“I think fate put Cian here, this way, so we understand there’s a weight to what we’re doing. So that we know, at the end of the day, we’ve done what we had to do. But not without cost.”

She stepped back. “That’ll have to do. Try to keep your face from walking into any more fists.”

She started to turn, but he took her hand, rising as he drew her back to him. His lips took hers with utter tenderness.

“I think fate put you here, Glenna, to help me understand it’s not just death and blood and violence. There’s such beauty, such kindness in the world. And I have it.” He wrapped his arms around her. “I have it here.”

She indulged herself, letting her head rest on his shoulder. She wanted to ask what they’d have when it was over, but she knew it was important, even essential, to take each day as it came.

“We should work.” She drew back. “I’ve got some ideas about creating a safe zone around the house. A protected area where we can move around more freely. And I think Larkin’s right about sending out scouts. If we can get to the caves during the day, we might be able to find something out. Even set traps.”

“Your mind’s been busy.”

“I need to keep it that way. I’m not as afraid if I’m thinking, if I’m doing.”

“Then we work.”

“Moira might be able to help once we have a start,” Glenna added as they left the kitchen. “She’s reading everything she can get her hands on, so she’d be our prime data source—information,” she explained. “And she has some power. It’s raw and untrained, but it’s there.”

While Glenna and Hoyt closed themselves in the tower and the house was quiet, Moira pored over a volume on demon lore in the library. It was fascinating, she thought. So many different theories and legends. She considered it her task to pick them apart for truth.

Cian would know it, or some of it, she concluded. Centuries of existence was plenty of time to learn. And anyone who filled such a room with books sought and respected knowledge. But she wasn’t ready to ask him—wasn’t sure she would ever be.

If he wasn’t like the creatures she read of, those that sought human blood night after night—and thirsted not just for that blood, but the kill—what was he? Now he prepared to make war against what he was, and she didn’t understand it.

She needed to learn more, about what they fought, about Cian, about all the others. How could you understand, and then trust, what you didn’t know?

She made notes, copious notes, on the paper she’d found in one of the drawers of the big desk. She loved the paper, and the writing instrument. The pen, she corrected, that held the ink inside its tube. She wondered if she could smuggle some of the paper and pens back to Geall.

She closed her eyes. She missed home, and the missing was like a constant ache in her belly. She’d written down her wish, sealed the paper, and would leave it among her things for Larkin to find if it came to pass.

If she died on this side, she wanted her body taken back to Geall for burial.

She continued to write with thoughts circling in her head. There was one she kept coming back to, nibbling at. She would have to find a way to ask Glenna if it could be done—if the others would agree to it, if it could.

Was there a way to seal off the portal, to close the door to Geall?

With a sigh, she looked toward the window. Was it raining in Geall now, too, or was the sun shining on her mother’s grave?

She heard footsteps approach, and danced her fingers over the hilt of her dagger. She let them fall away when King came in. For reasons she couldn’t name, she felt easier with him than the others.

“Got something against chairs, Shorty?”

Her lips twitched. She liked the way words rumbled out of him, like rocks down a stony hill. “No, but I like sitting on the floor. Is it time for more training?”

“Taking a break.” He sat in a wide chair, a huge mug of coffee in his hand. “Larkin could go all damn day. Up there now, practicing some katas.”

“I like the katas. It’s like dancing.”

“Just make sure you’re doing the leading if you’re dancing with a vampire.”

Idly, she turned the page of a book. “Hoyt and Cian fought.”

King took a drink. “Oh yeah? Who won?”

“I think neither. I saw them coming back, and from their faces and limps, it seemed to be a draw.”

“How do you know they were fighting with each other? Maybe they were attacked.”

“No.” She traced her fingers over words. “I hear things.”

“You got big ears, Shorty.”

“So my mother always said. They made peace between them—Hoyt and his brother.”

“That eliminates a complication—if it lasts.” Given their personalities, King figured a full truce between the brothers had the life expectancy of a fruit fly. “What do you expect to find out in all these books?”

“Everything. Sooner or later. Do you know how the first vampyre came to be? There are different versions in the books.”

“Never thought about it.”

“I did—do. One is like a love story. Long ago, when the world was young, demons were dying out. Before, long before that, there were more. Scores of them, walking the world. But man grew stronger and smarter, and the time of the demons was passing.”

Because he was a man who enjoyed stories, he settled back. “Kind of an evolution.”

“A change, yes. Many demons went beneath the world, to hide or to sleep. There was more magic then, because people didn’t turn from it. Man and the faeries forged an alliance to wage war on the demons, to drive them under for once and all. There was one who was poisoned, and slowly dying. He loved a mortal woman, and this was forbidden even in the demon world.”

“So man doesn’t have a lock on bigotry. Keep going,” he said when she paused.

“So the dying demon took the mortal woman from her home. He was obsessed with her, and his last wish was to mate with her before his end.”

“Not so different from men in that area then.”

“I think, perhaps, all living creatures crave love and pleasure. And this physical act that represents life.”

“And guys want to get off.”

She lost her rhythm. “Get off what?”