Mal, free of the beast, flew past them toward Tatiana.

Maris’s eyes fluttered open and she smiled weakly. ‘Too late, my darling child. I’m sorry it’s come to this. I made Tatiana promise to leave you alone if I helped her break the covenant.’

‘Shh. We’ll have time to talk when we’re on Dominic’s plane back to Paradise City.’ Tears burned Chrysabelle’s eyes. Maris could not die. She could not.

‘No, let me. I have much to say and no time to say it.’ Her cold hand rested on Chrysabelle’s wrist. ‘You are not my niece—’

‘That’s never stopped me from loving—’

‘You are my daughter.’

Shock stilled Chrysabelle. ‘What? How can you know that?’ Comarré births were shrouded in secret. Mothers didn’t even know the sex of the children they birthed. A hundred questions bounced through Chrysabelle’s head, blocking out the clash of weapons and words erupting around them.

‘Ask Velimai for my journals.’

‘If you knew, why did you leave?’ Chrysabelle held Maris tighter, willing life into her, praying some miracle would keep her alive. Holy mother, let her live. Please. I need her. She’s my mother. My mother.

Tears spilled from Maris’s lids. ‘I wanted a better life for you. A life outside this world, but … ’ Her voice faded, her breath coming in shallow gasps. ‘I made a mistake. I didn’t know it would turn out the way it did.’

‘What would turn out the way it did?’ Silent tears trailed down Chrysabelle’s cheeks. Her heart ached. Her mother. All these years of not knowing—

‘Algernon.’ Her hand slipped from Chrysabelle’s wrist. ‘Forgive me.’

‘There’s nothing to forgive.’ Maris had nothing to do with Algernon becoming Chrysabelle’s patron, but if talking kept her from dying, Chrysabelle would talk for as long as it took to get help. ‘Algernon was a good patron. Kind, considerate—’

‘The Century Ball. I was there … to bring you home.’ Maris’s eyes slipped shut. ‘He refused your freedom.’

‘Don’t,’ Chrysabelle pleaded. The word snagged in her throat.

‘So I killed him,’ she breathed. Her head lolled back, her voice a dying whisper. ‘To free you when he wouldn’t.’

The pulse beneath Chrysabelle’s fingers disappeared.

Chapter Thirty-four

The burst of power locked Mal’s voices down hard and fast, shoving their ever-present hum into the recesses of his mind and locking the beast back in its dark cage. He shook his head, blinking to clear the black haze clouding his vision.

The sight before him wasn’t any better. Pandemonium ruled the room. Two fringe guards leaped to their feet and leveled their swords at him. ‘Move and you die,’ one snarled.

He almost laughed until he saw Chrysabelle crumpled on the floor a short distance away. She held her aunt in her arms while trying to staunch the flow of blood from a gash in Maris’s neck. It was a losing cause. The woman’s heartbeat slowed with each passing second as her life ebbed. Behind them, Sha— Tatiana, blood smeared across her mouth, unsheathed a stiletto and took aim.

Anger fueled his speed. He cracked the guards’ heads together and dropped their bodies to the floor. A second later, he pinned Tatiana to the table behind her by her lying throat. ‘Not so fast.’ Her pulse hammered his palm, her smooth skin as warm as the last time he’d bedded her. Life thrummed within her. Life she’d gained from Maris’s blood.

‘You’re not mad about that little dungeon incident, are you, lover?’ She laughed, sweet and coy, tipping her head back. A gold locket slipped into the hollow of her throat. The locket he’d given her with the portrait of Sofia inside.

Could it be the same one? He’d spent a fortune on that trinket, but he’d loved her then. That time was gone. ‘Undo the curse and we’ll talk about that.’

‘I have nothing to say to you. Except that you should have withered up and died down there.’ She swiped at him, slicing the stiletto toward his face and catching his forehead.

Blood trickled into his eye, but already he felt the wound knitting closed, the sting fading. He grabbed both her wrists, immobilizing them against the table. ‘Then I’ll have to kill you and see if that removes the curse.’

‘It won’t,’ Mikkel answered. Across the room, he pushed a blade up under Fi’s chin. A thin line of red oozed down her pale skin. ‘But if you kill her, the kine dies too.’

One of Fi’s eyes was swollen shut, the bruise surrounding it melding into another on her cheek. She smiled bravely. ‘Stake her, Mal. For me.’

‘No,’ Doc yelled. He strained against the shackles and the guards holding him on either side. The muscles in his neck corded with the effort. He hadn’t shifted even slightly. Those restraints must be silver-lined.

Maris’s heartbeat went silent. Chrysabelle shuddered, exhaling a soft sob as she clutched her aunt to her. The guilt and sorrow flooding the comarré’s soul was a palpable thing.

New rage burned in Mal’s gut. He summoned a little of the beast’s darkness into his eyes and stared Mikkel down. ‘Kill her and you both die.’

‘Go ahead and try it.’ Tatiana laughed. ‘But if you fail, I’m going to drain your little blood whore dry.’ She shimmered and suddenly he was holding Chrysabelle prisoner. Somehow Tatiana had become Chrysabelle. She winked at him. ‘I see how you look at her. How you crave her.’