When someone screams, she shivers—but not from fear.
Vincent appears at my elbow. "The situation is handled. The man who bought the information is dead. What do you want to do with her?" He indicates the crying woman.
"Public punishment," I decide. "Let everyone see what happens to those who betray me."
"Here? Now?"
"Why not? Good entertainment for our guests."
I gesture to Adriel—one of my enforcers.
He knows what to do.
He forces the woman to her knees and makes her confess her betrayal loudly enough for everyone to hear.
The woman sobs hard, as if it will make a difference.
I feel nothing. Haven't felt anything in years.
Then I look up, and she's there.
Standing twenty feet away, watching me with those dark eyes.
She's more beautiful than the photographs suggested.
The fifteen-year-old girl has become a stunning woman, but it's not her beauty that stops me cold.
It's her eyes.
Dark, haunted, hungry eyes that look at Hell like she's finally come home.
Judge Deveraux's eyes, but with none of his righteousness.
These eyes have seen death and been transformed by it.
Transformed byme.
She walks toward me with no hesitation, drawn by something she doesn't understand.
She has no idea who I am.
The monster she's seeking is the one who created her need for monsters.
The irony is so perfect it's almost poetic.
When she stops in front of me, close enough that I can smell her perfume—something expensive with dark notes of amber and something else, something that reminds me of gunpowder—I have to control my expression carefully.
"You don't belong here," I tell her, testing.
"Everyone keeps saying that."
Her voice.
Fuck.
Smoky and dark, nothing like the screaming teenager from the news footage eight years ago.
This voice was made for begging, for crying my name, for breaking apart under my hands.
