There’s no changing her mind. Despite Jude’s full-on confession, she still chooses to hold me equally responsible for that particular mess and there’s nothing I can do about it.

“Just because you didn’t deliver the blow doesn’t make you any lesscomplicit. Doesn’t make you any less of anaccessory .” She smiles, allowing for a flash of blinding white teeth, as she revisits her door-kicking routine. Her words punctuated with a series of loud, crashingslams andbangs andcracks as she says, “Isn’t that what you told your good friend Honor just a moment ago? Because the fact is, you wereright there when he barged in and you did nothing to stop it. You just sat there and let it happen without making a single move to save him. And that makes you bothcomplicit and anaccessory. To use your own argument against you.”

She stops and turns, her gaze meeting mine, waiting for the words to sink in, wanting me to know that she’s not just keeping tabs on my conversations, but just might be capable of far more than that.

I lift my hands before me, palms facing her in a gesture of peace, hoping to defuse this before it’s too late. “We don’t have to do this.” I regard her carefully. “Youdon’t have to do this. There’s no reason we can’t just—coexist. No reason why you need to go through with this—”

But I can’t even finish before her voice overrides mine, eyes darkening, face hardening, as she says, “Don’t even bother. You won’t change my mind.”

She means every word of it. I can see it in her eyes. Still, the stakes are too serious, leaving me with no choice but to try. “Okay, fine. So you’re determined to make good on your threat, and you think I can’t stop you. Whatever. That remains to be seen. But before you do something you’ll no doubt regret, you need to know that you’re wasting your time. In case you don’t get it, I happen to feel just as badly about what happened to Roman as you do. And while I know that’s hard to believe, it’s true. But even though I can’t take it back, even though I was too late and too slow to stop Jude, I never meant for it to happen. I neverwanted it to happen. In the end, I had a much better understanding of just who Roman really was, what made him tick, why he did the things he did. And because of it, Iforgave him. That’s why I went to see him, so I could explain to him once and for all that I was done fighting, that I wanted us to call a truce. And I’d just convinced him of it, we’d just agreed to work together, when Jude came in, misread the whole thing—and—well, you know the rest. But, Haven, Inever saw it coming. If I had, I definitely would’ve stopped him. I never would’ve let it go down like that. By the time I realized what was happening it was too late to do anything to stop it. It was a tragic misunderstanding, but that’s all it was.

It wasn’t sinister, it wasn’t premeditated, it wasn’t anything like you assume.” I nod, not entirely convinced of that myself but still desperate to convince her.

Whether or not Jude really did misread the situation and was only trying to protect me—or if he had a much darker agenda in mind, stopping me from obtaining the antidote so that he could finally have a shot at me after hundreds of years of rejection, is something I’ve been mulling over and over since the night it all happened. And I still haven’t reached a conclusion.

“He assumed I was in danger, in over my head, and ruled by dark magick. He acted purely on instinct, nothing more, nothing less. Seriously, you can direct all the anger you want at me, but please leave Jude out of it, okay?”

But even though I try my best to convince her, my words have no effect. They just roll right off her like rain down a windowpane, leaving a faint trace behind but refusing to penetrate in any real way.

“You want to protect Jude—that’s your problem.” She shrugs, as though he’s as disposable as last year’s boy band. “But I think you should know, there’s only one way for you to accomplish that, and that’s by making him drink. Otherwise, it’s not a fair fight. He’ll never survive it. He’ll never surviveme .”

She turns to the doors again, kicking one after another in such quick succession it’s like a blur of speed and sound, while I shake my head and watch.

I have no intention of turning Jude or anyone else for that matter. But even if I can’t convince her to leave him alone, there’s still one last thing I can say. Something I’m sure she doesn’t know, something that’ll probably anger her even more, but still, she needs to hear it. Needs to know just what her so-called beloved Roman had planned.

“Here’s the thing,” I say, my gaze calm, even, wanting her to know I’m not the least bit impressed or intimidated by her door-kicking display. “The only reason I didn’t tell you this before is because I didn’t see the need, and I didn’t want to hurt you any more than you already had been. But the fact is, Roman was planning to leave.” My gaze bores into hers, seeing her flinch ever so slightly, but still enough for me to catch, enough to convince me to continue full speed. “He was headed back to London—jolly old Englandas he called it. Said this town was too slow, not enough action, and that there was no way he would miss it—or anything in it.”

She swallows hard and pushes her bangs out of her eyes. Two of her usual giveaways, proving she’s not so new and improved after all, that a good bit of all the old insecurities and doubts have managed to survive. But still putting forth a show of false bravado, she says, “Nice try, Ever. Pathetic, but certainly worth a shot, right? Desperate people do desperate things, isn’t that what they say? I figure if anyone should know for sure, it’syou .”