The last thing Kyla Sparrow remembered before waking up in the Vampyr’s holding cell, deep beneath the ground, was the severe sentinel, with red-and-black banded hair, palming her neck like it was a miniature basketball, scooping her off the bedroom floor, and dragging her away like so much garbage, as her knees buckled beneath her and she vomited all over his boots.

After that, the vampires in the house of Jadon took immediate and efficient advantage of her vulnerable captivity: Ramsey Olaru and Saber Alexiares interrogated her so mercilessly she wished she could die; Nachari Silivasi—the supposed good-natured wizard—extracted her memories so brutally, she thought she’d be left a vegetable; and apparently, from what Saber had told her with a snarl, Santos had dissected her phone.

There was nothing her enemies didn’t know.

Kyla had no way out.

And Xavier, Owen, Travis, and the rest of them—well, no one had come to her rescue.

And if she thought she could rely on Saxson’s gentle heart—his patient, loving, almost antiquated sense of chivalry—then she needed to think twice: She would never forget the murderous look in the warrior-sentinel’s eyes when he had snatched her by the hair, hauled her off the floor, and slammed her against the wall of Nachari and Deanna’s guest bedroom, threatening to cut out her tongue if she lied just one more time. Whatever love or devotion he had felt for Kyla, it was long, long gone.

Beyond that, he had taken her memories, right then and there, going back to the night of his Blood Moon. He had discovered perfect, talented Kiera, and according to Saber—the hard-hearted serial killer in training—Saxson had already claimed Kiera since then. So, that meant Kyla’s twin was in Dark Moon Vale…

With Saxson.

Kyla sighed, running a grungy hand through her equally mangy, oily, and dirty hair, looking down at her tattered red dress. The bastards had not even allowed her a shower or a change of clothes over the last five days—how barbaric was that!

They had barely even fed her.

The outer door to the guard room opened, and Ramsey Olaru rose from his perch behind the desk, reached for a set of heavy iron keys hanging on a rusted hook, and handed them to…

Saxson.

Oh, shit.

The vampire prowled noiselessly across the guard-room floor, approaching Kyla’s cage. He glanced absently at the two small windows at the top of the cell, beyond the bars, seeming to watch the moonlight dance in an arc along the diamond-embedded stone-and-mortar floor. His gorgeous mouth turned back in a snarl. “Just one question before you meet with your sister—she’s waiting outside that door.” He gestured toward the outer door of the watch room. “What did you hope to accomplish, Kyla? You had to know a pregnancy would kill you. You had to know that, at some point, I would be forced to violate your privacy and take your memories—how did you think this whole scenario was going to play out?” His luminous hazel eyes flashed dark with shadows.

Kyla rose from her cot, raised her jaw, and squared her shoulders to Saxson. “I had hoped you would die at the end of the thirty days.” She didn’t even blink as she spoke. “And I had hoped I could take another vampire with you.”

There.

How’d he like them apples?

Saxson Olaru chuckled, although the sound was absent of mirth. “I see,” he drawled in a chilling tone. “You just wanted to kill a vampire—any vampire—and you didn’t care if the victim was an innocent child. Every moment we spent together was just another part of your plot.”

Kyla smirked.

There was no need to reply.

At least not to those statements…

There was something else, far more sinister, she wanted to point out—something that would plague his chivalrous heart with guilt for the rest of his immortal days, even if Kyla was no longer around. “Fucked Kiera yet?” she blurted crudely. “How was it?” She laughed out loud. “Did my twin enjoy my sloppy seconds? Is she as tight as me? I’ve always wondered, you know.”

Saxson drew closer to the bars. “Now that was crass, even for a skank like you.”

Her stomach knotted, but she held her ground. “Maybe, but I’m not the one who has to live with the knowledge that he screwed his destiny’s sister—over and over. I wonder if you’ll tell her the truth.”

This time, it was Saxson who smirked. He jangled the keys in his hand, strolled to the heavy iron door, and unlocked the cage—apparently, there were too many diamonds embedded in the bars, plus the six-feet-thick walls, for the vampire to just pass through them. When he dropped the keys on the ground and his fangs extended from his gums, Kyla took several steps back.

He was in front of her in an instant.

He hoisted her off the ground by her neck and brought their noses together. “I never once touched you, not like that,” he growled.

All of a sudden, a wave of violent memories crashed into Kyla’s skull like a hurricane slamming onto the shores of a once-peaceful beach: Saxson Olaru playing with Kyla’s mind; Saxson Olaru pretending to enter her body; Saxson Olaru rolling his hips to the side to avoid making intimate contact with the human female as Kyla bucked, and writhed, and climaxed—alone—beneath him. “Why?” she gritted through clenched teeth, straining her restricted airway.

He slowly shook his head. “I just couldn’t stomach the thought of being inside you—had no idea why. Now we know.”

She stiffened in defiance and anger. “Screw you! At least you showed me your secret garden first, after all those centuries of waiting—you couldn’t have faked that. You didn’t fake that.”

“No,” Saxson answered. “I didn’t fake that. But I did make love to your sister, for real, in our garden, so the memory with Kiera will always be…stronger.” He smiled sardonically. “There is one secret, however, that you and I will always share—maybe it can serve as consolation.” His voice dropped down to a silken, soulless purr. “Ciopori Demir is going to make you scream in agony, and I am going to stand back and watch. But no, I will never tell your sister what your agonized screams sounded like, how much pain you endured…that will be our little secret.” With that, he tossed her across the cell, onto the cot, picked up the keys, and turned to leave. On his way out the door, he spared her a glance. “Kiera…my destiny…will be here momentarily, standing right on the other side of these bars. And I swear to you, on the life of my king, if you even so much as think about approaching your sister, trying to harm a single hair on her head, you won’t have to worry about the sentinel only a few feet behind her. I will rip every strand of hair from your scalp, one lock at a time; I will chain you to the ceiling of this cell and lower your body into a vat of acid, one body part after the other, but not before I cut out that lying tongue, slowly, with a pair of fingernail clippers.” He shrugged his shoulders absently and added, “Kind of makes you wonder what the princess has in mind, doesn’t it?”

The moonlight vanished from the rock-strewn floor, as if retreating with the hardened sentinel, and Saxson’s mood suddenly shifted. He cast his eyes downward, and softened his voice. “For what it’s worth, Kyla, I want you to know something: If you had just left the child alone…if you could find it in your damaged heart to somehow behave civilly toward your twin…if you could apologize and sound earnest—even if the entire performance was a lie—I would scrub your mind and let you live. At the least, I would ask the princess to kill you quickly…painlessly. Not for you, and not out of any sense of nostalgia, but for your sister’s peace of mind. For Kiera’s well-being. To spare the woman I love any further grief.” He shook his head sadly. “But Blood Vengeance is one of the most sacred claims any vampire in the house of Jadon can make—not even the king can save you now. I hope the attempt on the child’s life was worth it.”

Having spoken his piece, he handed the keys back to Ramsey, strolled out the guard-room door, and ushered his destiny inside.

* * *

Kiera passed Saxson on his way out the door.

She didn’t dare stop to question him about his visit, lest she lose her nerve and flee.

Give up on the whole confrontation.

As it stood, it was going to require every ounce of courage and determination she possessed…just to face her sister…her tormentor.

The woman who had handed her over to monsters.

She wrung her hands together, drew back her shoulders, and strolled purposely toward the six-foot-five, muscle-bound sentinel guarding the daunting cage. “I’m Kiera,” she whispered, extending a quaking right hand

The stalwart vampire clasped her hand firmly, but to his credit, he shook it softly. “Ramsey Olaru. Saxson’s twin.” He observed her with a keen, analytical gaze, almost as if he wanted to read every secret hidden in her DNA, to understand his brother’s destiny in an instant. “You okay?” He spoke to her in an intimate tone, protective, just like a big brother. “You ready to do this?”

Kiera cast her eyes to the side. “Not really, but it needs to be done.”

Ramsey placed a reassuring hand on her shoulder and squeezed it gently. “I’ll be right here, Kiera. Just say the word, and the conversation ends. If you want Saxson in here with you, it’s not too late—”

“No. No,” Kiera interrupted, “I don’t want Saxson with me, not for this. I need to face my sister…alone.” She chuckled half-heartedly and gestured toward Ramsey as if to say, Well, not completely alone—you’re here.

His smile was gracious and beguiling. “I knew what you meant.”

Unwilling to tarry any longer, Kiera turned on her heels, took five long strides, and approached the heavy iron bars. She blinked at the paradoxical visage: brutish iron rods infused with countless dazzling diamonds, a prison built to contain supernatural creatures. Or, in this case, humans without a soul.

“Kyla…” Her sister looked like crap.

Kyla tensed on the narrow cot, her spine stiffening and her chin raising, but she didn’t turn around. She kept her back turned to Kiera. “What the hell do you want, sister?”

Kiera took a slow, deep breath. Do not lose your cool, she told herself. Say what you came to say, then leave. “I wanted to see you one last time,” she murmured, wishing her words had more strength. “I wanted to say good-bye.”

Kyla grew unnaturally still, but she didn’t utter a word.

Kiera pressed on. “Your friends Owen, Travis, and that Head-Hunter, Xavier—oh, by the way, Xavier isn’t a monster-hunter; he’s a monster, himself, a lycan. A werewolf. Just thought you’d like to know.”

Kyla jolted in surprise, her head spinning around to stare incredulously at Kiera. She quickly regained her composure and turned away again, but not before Kiera saw her trembling bottom lip.

“Your friends,” she repeated, “they experimented on me in an old, rusty barn; they strapped me to a stainless-steel table and carved insignias all over my body; and they tried to…wanted to…rape me, three of them at the same time.” Her voice began to quaver, and she had to pause to steady her nerves. “I would like to know what I could have possibly done to you, in all our twenty-eight years of living, that would have justified what you just did…to me.”

Kiera thought she heard Kyla sniffle, but she couldn’t be sure. Her sister’s cocky posture diminished slightly as her chin slanted downward; and that, apparently, was all the remorse or regret Kyla was going to show.

Kiera nodded, absorbing the silence, forcing her tears to remain at bay. “I see.” She cleared her throat and wrapped a trembling hand against an iron bar to maintain her balance. “Um…I want you to know that I’m not going to tell Mom and Dad anything—not ever. They will never know what happened to me, and they will never know what happened to you. I imagine, at first, they will just presume that you disappeared, as you so often do, and as the months…and years…pass, they’ll assume you finally went away for good, or maybe you got into some kind of trouble that you couldn’t get out of. It’s going to break their hearts, but I will do my level best to shower them with joy and memories and grandchildren to love…to make up for your loss.”

Kyla’s shoulders began to tremble, so maybe she did have at least the remnants of a soul…

“I also want you to know that you could’ve broken me—you could’ve destroyed me. What happened in that warehouse with Owen and Xavier; what happened in the days following Saxson’s Blood Moon: I’m surprised it didn’t ruin me, but it didn’t. At the end of the day, I found my soul mate, my other half, the true twin…of my soul. He is honorable, he is generous, and I think he will love me more than any human being ever could. I am going to live a life of laughter, love, and abundance, and I am going to cherish it…forever. So that’s what you ultimately did, Kyla. You sent me to hell, and I found my heaven. You didn’t win, sister. Not even close.” She released the bar and backed away, about to turn around, when Kyla finally rose from the cot and approached her.

She stopped several feet in front of the bars, as if she were too terrified to come any closer. “Kiera…” Her voice was a broken refrain. “For whatever it’s worth, I never meant to hurt you. Torturing you was not the end goal. You were just…you have always been too fragile to survive a storm, and in this instance…this storm…you were just collateral damage. That’s all, Kiera.”

Kiera staggered backward.

Collateral damage.

She had been her twin sister’s collateral damage…

Ramsey Olaru was there in an instant, spinning her around by the shoulders, enfolding her in his massive, strong arms, and cradling her head against his warrior’s chest. “Broken people have nothing but broken promises—and ruin—to give,” he whispered. “Squeeze a lemon, and you’ll always get lemon juice, never lime juice or papaya.” He snickered quietly at the random comparison. “That female couldn’t honor you—or anyone else—because she never loved herself.” He rocked Kiera gently, like a fragile child, as she wept into his shoulder, and then he murmured softly in her ear, “It’s okay. You’re going to be okay. You’re a warrior, Kiera.”

Although Kiera had just met the intimidating sentinel, his voice and his arms felt like an extension of home. Finally, when she was all cried out, she turned to approach the cage…one last time.

Chuckling softly beneath her breath, she whispered, “You know, the funny thing about twins is that even when they’re as different as day is from night, they still have some uncanny similarities. I’ve always recited quotes when I needed strength—or to spur myself on. You have, too—I’ve heard you.” She swallowed her pain and trepidation, angled her jaw, and projected her voice. “Fate whispers to the warrior: You cannot withstand the storm. And the warrior whispers back: I am the storm.” She stepped away from the bars and headed toward the guard-room door. “Good-bye, Kyla.”

This time, it was Kiera who did not turn around.