you don’t need to stay. In fact, I wish you wouldn’t. I’m living with enough guilt as it is that you were hurt last night.”