Shadow’s Edge

they would just take the Keeper of the Bloodlines, just him and no one else!”

Viscount Weymouth gasped, then took two swift steps toward Morgan and slapped her very hard across the face.

Her head rocked with the impact of his blow, but she whipped it back and glared at him, her face streaked with tears and mascara, her pride not yet defeated.

“How did they get to you?” he demanded, trembling in fury. “Why would you betray us?”

Morgan smirked, her lovely face twisted into a mask of hatred. “Why would I betray you?” She let out a cold, mirthless laugh. “When every decision about my life is not my own? When even who I should marry is determined for me, by the Keeper of the Bloodlines, forced upon me and every other woman of our kind so we make a proper Blood match? We’re nothing more to you than breeders!”

Viscount Weymouth slapped her again, this time so hard she fell back to the floor on one elbow. A drop of blood welled up on her lower lip. She licked at it, then wiped the back of her hand across her mouth. The blood smeared over her chin.

“Do you have any idea what you’ve done?” Weymouth shouted. The other men began to advance around Morgan, staring down at her with flexed fists and faces black with fury. “They’ll kill us all!”

“Then let us die!” she screamed back at him. A dozen hands reached out for her, closed hard around her wrists and arms and waist. She was hauled to her feet. “We live on our knees as it is, shackled by your precious, goddamn LAW—”

Weymouth reared back to slap her once again, but his arm was caught in midswing.

“Do not,” Leander said very softly, his fingers closed in an iron grip around the other man’s wrist, “do that again.”

The viscount wrenched his wrist away and began to step back, panting and wide-eyed, rubbing his other hand over the spot where Leander’s fingers had dug into his flesh.

“You will take Morgan to the holding cell to be questioned,” Leander continued, his tone still soft and infinitely dark. He motioned to Morgan with his head but did not remove his gaze from the viscount. “And you will wait for me there. You will not begin without me. She will not be touched again without my express permission. Is that perfectly clear?”

The viscount nodded, still backing away.

“And what of her?” Durga demanded, pointing one shaking finger at Jenna.

Leander turned his head to consider Jenna, just the one elegant motion of his neck, and for a swift, horrifying moment, she was sure she would be dragged to prison along with Morgan. She kept her heels hard against the floor, kept her spine straight and her face impassive. But the look he gave her, the blade-thin smile as he examined her under his lashes, sent a spike of dread straight through her heart.

All the warmth and softness that had been there in the forest had now been replaced by something alien and cold. It sliced through the air between them, slick as steel, predatory and dangerous.

“Christian, Andrew.” His gaze flickered to his brother and another, much larger man, then came back to her face. “Escort Jenna back to her chambers. Don’t let anyone else in. Wait for me there until I return.” He took another step away from her.

“You’ll never find Daria without her!” Morgan screamed, struggling to free herself from the hands that bound her. Someone twisted her arm behind her back and Morgan grimaced in pain. “She’s as good as dead without Jenna!” she screamed again.

But no one paid her any heed. Nearly every gaze had settled back on Jenna.

Jenna didn’t protest as Christian came up and took her arm gently, she didn’t speak as he and Andrew led her from the room. She held her head high, she kept her face straight. She wouldn’t let them see her fear.

But as she passed through the doorway, she couldn’t resist another, final glimpse at Leander.

She craned her head over her shoulder to see him, standing alone in the middle of the room. Motionless, taut, gazing straight back at her.

Gazing back at her with unblinking eyes of dead-cold flint.

25

Christian stared out the row of massive windows in her pink and gilt room, silent, his back turned to her, his hands clasped behind his back. Her gaze skipped around the room but she saw nothing except the repeated pattern of ivy on the wallpaper, which made searing impressions of red against her eyelids when she closed them.

She’d done this often over the past few minutes.

The chair she was sitting on seemed oddly insubstantial, as if she had only to shift her weight and it would disappear beneath her in a puff of smoke. Nothing, in fact, seemed to hold any weight any longer. Even her hands in her lap seemed poised to evaporate into nothingness. It all seemed like something from a dream.

From her time spent here with Morgan, Jenna knew this room was sealed like a vault. She’d been over it a hundred times as vapor, searching for any escape, any exit, but there was none.

No handles to open the windows, no cracks in the panes, no fireplace and chimney that led to the freedom of the roof. Not even a breath of air flowed past the doors. They were fitted perfectly with a custom lead jamb that allowed no gaps and locked her in with the finality and airtight seal of a tomb.

They’d prepared well for her arrival. There would be no escape until Leander decided to let her out. If Leander decided to let her out.

If they ever find you...run...

How she wished she had listened to her mother. What a stupid, reckless fool she had been.

He didn’t love her, he didn’t trust her, he didn’t even allow her to speak in her own defense before sending her away under guard to await his return. She knew he imagined her in league with Morgan’s plans to destroy the Ikati, he imagined her a traitor. And now she knew with vivid clarity what happened to those who ran afoul of their savage, unyielding Law...

Her mouth went dry.

The longcase clock in the corner began to chime the hour in low, haunting notes.

“I know you had nothing to do with Daria’s disappearance,” Christian murmured, bringing Jenna back from her dazed inspection of the backs of her hands. He turned his head to consider her through half-lidded eyes. Against the fall of the silk curtains and the dark oyster clouds beyond the windows he seemed as cool and remote as the rainfall that slanted over the emerald forest in the distance.

“I appreciate that, Christian,” Jenna answered quietly. “But your Assembly doesn’t seem to share that opinion.” Her voice dropped even lower. “And neither does your brother.”

Leander, oh, Leander, how close we came.

She still smelled him on her skin, she still felt his hot breath in her ear and heard his moans of pleasure as he found his bliss inside her. She almost tasted the velvet sweetness of his tongue as he thrust it into her mouth.

But now it was gone, all gone with the blink of an eye, and nothing could ever bring all that sweetness back.

Christian continued to gaze at her with an inscrutable expression. His eyes and face were shadowed as the gray light from the windows flared into nimbus around his head.

“Do you love him?” he suddenly asked, his voice too loud.

It startled her. She stared at him across the silent room and realized there was a distinct possibility she would be sent to a traitor’s death within the hour. She wouldn’t be a coward now, here at the end of everything.

She wouldn’t lie. To him, or to herself.

“Yes,” she rasped, her throat closing around the word.