“Trust me, falling down properly is harder than it looks. Learn the right way and you can get back up faster and keep fighting.”

I thought of being in Lady Natasha’s dungeons, of my cousin Christabel being kidnapped because they thought she was me, of stakes flying at my boyfriend, and of Hope taking out half the Drake farmhouse. I bared my teeth.

“I’m in.”

Chapter 14

Solange

Monday, sunset

I woke up missing Kieran.

By the time I’d drunk three bottles of blood and was sated enough to leave my own private corner of the family tunnels, I’d already talked myself out of writing him a letter or checking to see if he’d written me one, about five times. Maybe ten.

The last thing I wanted to do was deal with the aftermath of Sunday night. Mom lost her temper all the time; everyone was used to it. Even Lucy lost her temper enough to give Mom a run for her money. But I never lost my temper. Frankly, until recently you could have been forgiven for assuming I didn’t even have one. Now I just felt it there all the time, boiling and searing under my skin.

I knew I should apologize, and I meant to, but the minute I came up from the safe house and felt everyone staring at me, the anger came back. I actually glanced down to make sure there wasn’t steam coming off me. I felt full of embers again, instead of blood.

Duncan was sprawled in a chair, looking wary. I should definitely tell him I was sorry, but I didn’t know if he wanted to be reminded that his baby sister had taken him down. Quinn, Connor, and Marcus sat at the table. Only Connor smiled at me. Mom and Dad turned to watch my progress up the last of the metal steps. A candle burned between them. Dad’s worry lines were so deeply etched between his eyes they looked painted on.

“How are you feeling?” he asked.

“Fine.” I didn’t mean to snap the answer; it was just that somewhere between my brain and my tongue everything got jumbled up. “How’s London?” I asked before we could get into another painful discussion about my attitude.

“Better,” Dad replied. “Not at full strength, but she’ll get there. Your uncle’s keeping an eye on her.”

“Oh. Good.” I didn’t know what else to say. I took a step toward the door.

“You’re restricted to the grounds.” It was the first thing Mom had said to me since I’d compelled her. She wouldn’t look at me.

“I know.” They want to keep you weak. They always have.

“That means you stay between the torches.”

“I know.”

“And watch your tone, young lady, or you’ll be restricted to this tent.”

I slipped outside before I said anything to make it worse. The cold night air helped, and the expanse of the star-thick sky made me feel slightly less itchy and claustrophobic. I didn’t know what to do or where to go. I wasn’t even sure who to trust anymore. I knew I didn’t trust Madame Veronique, but my parents did, so what was the use in warning them? They’d think I was overreacting. They’d think it was pheromones or regular hormones or whatever other thousands of excuses people had when anyone under twenty-one had something important to say. And it was even worse with vampires, whose life spans were so ridiculously long some would barely acknowledge anyone under two hundred.

A sixteen-year-old girl who’d tried to compel her mother and the oldest matriarch of her lineage?

Not likely.

I stepped out from under the tent awning and wandered down the path, aimless. I tried to ignore the vampires who turned to watch me pass and Penelope, who curtsied so deeply and abruptly she nearly tripped an Amrita dignitary from India. I searched for Constantine’s black hair and his distinctive violet eyes, while trying not to be too obvious about it. For some reason, he always made me feel better. Or at the very least, he made me forget. Maybe he could take me back to the Bower, where I was a dhampir and it was no big deal, where I was a princess and it was no big deal either. The Bower was technically off-limits for me right now, but the ache to be sitting in the parlor under the trees was palpable. I felt better just thinking about it.

Better enough not to notice the way the crowd was parting in front of me until it was too late.

The Furies.

The sound of white damask silk rubbing over wicker panniers was soft as the wind through the snow. Fangs gleamed, diamond shoe buckles glittered, and black feather tattoos seemed to move on their own. I smelled face powder and blood.

Everyone around us stilled. Morbid curiosity thrummed. My heart would have stuttered in my chest, if it still beat. It gave me a jolt to see them looking so identical to Lady Natasha, even though I’d seen them before. Constantine might consider her to be a colonial backwater wannabe queen, but she was still the vampire who’d eaten a raw deer heart because she thought it was mine. Her Furies didn’t intimidate him, not even now, hissing and spitting as one.

Which is why he was the first one to move when the whitethorn stake came at me.

It would have cleaved my heart if he hadn’t been there.

“Solange!” he yelled, even as he leaped impossibly fast and high. He kicked the stake, knocking it out of its trajectory just before it sliced through my shirt. It grazed my skin lightly and landed in the snow. At the same time Constantine threw his own stake at the Fury nearest to us. He was as good a fighter as any of my brothers and nearly as good as my mother.

Even so, he was no match for the Chandramaa. No one was.

It all happened so fast, it was as if the snow froze in midair, as if everything else had stopped moving altogether. The Fury who’d attacked me crumbled into ashes, leaving behind an embroidered white dress that drifted to the ground as if it were underwater. Someone shouted but the sound was elongated and strange. Red arrows fell like angry rain, creating a sort of fence between me and the other Furies. Constantine was facing me, about to land on the frozen ground.