I was wondering the same thing. Ryodan doesn’t explain himself. Ever.

“I’m telling you because for some unfathomable fucking reason Dani likes you. That means you may prove useful in getting her back. The more you know, the more you can help.”

“Getting her back from where?” Lor demands. “What did the bitch do to her? Where are those journals? I want to see them.”

“It wasn’t just Rowena. And I suggest you leave it.”

“I suggest you go fuck yourself.”

“Once you called me king. Now you lie, fuck my ex, and tell me to fuck myself. Tread lightly, Lor. You may have changed. I have not.”

“You’re talking about my favorite human. I want names. Details. I’ll rip out their hearts. I’ll flay their fucking hides.”

“I already took care of them.”

My hands are fists, nails digging into my palms. I force myself to unclench them so I don’t drip blood on the floor. Other people abused Dani? Who? I want to kill them, too.

“Yet you let the old bitch live after you found out. What the fuck’s with that?”

Something inhuman rattles deep in Ryodan’s chest. “The moment Barrons got the Sinsar Dubh, I planned to lock Rowena away in a dark, hellish pit. Keep her alive so that if one day Dani remembered, she could exterminate her. Some crimes are so personal, blood-vengeance belongs only to the one who suffered them. It was the only gift I could give her.”

“Dani doesn’t remember? How’s that possible?”

“She fragmented. Not sure if the old bitch managed to intentionally cause it or if it had already happened to some degree before she came on the scene and she just drove wedges in the door to lodge it open. When I chained Dani up in the dungeon, it wasn’t because she’d killed Unseelie in my club. I was trying to discover what she recalled of Ro’s experiments. I’d begun to suspect it was little. Skimming her mind was time-consuming and tricky as hell. Kid’s got more locked doors in that megabrain of hers than a high-security prison. Dani remembers some of it but it seems the worst memories were embedded in her other personality’s psyche, or never fully absorbed. It was difficult to read her, even unconscious. There are things she may never remember. If we’re lucky. Our super-girl carries her own kryptonite, right there in her head.”

“You gotta be kidding me. My little darlin’s a split personality?”

“Not so little anymore. And she calls herself Jada now. She’s the survivor, aware of Dani. Jada has ledgers and objectives. Dani has hopes and dreams. Dani doesn’t know about Jada. She has what she thinks of as an ‘Other’ but doesn’t realize it’s a fully formed persona.”

Lor shakes his head. “How the fuck did I miss it?”

How did I miss it? I narrowed my eyes, replaying memories, searching for clues.

“They’re hard to tell apart. Nearly identical, but one feels, the other doesn’t. One’s on fire with life, the other’s cold as ice. One butchers the English language. The other obeys it to the letter. Not a flicker of emotion, not an ounce of humanity. Their posture is subtly different. I’ve watched her change four times. She pulled back a fifth time, recently, outside the club while she was trying to figure out what the Hoar Frost King was after, as if she’d dipped in a toe but pulled out quickly. Each time she changed, she was unstoppable. The other has double her talent and abilities. You never saw it, then.”

Lor rubs his jaw. “No. You ordered us to stay back, out of sight. We just thought she was a helluva fighter. Stone cold at times but that’s my little honey. Couldn’t be more proud of her.” He grins but it quickly fades. “You said you went to kill her. Why didn’t you?”

“The memories Dani retains are enough that she should hate the world. Kevlar her heart. Never trust anyone or anything.”

“Sounds like someone I know.”

“I feel.”

“With your dick, maybe.”

“Hands and tongue, too.”

“So, why didn’t you kill her?”

“I found her standing outside Temple Bar, watching street mimes. Eyes brilliant, up on her tiptoes, at the back of the crowd, one hand shoved in a pocket, the other cramming a cheeseburger in her mouth. Bouncing from foot to foot trying to burn off some of that excess energy she always has. There were guts from a recent Unseelie kill in her hair. Never had friends, went to school, celebrated a birthday or Christmas, none of those rites of passage by which humans mark their time and so highly prize.”

I blink. Ryodan is talking about human experiences like he understands them? Like he’s actually given one ounce of thought to a moment of it?

“Alone. Living on the streets. Dirty. Torn jeans. Two black eyes, bruises everywhere. Not one person in the world gave a bloody damn she was alive except to use her. And she knew it.”

“That’s why you didn’t kill her? Because she was young and dirty and a beat-up, unwanted kid? World’s fucking full of ’em.”

“It was what she did next.”

What could make the implacable, imperious Ryodan change his mind? This was a man of steel who made rules and enforced them without question.

“What?”

His face changes, eyes distant on a memory, and he smiles faintly. I realize I might not know him at all. Perhaps no one does.

“She threw her head back and laughed. The kid fucking laughed, eyes shining. Like there was no greater adventure she could possibly be on. Like life was turning out to be the most exhilarating, fantastic roller-coaster ride she could ever have imagined. Fuck the pain. Fuck the misery. In the middle of the hopeless, brutal hell her short existence on this Earth had been, that girl laughed,” he finishes on a near whisper.

That was Dani. Nothing broke her. Ever. Not even if it meant splitting herself into pieces to deal with things, so she could laugh and want to go on living.

“You don’t snuff a life like that,” Ryodan says softly. “You honor it. You take measures to protect it, even from itself when necessary, and keep it alive.” The ghost of a smile vanishes and his face is once again a smooth, urbane mask. He clips, brisk and businesslike, “She was reckless, convinced of her own invincibility. She’s no longer reckless and far more powerful. We currently have two primary objectives: stop the cosmic anomalies that threaten to destroy this world, and get Dani back. Not necessarily in that order. I expect your full attention on those two matters. Nothing else. I’ve others addressing my secondary concerns.”

Ryodan stands up and walks around the desk, a signal even I can read for Lor to get up and leave. I’m surprised he’s letting him. Lor’s got hell to pay, and Ryodan is the devil that collects.

Taking his cue, Lor rises. “Sure, boss.” His brow furrows like he’s hunting for words. After a moment he adds, “Like I said earlier, I didn’t go looking for Jo.”

“But you plan to fuck her again.”

Lor rubs his jaw, sighs but doesn’t answer.

Ryodan changes into the beast faster than I believed possible. One instant he’s a man — the next his clothing is in tatters on the floor.

A nine-foot-tall, horned, black-skinned slathering monster with feral crimson eyes slams his fist through the wall of Lor’s chest and rips out his heart.

The beast holds the bloody thing up — God, it’s still beating! — narrows its eyes then licks it, forked black tongue unfurling with grace around the delicacy.

Then he looks at Lor, who’s jerking convulsively, gushing blood from a huge jagged-edged hole in his chest, framed by an explosion of bone fragments, taps him lightly on the shoulder and pushes him over.

Despite enormous fangs distorting his words, I have no problem understanding them.

“Never. Fucking. Lie. To. Me. Again.”

Lor crashes to the floor, dead.

The beast drops Lor’s heart on the floor where it lands with a wet splat, turns and swipes the wall panel with a prehensile, taloned claw, and stalks out.