I know. We won’t be here long. He released the lever that kept Trenton suspended and the vampire hit the stone floor with a muffled cry, his frightened, pain-filled eyes rolling. Mason shoved him to his back with his foot, held his boot on Trenton’s throat to keep him from thrashing. When he extended a hand, Jacob put a wooden stake in it. Then, meeting Jessica’s eyes, Mason put the stake in her palm, closing her fingers on it.

Jess stared at it, curled her fingers around the wood. When she lifted her gaze to Mason’s face, she saw something dark and deadly lay there. She couldn’t deny something that matched it stirred in her own breast, when she looked back down at the creature who had stood by and laughed at her pain and fear. Trenton’s attention darted back and forth between them. Jessica swallowed. What Mason was offering her was an act that violated Council law.

“He is yours, habiba.”

She swallowed, felt Mason’s arm come around her, the gentle hand passing down her back at odds with the violent situation, the stench of fear and death that hung over them all. What if I want to let him go?

Mason tipped her chin, studied her eyes. He understood, she knew he did, for he could see everything in her mind. She also saw the restless violence in him, his rage at what Trenton had done to her.

Without his moral compass, there is no deadlier vampire than Lord Mason . . .

His thumb touched her lip. We cannot do it, Jessica. He knows too much about Lyssa, and perhaps even Danny and Dev.

She considered that, ignoring the fearful, strangled whimpers under Mason’s foot, Jacob’s tactical shift to be in a better position if needed.

All right, then. Giving him a nod, and gripping the stake, she squatted next to Trenton, aware of the other two males tensing, despite the fact Trenton was trussed so securely. Mason’s low voice was sibilant in the shrouded gloom of the dungeon, running a chill even up her spine. If Trenton wasn’t a vampire, she was sure he would have pissed himself.

“You have a choice. She will stake you as you lie, and you can meet your fate, but if you so much as twitch, try to harm her in any way, I will put you through everything you did to her, twice.”

Trenton’s pain-crazed eyes went from Mason back to her. There was pleading there, of course, a mindless fear, but she saw the contemptuous savagery behind it as well. No, it wasn’t the nature of every vampire. But some natures didn’t change. Nor had hers, not as much as she’d thought. And she loved the vampire next to her too well to unbalance his.

Rising, she handed Mason the stake, closing his fingers on it. This time she spoke aloud. “Show him what he never showed me. Let his end be merciful and quick, and let’s have it done. Please. We have enough ghosts haunting us.” After a long moment, he nodded, those deadly shadows replaced by something else. A soul-deep yearning, as if he might want to clasp her hand on the stake tighter, tight enough to fuse them together. Then, his gaze becoming unreadable again, he released her and turned to do her will.

Men weren’t supposed to be this bloody complicated. Sitting on the fountain’s edge, Jessica scowled up the hill at one of the new fruit trees. She preferred not to think of their origins, and in truth, they were one of the loveliest groves of trees, with their graceful shapes and mature forms, than any she’d ever seen. Like a grove straight from a fairy world, she thought ironically, even as she wondered how the delicate pear tree would do here, exposed to salt-laden winds. It seemed to be thriving for now.

Lyssa’s efforts on their behalf fairly pulsed with Fey power. Jacob had indicated when they returned to their mountain home in the States, they would consult the Fey there, to determine if the forest needed to be dissolved or could stand as it was, a beacon of powerful protection for the estate, built on the blood and bones of vampires and their human minions.

She shivered at that thought. If Mason had been overwhelmed, she would have been at their mercy for God knew how long before they killed her. Or, since most hadn’t cared for Trenton’s cause, but Mason’s wealth, she might have ended up servant to one of them, even while her mind and body were still possessed by Mason. They would have chained him in his own dungeon, where her torment would have driven him mad, same as with Farida.

Lyssa and Mason thought this was the end of it, though. Trenton and his friends, all now fertilizer or vegetation, had been Raithe’s most active supporters. The other hard-core dissenters disagreed with pardoning a human servant who had killed her Master. They had no personal issue worth coming after her, particularly if it was clear she was contained by Mason’s third mark and protection.

If she took Brian’s potion and had no memory of any of it, it was even less likely to become an issue. The medical supply case containing the three vials now sat on her nightstand, the physical evidence of the decision to be made. She recalled Enrique’s words when he brought it to her.

Lord Mason reminds you that it is your decision to make. While he does not wish to hasten you, he thinks it would be wise to choose within the next week or so. We will need to move you to your new location before you take the serum, of course.

Jessica had nodded, but she remembered Amara’s face, as the woman stood at her door. She’d had a light sheen of tears, but when she went to her, Amara shook her head. “You know my mind, Jessica. But Enrique and Mason, they’ve always been right.

What’s best is what will make you happy. If you go, I will miss you, though. We all will.” She’d studied those three vials of emerald green liquid, held them in her hands and felt the heat from them, portents of the magical as well as scientific miracle they contained. Three vials, to remove three marks. The ultimate soul cleaner for a human servant.

As she rose from the fountain and walked between Mason’s garden and Lyssa’s, she didn’t think about that, though. She listened to the song of the ocean, and wondered why he wouldn’t talk to her.

Near dusk, Mason stood at the window, but not in his study. There was a little-used room on the top level of the estate, in one of the turrets. The small room was big enough for ocean viewing, furnished with only two chairs. He rarely came up here, for sometimes the sight of all the vastness of the ocean and sky, while sequestered in the silent room, made him feel oddly isolated. But he wanted to see her, without her knowing she was being watched. She’d spent most of the day in the garden, according to Enrique, pacing back and forth as she was doing now in the evening light. Her arms were wrapped across her midriff, a feminine sign of defensive uncertainty and deep thought at once.

He loved her. He’d known he cared deeply about her, but in that key moment, when he’d seen Trenton attack her, he had felt her panic give way to a rush of fury, he’d heard the curse go through her mind— never again, you worthless son of a bitch—and he’d known he loved her.

It was so fast, but a universe could be blinked into existence, couldn’t it? And in that blink, he knew he loved her as much as Farida, perhaps more in some ways. Not because Farida had been lacking, but because of who he’d become since then. He knew how to love more deeply, more painfully, because of what he’d learned since.

When she was dying, he’d felt it in every part of himself. At this age, a servant’s death was more of an emotional impact than a physical one, but perhaps he had given her all that he was, matter as well as spirit.

If he was ever lucky enough to win Jessica’s love, her absolute trust, that courageous heart of hers would never doubt him. He’d dedicate himself to it. Even if their minds were separated, as his and Farida’s had been, even if all the forces of Hell severed the connections between heart, body and soul, she would know his heart was hers, and that he would never abandon her. Some things were beyond the reaches of Hell.

He realized he was no longer alone. “You’ve left a formidable challenge for my gardening staff,” he observed. “It looks like a prehistoric forest down there.”

“Since Gideon’s attack, your incessant whining about your destroyed rosebushes had become annoying. I was merely trying to help.” Lyssa sat down, crossed her legs. “If I were you, I’d stop worrying about your hedges and work harder on your security. A dozen fledglings crept up in your backyard and practically staked you. It would have been mortifying if they’d succeeded.”

“At one time, the rain forest and ocean served as very effective deterrents.” He frowned out the window. “But you’re right. It’s a different world now. It’s time for me to return to the desert, let Amara and Enrique move into a safer location. Perhaps Cairo.”

“Hmm. What’s that?” Lyssa glanced at the book he’d left in the seat of one of the chairs.

“One of Farida’s journals. I was looking for something in it.”

“Oh.” Lyssa was as capable of reading his thoughts as he was hers, since a blood exchange had happened several times in their history. But she entered his mind with a courteous warning touch, making sure he preferred that she read it there rather than wait for it from his lips. He gave her both.

“I didn’t find it. It wasn’t there. Not in either one of them.”

That first night he’d taken Jessica’s body, he remembered what he’d told her. I kiss your mouth, your breasts, worship every inch of you even as I declare you mine, the way my heart and soul and breath are mine . . .

But it was her reply that had stuck in his mind. I am yours, my lord. In all ways. I have no fear of it.

Because of the circumstances, he’d been certain she’d adopted words from Farida’s journal, her broken mind meshing with the dead woman’s writings. He’d been wrong.

“So the words were Farida’s, and yet hers as well. The same words, from her own heart.” Lyssa was quiet a moment. “It’s problematic, feeling so much for your servant, isn’t it?”

He glanced at the vampire queen, pulled himself reluctantly out of his thoughts. “I certainly hope you’re not going to lecture me about giving inappropriate weight to our relationship, considering all you did to keep Jacob at your side.”