Was it any wonder that she had so keenly felt its absence ever since, even without knowing what it was she’d missed?

Slowly, she opened her eyes. The past vanished, and there was nothing but Sam, just as he had always been. Strong. Solid. Real. He lifted his hand to her face again, this time to wipe away the tears she hadn’t realized were streaming down her cheeks. There was pain in Sam’s eyes, the first she had ever seen there.

“I am sorry, Ariane.”

“For saving me?” she asked as her tears flowed freely for the first time in this life.

“No,” Sam said. “For all your loss. I gave you new life, a new name, but I could give back nothing you really needed. I think… I had grown lonely. I’m so very much older than you know. To be in the world and never of it wears on a soul, even one as endless as mine.”

She smiled despite the tears, gave his hand a small squeeze. Finally, she thought she understood.

“No,” she said. “No apologies. You did the best you could with what you had, Sam. It was more than enough. I’m glad you found me. I’m glad it was you.”

His smile was warm and full of the love she knew was there even if he might never be able to use the word.

And now she realized why he had called for her. He needed her help.

“Tell me what I need to do,” Ariane said. “Whatever you need, I want to help set things right.”

Sam’s relief was palpable. “Thank you, Ariane. Lucan sleeps too deeply. I don’t know if he will wake again. If he does, it won’t be in time. I don’t want to risk you, but you have the strength, and I have no choice. The longer our kind hides Chaos, the deeper the rot he creates. It took me too long to see it. What we have done—all the souls we have given him to keep him just sated enough, sleeping—it poisons us, until we are not his keepers but his agents. Unless things change, the Grigori will not prevent the Rising. We will enable it.”

“So we start with Sariel,” Ariane said. She thought of the big, unyielding warrior and hoped Sam had a very, very good plan.

“You will expose him to the others. And I will try to sway the rest of the ancients in his absence. This Council meeting provides an opportunity I had barely hoped to have.”

She stared at him. “You want me to tell the leaders what he’s done? Why would they listen? I’m no dynasty leader. And he’ll be right there!”

“You are far safer in the midst of the strength of the dynasty heads. I won’t pretend there is no danger, Ariane. But if there is any way to destroy Chaos—and even now, I don’t know if it’s possible—it will take the combined strength of the dynasties. Sariel will never allow even an attempt at that. Chaos whispers to him, as he does to all of us when we are near him. I don’t know how long Sariel has been listening. All I know is that Chaos’s hunger has grown, and there has been no attempt to check it. Sariel is not himself.” He sighed. “But then, he was closest to Chaos before he fell. When he was one of us. Perhaps he mocked my weakness because he feared his own.”

“One of us?” Ariane asked.

“Chaos was an ancient once. He was Grigori. He is our brother.”

Stunned into silence, Ariane watched Sam sink back into the pillows, weakening before her eyes. They had been talking for some time, she realized… longer, probably, than he should have. She now knew that a wounded wing was a graver injury than it appeared. And if he—if they—were going to have any chance at pulling the Grigori’s dark secret out into the light without Sariel stopping them first, she needed to let him sleep. There were some things that only the deepest sleep could heal.

“Rest now,” Ariane said gently. “We’ve talked enough. Everything else can wait for tomorrow.”

She had a great deal to think about, to plan. And, she realized with a sudden pang, she would have to find a way to tell Damien.

He inclined his head faintly. “Yes. I believe… that is best.” His eyes began to slip shut. “We’ll have to make preparations… tomorrow night…”

His voice faded away as his eyes closed completely. Ariane sat on the bed beside him, watching each slow breath. For so long, every day had been the same. And then she’d left, and it had been one change after another. Finding a place. Friends. Damien…

And now this. She’d spent centuries waiting for a chance to prove herself, to matter. It didn’t get much more important than removing her dynasty’s leader in order to take on a chained up, soul-eating demon that he happened to be related to.

With Sam behind her, she felt almost no hesitation. Except…

Ariane sighed and rose from the bed, walking toward one of the tall windows. There was no moon tonight, but the dark sky drew her nonetheless.

Even with everything Sam had revealed, her thoughts kept returning to Damien. What he would think? How he would feel? Maybe he would be relieved that she’d found something to do with herself that didn’t involve him. Maybe he would be happy to get back to his life, to be free.

Or maybe… he would care enough to stay?

By the darkened window, Ariane finally let herself wish it, finally accepted that the one thing she really wanted, even when presented with a world full of wondrous options, was simply to have Damien by her side. He was ridiculously imperfect and would probably never behave himself. He might never want a home beyond his rarely visited apartment. He might not even want her.

None of it mattered to her but the last.

Because she loved him.

The truth, so simple, shook her to the core. And it terrified her as nothing ever had, not even that final leap into the desert sky. Damien was damaged and difficult and scarred. But he had brought a color and life to her existence unlike anything she’d known before. He professed to be a liar, but with her, he had been brutally honest about his strengths and his flaws. More, he accepted her own.

Behind the shield he carried, Damien was warm, funny, surprisingly loyal… and lonely.

She understood what loneliness could do.

Ariane wrapped her arms around herself and shivered, though the night was warm. So much to think about, and so little time. She needed to find the right words before she went to Damien.

But right now, words failed.

All she had was the truth: Come with me. Don’t leave me. I love you.

And the lingering fear, in the deepest part of her soul, that no matter how much she’d gained, nothing she could offer would ever be quite enough.

Chapter Twenty

HE WASN’T GOING to look for her.

She’d gotten what she was after. Her large and frightening friend was safe, she was in a place where further attacks by Grigori hunters were unlikely, and from the look of things, she would soon have plenty more problems to contend with to keep her busy. Grigori problems, highblood problems… not his.

And yet as the night drew closer to morning and the vampires of the manor retired to their respective quarters to relax, Damien couldn’t seem to settle himself. Finally, rising from a comfortable chair in an uncomfortably empty room with a muttered curse, he set off to find Ariane.

He refused to let himself be disturbed by the fact that he knew, almost at once, that she wasn’t in the house at all. So what if he’d gotten used to her scent, the very feel of her presence? They’d been together a lot. And besides, it wasn’t unusual to want to think out in the open air. He did it often himself.

Within moments of stepping outside and shifting into a large, sleek cat, he’d nosed her out. She hadn’t gone far. Damien reached her quickly, moving fast and silent on four feet until she came into view, hidden in the peaceful silence of the local graveyard.

He hadn’t intended to lurk, but when he saw her, Damien had to stop, just for a moment, to drink in the picture she presented.

Ariane was perched atop a massive old marble headstone, her knees drawn into her chest, wings draping down behind her. To human eyes, she would have appeared just a part of the stone. But Damien could smell her, could see the shimmer of her pale hair in the darkness. He crouched beneath a tree nearby, blending with shadow as he watched her.

She looked incredibly beautiful… and so lost. As he thought it, Damien felt an unfamiliar ache somewhere in the vicinity of the place his heart should be. Whatever had passed between her and Sammael, it hadn’t been the happy reunion she’d wanted. She’d gotten what she thought she wanted… and it hadn’t been what she hoped.

He knew the feeling so very well. Had been the cause of that feeling more times than he could fathom.

But not tonight. She’d had quite enough disappointment for one evening.

Damien slunk from beneath the tree, padding over to stand before the stone and look up at her.

Ariane’s eyes gave off a faint violet glow in the darkness as she stared into the distance. She had her arms wrapped around her knees, making her look both young and vulnerable. It gave him a jolt to realize she had been crying.

It was only then that Damien hesitated, suddenly uncertain. He’d never seen Ariane cry. He bloody hated crying. Normally he would have turned tail and run in the other direction, but something held him in place: the strange but undeniable impulse to soothe her. She was being so quiet about it, almost a part of the stone except for the silent tears that slipped down her cheeks.

Instead of disgust, he felt something far more unsettling. Doubt.

What if he was intruding? What if she didn’t want him here? She hadn’t come to him, after all… not that he blamed her, and gods knew he wasn’t a nursemaid, but still…

“Oh!”

He pinned his ears back, surprised at the sudden sound that escaped her. He had a flash of worry that she wouldn’t know it was him—he’d showed off his skill in passing one night in Chicago, but it hadn’t been for any length of time—but he saw Ariane recognized him immediately. She wiped at her eyes, and even in the dark he could see her blush.

“Sorry. I was just, um… yeah.” She laughed, but it was a sad sound. “So much for Grigori not being able to feel things, I guess. Now you know the truth. We can cry and everything.”