I sucked in a sharp, pained breath.

“Pick up the knife!”

I raised it jerkily in my hand.

“I’ve been in your skin,” he taunted. “I know you inside and out. There’s nothing there. Do us all a favor and die so we can start working on another plan and quit thinking maybe you’ll grow the fuck up and be capable of something.”

Okay, enough! “You don’t know me inside and out,” I snarled. “You may have gotten in my skin, but you have never gotten inside my heart. Go ahead, Barrons, make me slice and dice myself. Go ahead, play games with me. Push me around. Lie to me. Bully me. Be your usual constant jackass self. Stalk around all broody and pissy and secretive, but you’re wrong about me. There’s something inside me you’d better be afraid of. And you can’t touch my soul. You will never touch my soul!”

I raised my hand, drew back the knife, and let it fly. It sliced through the air, straight for his head.

He avoided it with preternatural grace, a mere whisper of a movement, precisely and only as much as was required to not get hit.

The hilt vibrated in the wood of the ornate mantel next to his head.

“So, fuck you, Jericho Barrons, and not the way you like it. Fuck you—as in, you can’t touch me. Nobody can.”

I kicked the table at him. It crashed into his shins. I picked up a lamp from the end table. Flung it straight at his head. He ducked again. I grabbed a book. It thumped off his chest.

He laughed, dark eyes glittering with exhilaration.

I launched myself at him, slammed a fist into his face. I heard a satisfying crunch and felt something in his nose give.

He didn’t try to hit me back or push me away. Merely wrapped his arms around me and crushed me tight to his body, trapping my arms against his chest.

Then, when I thought he might just squeeze me to death, he dropped his head forward, into the hollow where my shoulder met my neck.

“Do you miss fucking me, Ms. Lane?” he purred against my ear. Voice resonated in my skull, pressuring a reply.

I was tall and strong and proud inside myself. Nobody owned me. I didn’t have to answer any questions I didn’t want to, ever again.

“Wouldn’t you just love to know?” I purred back. “You want more of me, don’t you, Barrons? I got under your skin deep. I hope you got addicted to me. I was a wild one, wasn’t I? I bet you never had sex like that in your entire existence, huh, O Ancient One? I bet I rocked your perfectly disciplined little world. I hope wanting me hurts like hell!”

His hands were suddenly cruelly tight on my waist.

“There’s only one question that matters, Ms. Lane, and it’s the one you never get around to asking. People are capable of varying degrees of truth. The majority spend their entire lives fabricating an elaborate skein of lies, immersing themselves in the faith of bad faith, doing whatever it takes to feel safe. The person who truly lives has precious few moments of safety, learns to thrive in any kind of storm. It’s the truth you can stare down stone-cold that makes you what you are. Weak or strong. Live or die. Prove yourself. How much truth can you take, Ms. Lane?”

I could feel his mind rubbing up against mine. It was a shockingly sensuous feeling. He was reaching for my thoughts the way I’d hammered at him for his, only he was seducing me into opening my mind, making me blossom like a flower for his sun, beckoning me into one of his memories.

Then I was no longer in the bookstore, a breath away from wanting to kill or—who the hell knew?—kiss Jericho Barrons, I was—

In a tent.

Sawing open a man’s chest with a bloody blade.

Drawing back my arm and punching my fist into the bones that protected his heart.

Closing my hand around it.

Ripping it out.

I’d already raped his woman—she was still alive, watching her husband die. As she had watched her children die.

I raised his heart above my face, squeezed it in my fist, let the blood drip—

He was trying to drown me in the scene of slaughter. Force it on me, graphic detail by detail. But there was more. There was something behind it.

That was what I wanted to see.

I gathered my will, drew back, and launched myself into the scene he was forcing on me. It ripped down the center like a movie screen, revealing another screen behind it.

More slaughter. Him laughing.

I sought that dark glassy lake in my sidhe-seer center. I didn’t summon what lay in its depths. I merely coaxed a little strength from it. Whatever lay beneath that lake offered it willingly, inflating my mental muscles.

I knifed through screen after screen, until finally there were no more and I went crashing to my knees in a puff of sand in—

A desert.

It is dusk.

I hold a child in my arms.

I stare into the night.

I won’t look down.

Can’t face what’s in his eyes.

Can’t not look.

My gaze goes unwillingly, hungrily down.

The child stares up at me with utter trust.

His eyes say, I know you won’t let me die.

His eyes say, I know you will make the pain stop.

His eyes said, Trust/love/adore/youareperfect/youwillalwayskeepme safe/youaremyworld.

But I didn’t keep him safe.

And I can’t make his pain stop.

Bitterness fills my mouth with bile. I turn my head and vomit. I never understood anything about life until this moment.

I always sought only my own gain. Mercenary to the core.

If the child dies, nothing will ever matter again, because a piece of me will go with him. Until now I was not aware of that piece. Didn’t know it existed. Didn’t know it mattered.

Ironic to find it, in the moment of losing it.

I hold him.

I rock him.

He weeps.

His tears fall on my arms and burn my skin.

I stare into those trusting eyes.

I see him there. His yesterdays. His today. The tomorrows that will never be.

I see his pain and it shreds me.

I see his absolute love and it shames me.

I see the light—that beautiful perfect light that is life.

He smiles at me. He gives me all his love in his eyes.

It begins to fade.

No! I roar. You will not die! You will not leave me!

I stare into his eyes for what seems a thousand days.

I see him. I hold him. He is there.

He is gone.

There’s a moment, in the dying, of transition. Life to death. Full to empty. There, then gone. Too fast. Come back, come back, you want to scream. I need just one more minute. Just one more smile. Just one more chance to do things right. But he’s gone. He’s gone. Where did he go? What happens to life when it leaves? Does it go somewhere or is it just fucking gone?