She sniffed. “I am the eldest of your lineage, boy.”

“Consider our branch of the family tree severed,” he said calmly.

“And if you come near our daughter again, it won’t be all that’s severed,” Mom promised.

They stared at each other for a long deadly moment before I flicked my hand, casually bringing a curtain of bats between them.

“We’ll discuss this later,” Madame Veronique said before moving away.

“Remember when the most exciting thing you did was make lopsided pots at your wheel?” Duncan asked, wiping blood off his face. “Good times.”

I smiled slightly. “I promise to make you a dozen lopsided pots for Christmas.”

He just groaned and moved his shoulder until it cracked back into place.

“Some sweet sixteen,” Mom said, sliding her silver spike into her boot, as the Chandramaa were too busy to stop her. “I don’t remember sixteen being quite so treacherous.”

“I was there,” Dad reminded her drily. “I’d say it’s a family trait.”

She just laughed, winding her arm through his. It was her first true laugh since my bloodchange. Duncan, Marcus, and I grinned sloppily at one another. Then Dad kissed her and we looked hastily away, grimacing.

“Haven’t we suffered enough?” Duncan muttered as we left them, still kissing. It didn’t seem to bother them that Chandramaa guards were now racing up and down rope ladders with buckets of water and refusing to let any other vampires out of the camp until they’d gotten the fire under control.

I followed Seki’s barely-there footsteps, just to reassure myself that she was truly gone. I felt better when her footsteps disappeared and no one tried to kill me for five whole minutes. The soft, quiet beauty of the woods in winter helped. They were cleansing, hopeful. I could finally hear myself think again.

And in that soft quiet moment, I couldn’t help but think of Kieran.

I wanted to call him but I was still out of signal range. I wrote a text and then decided to take a walk to the Bower to find a signal strong enough to send it. I wondered what he was doing right now. Had he thought of me at all, since our conversation at the tree? There’d been no mention of getting back together, no reunion kiss. But he’d told me I was worth it. Surely that meant something? Was it too soon to ask him on a date? Would we ever even be able to reclaim such a normal pastime after all we’d been through?

I wouldn’t find out by being a coward.

I hit “send” on my text before I’d even reached the Bower. The connection was weak, but it eventually went through. Now I could go back to concentrating on history, politics, and the traditions of tribeless vampires around the world.

I was turning around to head back when I spotted Nicholas moving furtively between the trees. He was holding the back of his neck.

“Nic,” I called out, hurrying to catch up to him. He didn’t hear me. He was stumbling, as if in pain.

“Nicholas!” I was running alongside him now and he still couldn’t hear me. He kept scratching at his neck, but there was nothing here. There were no wounds on him, no blood. But he was acting as if he didn’t even know I was there. “Hey,” I said. “Stop.”

Even my pheromones didn’t work. He kept staggering along, but he was also now clutching at his head, moaning. I dropped back, not wanting to cause him more pain.

Frowning, I hung back out of sight, tracking my brother as he went deeper and deeper into the forest.

Chapter 32

Lucy

“I thought she was dead too.”

I shifted awkwardly toward the familiar voice, the rope chafing my wrists. “Kieran? What are you doing here?” I frowned. “And what am I doing here? And, by the way? Where is here?”

We were inside the entrance to a damp series of caves lit with camping lanterns. I could see gleaming steel tables, manacles, and strange instruments whose purpose I had no desire to learn. A man in a stained leather apron was investigating the contents of a steel pan with a smile that made me shiver. There were stockpiles of weapons and opposite us, several barred openings in a row. Pale, fanged faces flitted briefly into view, then crawled back into the darkness. Humans were curled up behind the nearest gate, dirty and frightened. The sight of them soured my belly. Between us and them, and between us and the forest outside, were Huntsmen, agents in Helios-Ra gear, and Host vampires.

None of it made sense.

“We’re hostages,” Kieran explained, keeping his voice low. There were bruises on his face and jagged tears in his jacket. “They just brought me in. I was on my way to the Helios-Ra headquarters after my uncle sent a distress signal when they got me. I thought they were there to help.”

“We thought so too,” I said, thinking of the lockdown at the school. “And speaking of distress signals . . .”

“Don’t scream,” he interrupted hurriedly when I opened my mouth to do just that. “They’ll just chloroform you again.”

“Is that what that stuff was?” I asked, snapping my teeth together. “It was nasty.” I could still taste it in the back of my throat. I was so thirsty, it hurt to swallow. It made it hard to concentrate. I leaned my cheek against the damp stone for a moment. The cold helped clear the fogginess from my head.

“I don’t understand,” I said finally. “Is that really Hope?”

Because there she was, standing at a table, her blond hair swinging cheerfully behind her. She was just as tiny, just as cute . . . just as alive. “Hunter told me she killed herself last month while in League custody.”