“Bloody hell!”

Ian’s curse turned my head around. He held the new mobile he’d somehow acquired to his ear. His lips were compressed into a thin line as he listened. I couldn’t make out the words, but I thought I recognized Mencheres’s voice. It sounded as if Ian were listening to a recorded message. Then Ian suddenly hurled his phone to the ground so hard, it shattered.

“What’s wrong?” Had Dagon done something horrible to one of Ian’s friends? That would be just like him.

“Xun Guan,” Ian snarled.

I blinked. “What about her?” She wouldn’t hurt anyone . . .

Ian stomped on the remains of his phone as if he hadn’t already destroyed it enough. “The jealous bitch voiced so much dismay over our supposed marriage, word of it reached Mencheres. Now, he’s demanding to know what the devil is going on, and if I ignore him, we’ll have two people hunting us.”

I knew countless words in hundreds of languages, but “Oh, fuck!” was what flew out of my mouth.

Ian gave me a frustrated look. “Exactly.” Then he muttered another string of curses, ending with “Mencheres will tell Crispin, then Crispin will tell Cat, and Cat will tell everyone. Might as well start shopping for a bloody wedding band now.”

“Fuck,” I said with even more vehemence. “That means Dagon will hear about it, too!”

Ian shot me an irate glance. “As if I care what he thinks.”

His sharp wits must have been dulled by his horror over being outed as a supposedly married man. “Dagon now knows I’m alive, but he doesn’t know what identity I’m hiding under. He does know that we’ve partnered up, so how long do you think it will take him to figure out that I’m really Veritas once he hears you’ve suddenly married a Law Guardian?”

Ian’s brows came together in the darkest of frowns. “Everything you’ve done to hide yourself—”

“Exposed,” I said, shuddering. “Just like that.” Dammit, Xun Guan! How could you?

But it wasn’t her fault. I shouldn’t have let Xun Guan get close enough to me to hurt her this way. I’d known her feelings were deep, and I’d still sought comfort in her arms from time to time. Like Ian, she’d also sensed that I’d been holding back, both in bed and out of it. But I’d never dropped my guard with her. My refusal had hurt Xun Guan deeply, as had my disavowal of serious relationships. Now, my supposed about-face by marrying a virtual stranger must have been too much for her. I had only myself to blame for her talking to others about her pain.

Still, all the people I needed to get justice for didn’t deserve to have Dagon beat me because of this. Ian didn’t, either, and he needed me to ensure his victory. The clock might be winding down on my alias, but the game wasn’t over yet.

“We’ll deal with Mencheres by playing the happy couple, then we’ll have to move fast to kill Dagon.”

“How?” Ian asked bluntly. “Even if we could fool Mencheres into believing our marriage was genuine albeit supremely idiotic, our plans for Dagon required time. We don’t have that now.”

“I know!” My brain ached from all the ideas I thought up and immediately discarded. My distress must have been palpable, because Silver whined and pressed himself against my leg. I bent to pet him while trying to figure out how we could compress our original, elaborate plan into a much speedier version.

Ian knelt next to me. “Didn’t mean to snap at you. None of this is your fault.”

“No?” I said, with a humorless laugh. “It’s not one of your ex-lovers that blew our plans all to hell.”

“Could’ve been,” he said, flashing me a sudden grin. “Statistically, it should have been. Despite your vast age, you’ve probably limited yourself to a mere four or five lovers a year. I’ve frequently gone through that number in a single night, so my exes doubtless outnumber yours.”

Since he’d vastly overestimated my lovers, he was right. “I do remember what you were doing when I found you,” I said.

“Eh, that.” Ian’s wave dismissed the carnival-themed orgy. “Wasn’t even really enjoying myself.”

“I agree. You looked more miserable than anything else.”

His brows went up. “‘Miserable’ might be stretching it . . .”

I sighed. “Come on, Ian. You thought you only had a hundred weeks to live. You chose to spend that time not with your friends, or members of your line, or even strangers who found you attractive. Instead, you spent it with people you paid to be there. That had to be horribly lonely, making that orgy only a few steps up from self-flagellating on the misery scale.”

A sardonic smile twisted his mouth. “How like you to ignore the surface and see what’s beneath. Most people don’t bother. You’re wrong about one thing, though. Being with my friends would have been more miserable. Then, I’d have to think about how much I’d miss them. Still, with time running short, I did want more memories of what it felt like to have people touch me without meaning me harm. Knew it would be some of the last I’d get since I had less than two years before Dagon came to collect my soul. ’Course, the orgy only served to make me feel more alone. May as well have been slamming doors in an empty house just to pretend the noises they made were other people’s voices.”

I touched his face. “I know what it’s like to medicate pain in unhealthy ways. I sometimes get judgy and forget that, but when I was recovering from my worst trauma, I did things that don’t give me room to criticize you or anyone else.”

He covered the hand I held to his face with his own. “Perhaps one day, you’ll tell me about your worst trauma.”

I glanced away, catching a glimpse of his sardonic smile again before he dropped his hand. At once, I missed his touch, but I was still unable to open up the way he wanted me to.

“So, Xun Guan’s actions aren’t your fault,” he said, going back to his original point. Silver picked up on my inner turmoil. He whined again, rubbing his head against me. I fluffed the feathers near his wings, then paused when I felt something bumpy. Then I plunged my fingers deeper to see what it was.

The bumps were scars. Anger burned through me. I couldn’t imagine the damage Dagon must have done to leave permanent scars on a creature that healed nearly as well as I did. Thank all the gods that the Nordic vampire had been loose-lipped. If not for him telling me about Dagon’s blood-tracking spell, Silver would be back in the cruelest of captivities, all so Dagon could profit from a creature that was created to be cherished—

“Silver!” I cried out, leaping up in excitement.

That startled the Simagyl so much, he flew back until his new leash stopped him. I began to soothe him at once, all while Ian eyed me as if I’d lost my mind.

“I’m not crazy,” I announced, then laughed when the couple nearest us overheard that and did a double-take. Yes, I suppose that was hardly a ringing endorsement of anyone’s sanity. “I know how we can bring Dagon to us as soon as we want.”

“Cut off your warding spell on my brands,” Ian replied.

I waved at his crotch. “Not that, though that would do it, too. Still, then Dagon would know it was a trap since you’d never accidentally do that. But if I let the blocking spell on Silver’s blood dissipate, Dagon will be able to trace him again. He knows Silver’s with us, and Dagon’s arrogant enough to believe his magic poked a hole through my spell. If Dagon thinks he overpowered my magic, he shouldn’t expect a trap.”