The beast stretched about five feet ten inches on the shiny metal surface of the autopsy table. Fine brown hair, more like the coat of a horse than the fur of a dog, sheathed it. It thickened on the backs of its arms and at its crotch. Hard, ropy muscle wrapped its skeleton. It was likely incredibly strong, Hugh decided. Elongated digits, both toes and fingers, were sturdy and tipped with triangular, hook-like claws. No tail. Big ears with tufts of fur on the ends.

The face was a nightmarish mess. The eyes, human enough in shape, were unnaturally large, almost owl-like, surrounded by deep wrinkles, as if they pushed aside the flesh around them to make room. A short snout replaced the nose. Its upper lip split like that of a cat or a dog. The mouth slashed across its face, too wide to be human. Surgical clamps pulled the lips open on the right side, displaying long, conical fangs.

Next to Hugh, Felix grimaced. Hugh glanced at him. Felix waved his hand in front of his face. The stench. Right. The bitter harsh scent had to be hell on the shapeshifter nose. Bale, on the other hand, appeared to be completely unbothered. He had taken these two with him. Stoyan and Lamar manned the wall.

Elara had brought Savannah, Dugas, and Johanna. They stood on the other side of the table. The head witch wrinkled her face in disgust. Dugas appeared thoughtful.

They were in a large laboratory in the basement of the main tower. Three groups of people clustered around three tables. The first table, where he stood, supported the autopsied body of a beast, the second offered a similarly cut open warrior, and the third, where the smiths quietly argued with each other, held pieces of the warrior’s armor.

Hugh had to give it to Elara. Her people were efficient and well-trained, and their work spaces were always in good order, no matter if it was a pottery shop or an infirmary room.

The coroner, an older man with brown skin and sharp dark eyes, folded his hands together.

“It used to be human,” the coroner said.

Elara raised her hands and signed for Johanna.

Hugh examined the internal organs. Heart, liver, lungs. All the usual suspects. Some of the organs were deformed, but still appeared functional.

“How to explain this,” the coroner began, clearly trying to come up with a dumbed-down version. “Umm. Well, to simplify…”

“The orthograde spine,” Hugh told him. “None of the other bipedal vertebrates show the same adaptation. Penguins stand erect, but their biomechanics are completely different. The other upright vertebrates, ostriches, kangaroos, and so on, do not exhibit an orthograde spine during locomotion. The S curve of the spine with lumbar lordosis is unique to humans. Other primates show a C curve.”

He moved his hand to indicate the hip. “The examination of the femur head will likely indicate large femur size and valgus angle typical to humans.” He moved his hand further to the foot. “Evidence of longitudinal arches. Even though there is hallux opposability, the structure of the foot indicates adaptation to bipedal locomotion. There is no reason for a predatory simian animal to exhibit these characteristics.”

Silence fell.

“He’s a healer, Saladin,” Elara said quietly, then signed it.

“Well, this simplifies things,” Saladin said.

“Hallux whatchamacall it?” Bale asked.

“Opposable big toe,” Saladin translated. “Like in an ape.”

“They’re good climbers,” Dugas said.

Felix leaned forward, examining the feet. “And good runners. Calluses.”

“So they’re like cave people,” Bale said.

Everyone looked at him.

“Hairy, strong, stupid. Troglodytes.” Bale looked around. “What? We have to call them something.”

He was right.

Johanna finger-spelled something he didn’t catch. Hugh turned to Elara. “What did she say?”

Johanna stomped her foot and moved her fingers slowly.

“Mrogs?” he asked.

Elara grimaced. “Yes.”

“What’s a mrog?” Stoyan asked.

“A scary magic monster who lives in darkness,” Dugas said. “It’s a story we tell children to warn them away from dangerous magic they don’t understand. Most children have an instinct when it comes to magic. They know when things don’t feel right. Those who don’t listen to that instinct know that mrogs are waiting in the darkness for those who cross the line.”

“It fits,” Hugh said. “Mrogs it is.”

“What about those armored assholes?” Bale asked.

“Mrog masters?” Dugas suggested.

“Mrog soldiers,” Elara said.

“Whatever was done to this… um… mrog was done in childhood,” Saladin said. “There is no evidence of undeath or atrophy typical of vampires. But the abnormalities in the organs are severe enough that a normal human wouldn’t survive the transformation unless it was a gradual process that took place when the body’s healing was still at its highest. Unless we’re dealing with some sort of regenerative virus like Lyc-V.”

The Lycos Virus was responsible for existence of shapeshifters and came with fun side effects. It also left irrefutable evidence of its presence in a human body.

“Is there any evidence of past regeneration?” Elara asked. “Bands of new tissue on the bones? New teeth?”

“Not in the three we opened up so far. I’ll let you know if we find it.”

“Do you have protocol for handling vampires?” Hugh asked.

Saladin looked offended. “Yes.”

“Keep to that protocol for them until we know they’re not going to regenerate and rise.”

“We’re not amateurs,” Saladin said.

“If I thought you were, I’d put my people here to stand guard.”

Felix walked over and stared at the mrog’s face.

“Yes?” Hugh asked.

“Bigger eyes, longer nose, bigger ears,” Felix said.

“Every sense pushed into overdrive,” Elara murmured.

“Predators,” Savannah said.

Tame predators, like dogs. Trained to do what their masters told them.

“Anything else?” Hugh asked.

Saladin shook his head. “When the magic is up, maybe we can learn more.”

“Let’s see the human,” Elara said.

They moved to the second table. A large man lay on the steel surface, butterflied, his insides exposed for everyone to view. Geometric tattoos covered his skin, but only on the left side. An Indian woman in her late thirties stood next to him, holding up gloved hands. He’d met her before, Hugh remembered. Her name was Preethika Manohari and she ran the pediatric clinic in the settlement.

“He’s human,” she said. “His heart is about 25% larger than average. The lungs are larger as well. Nothing outside of the realm of human norm, but with those hearts they can pump much larger volumes of blood and their VO2 max, the maximum amount of oxygen the lungs can intake, is much greater. The other two are the same.”

“So they’re stronger?” Bale asked.

“They have high endurance,” Preethika told him. “Some of this is genetic, some of it is training. Look here.” She picked up the man’s right hand and held it up. “Calluses from sword use. Scars here and here.” She traced the thin lines of old scars. “All done by a bladed weapon. Except here, looks like an acid burn. The scars are of different ages.”

“A veteran,” Hugh said.

She nodded. “Same story with the other two. These men fought for years. But there is something I don’t see.”

“Bullet wounds,” Dugas said.

“Yes. All three of them are in their thirties and professional soldiers. Most men of that age who are professional soldiers have been shot at. It’s possible that these three were lucky. Some other interesting things.” Preethika used forceps to lift the man’s upper lip. “No evidence of dental work in any of them. Their wisdom teeth are still there. No surgical scars. No inoculation scars. No piercings. Then there are their tattoos. Most people with tattoos tend to choose at least one or two for cultural reference. A tattoo must mean something to the owner. There are no modern cultural reference tattoos on these men.”

She stepped aside, and a man in his forties stepped forward. He was white, with a head full of reddish curly hair, a sparse beard, and light-blue eyes behind silver-rimmed glasses. He looked out of place in here, as if an English professor had wandered into the autopsy by accident.

“This is Leonard,” Elara said. “Our head druid scholar. I asked him to look at the tattoos because they look vaguely Celtic to me.”

Leonard nodded. “Most of these are unfamiliar to me, but there is something interesting here.”

He pointed at a tattoo on the man’s thigh, where an ornate crescent marked the skin, points down. A thin V-shaped line crossed the crescent, the point of the V under it, as if someone had shot an arrow just under the inverted moon, and the arrow snapped in a half.

Well, now that was interesting.

“V-rod and Crescent,” Leonard said.

“They’re a long way from home,” Hugh said.

“It appears to be so,” Leonard said.

“Is it Celtic?” Elara asked.

“No. It’s Pictish.” Leonard pushed his glasses up his nose. “We don’t know too much about the Picts, and what we do know depends on who you talk to. Some people say that the Picts were the original inhabitants of Scotland, predating British Celts and distinct from other groups like Celtic Scots and Britons and Germanic Angles. Other people say that they were ethnolinguistically Celtic to begin with. There was a DNA study done before the Shift and apparently, they were similar to Spanish Basques. None of which helps us, and I do realize I’m rambling. They left behind carved stones and the V-rod and Crescent is a reoccurring motif. But I’ve never seen one this elaborate. The detail on this tattoo is remarkable. I only had a few minutes with him, so I may be able to tell you more once I go over all three bodies with a magnifying glass. So give me time and more to come.”

All of that was good, but they needed to figure out how the bond between the mrogs and humans worked.

“We need to know how they’re controlling the mrogs,” Elara said. “We need to preserve the bodies until magic.”

That’s my harpy.

“We’ll put them on ice,” Preethika promised.

“One more thing,” Leonard said. “We all agree on this: whatever was done to these people and creatures is permanent and foreign. It has a different flavor.”

“What are you trying to say?” Elara asked.

“We are positive they can only survive in our world during magic. Tech will kill them.”

“They seemed to have survived tech just fine,” Hugh said.

“It probably takes some time,” Preethika said. “An hour, maybe two. Eventually they will die, though.”

“How sure are you?” Elara asked.

“I’d bet my life on it,” Leonard said.

They moved on to the third table, where three people waited: Radion, a short, muscular black man who seemed almost as wide as he was tall; Edmund, a white man in his late fifties who looked like life ran him over and that just pissed him off; and Gwendolyn, a tall redhead with hair like honey and the kind of eyes that warned men to stay the hell out of her way. The three best smiths in the place. A chain mail helmet, two boots, and two gauntlets lay in front of them.

“You do it,” Radion told Gwendolyn.

She raised her chin. “We can’t replicate it, we don’t know how they made it, or what the hell it is made of.”

Great. “Is it steel?”

“Possibly,” Radion said.

“There’s no evidence of rust and it hasn’t been oiled, so it may be some form of stainless,” Edmund said. “It’s non-magnetic, but that doesn’t mean anything.”

“Stainless steel comes in two types, austenitic and ferritic,” Gwendolyn said. “It has to do with atomic structure. They both form a cube on the molecular level, but austenitic steel is face-centered. It’s a cube with an atom in each corner and in the center of each cube’s faces. Ferritic steel is body-centered, with an atom in each corner and one atom in the center of the cube.”

“Austenitic steel doesn’t respond to magnets,” Radion explained.

“We weighed it,” Edmund added. “It’s running too light for stainless steel.”

“But then we ground it,” Gwendolyn said. “And it sparks like steel does.”

“We also filed it,” Radion said. “It’s almost as hard as steel but it’s flexible.”

“And we dropped 45% phosphoric acid on it, and it didn’t bubble, so it’s definitely not a low-chromium steel,” Edmund finished.

Hugh fought an urge to put his hand on his face. “So it may or may not be steel?”

“Yes,” they said in unison.

“Is it metal? Can you tell me that?”

“Yes,” Radion said.

“It’s a metal alloy of some kind,” Gwendolyn said.

Fantastic. Good that we cleared that up.

“How can we know for sure?” Elara asked.

“We have to send it off to a lab in Lexington,” Edmund said. “For photoelectric flame photometry or atomic absorption spectroscopy.”

“Both,” Radion said. “We should do both.”

“I agree,” Gwendolyn said.

Here it comes. Three, two, one…

“How much will it cost?” Elara asked.

Right on cue.

The three smiths shrugged.

“Find out,” she said. “When you do, take it to the Preceptor. He will approve or deny the expense and arrange for the security for the transfer to Lexington.”

Wow. That was new. Apparently, the key to Elara’s bank account was saving children from monsters in the dark woods.

“We could bird it,” Radion said. “They’d need a very small sample. A carrier pigeon should be able to handle it.”

“We may do that,” Elara said. “Talk to the Preceptor when you have something concrete.” She turned to him.

“You have tonight with it,” he told them. “Tomorrow, as soon as our guests leave, the armor is going up on targets and we’re going to cut it and shoot it.”

The three smiths drew a collective breath. Gwendolyn paled. Radion gave him a horrified look.

“We don’t need to know how it was made,” Hugh said. “We need to know how to break it.”

“But it’s like painting over the Mona Lisa,” Gwendolyn said.

Right. Pissing off all three smiths at the same time wasn’t a good idea.

“You can keep one,” he told them. “When we figure out how to crack it, I promise you all the armor you can stand.”

“Can we have the beat-up armor after you’re done?” Gwendolyn asked.

Hugh almost sighed. “Yes.”

“Okay,” Radion said. “We can live with that.”

Elara strode down the hallway. The after-battle jitters had morphed into unease, then outright dread. Exhaustion set in, as if a massive weight rested on her shoulders and kept getting heavier and heavier.

Quick footsteps echoed behind her.

Just what she needed. Elara caught a sigh before it gave her away. She didn’t have the energy for verbal sparring right this second.

Hugh caught up with her.

“How much do you want to spend on tests?” he asked, falling in step with her. “Give me a ceiling.”

She almost pinched herself. “How badly do we need them?”

“We don’t need them at all,” he said. “We don’t have to know what the armor is made of. We need to know how to break it and we’ll find that out tomorrow. Basically, how much money do you want to spend to keep the smiths happy?”

Thinking was too difficult, and making a decision was even harder. “A thousand. Fifteen hundred at most.”

They started up the staircase.

“More than I would’ve given them,” Hugh said.

“Since when are you fiscally responsible?”

“I spend money to keep us alive.”

She almost groaned. “Please don’t start about the moat, Hugh, I can’t take it right now.”

“Begging? Not like you. What’s bothering you?” he asked.

She missed her magic. It was her shield and her weapon; she felt naked without it. She wanted it so badly, it was almost a physical pain. This was wrong, Elara reminded herself. She tried to push the need out of her mind, but it refused to leave. The stakes were too high to give in to magic cravings. If she did, it would undo her in the end.

“Fourteen,” she said, grasping at a distraction.

“Yes?”

“There were three men and fourteen mrogs. If they all had the same number of creatures, where is the fifteenth mrog?”

“Perhaps one of them only had four.”

“The man at the Old Market had five too,” she said.

Hugh’s face showed nothing, but his eyes said he wasn’t happy. She wasn’t happy with that thought either.

They came to the third floor and she turned into the hallway.

“Where are you going?”

“To check on Deidre,” she told him. “The little girl.”

“Is she alone?”

“No. Lisa is with her, and she is good with guns. Savannah got Deidre to talk. She has an aunt in Sanderville. We called her, and the family will be coming to pick her up in the next few days.”

“I’ll send an escort,” he told her.

“Thank you.”

“It’s one o’clock in the morning,” he said. “The kid is probably asleep.”

“I know. I just want to make sure she’s okay.”

He followed her. They walked together through the shadowy hallway.

It was comforting, walking like this next to him. It was like walking next to a monster, but if something jumped out at them from the shadows, he would kill it, both because it was his job and because he would enjoy it. He wasn’t carrying a sword, but it didn’t matter. At the core, Hugh d’Ambray was a predator. She understood that all too well. There were two monsters in this hallway, he was one and she was the other, both of them horrible in their own ways. The vision of blood spreading through the clear water came to her. She shivered.

“Cold?” he asked.

“No. Hugh, do you think Redhill is like the Old Market?”

“Yes.”

“Where do they take them?” She glanced at him. “They kill these people, so they have pounds and pounds of dead weight. They have to transport them out, but the shapeshifters lost their scent at the palisade. You would need vehicles or wagons to transport the people. It wouldn’t just leave a scent trail, it would leave a regular trail a mile wide.”

“Yes.”

“There is no trail. There is nothing. The people and the warriors vanished into thin air.”

“Yes.”

“Are we dealing with an elder being?”

His face was grim. “Probably.”

She almost hugged herself. Certain creatures required too much magic to survive the seesaw of magic and technology. Djinn, divine beasts, gods… They only manifested during a flare, a magical tsunami that drenched the world every seven years. The rest of the time they existed outside of reality, in the mists, in the secret caves, in the primordial darkness. A dark swell of memories rose inside her, and she crushed them before they had a chance to drag her under.

An elder being could open a portal to its realm. She had seen it firsthand during a flare. An elder being brave enough to risk appearing during a magic wave would be infinitely more dangerous. Nobody could predict tech shifts, and if the magic wave suddenly ended, the elder creature would likely die.

“We need to figure out the nature of the bond between the beasts and the handlers,” she murmured.

“Could be telepathic navigation,” Hugh said. “Would explain why the humans stood still.”

It took concentration to navigate. “But five? Most Masters of the Dead can hold what, two vampires? Three?”

“Depends on the navigator. Daniels can hold a couple hundred.”

Elara stopped and pivoted toward him. “A couple hundred?”

“She can’t do much with them, but she can hold them. There is a lot of power there, which she doesn’t use most of the time. Like you. Why do you hold back, Elara?”

Excellent time to make her escape. She pointed at the door ahead. “This is my stop.”

“Not in the talking mood?”

“Good night, Preceptor.”

He nodded, turned without a word, and strode down the hallway. He’d walked her to the door. That was almost… sweet.

The only way the Preceptor of the Iron Dogs would ever be sweet is if he were walking her into a trap. Elara turned around, peering at the shadows, half-expecting something to leap out at her.

Nothing. The soft gloom of the hallway was empty. The man had her paranoid in her own castle. This marriage was a gift that kept on giving and just when she thought she had him figured out, he changed his stride.

Outside the walls a dog yowled, its howl breaking into hysterical furious snarling. Alarm shot through her.

The door swung open under the pressure of her fingertips. The window stood wide open, the white curtains billowing in the night breeze. Deidre sat on the bed, still like a statue, her eyes wide and unblinking. Lisa’s body slumped on the floor by the window, her shotgun on the rug, next to the bed. A creature squatted over Lisa, its clawed hands hooked into her flesh, biting into her neck. It had nearly chewed through it and Lisa’s head dangled, her brown eyes dark and glassy.

The creature looked up, big owl eyes empty, flat, like the eyes of a fish. Blood stained its nightmarish fangs.

She had to save the child.

The only weapon in the room was Lisa’s shotgun. Knowing Lisa, it would be loaded. The other door in the room led to the bathroom; it would be too flimsy to hold against the beast and once they got inside, they would be trapped. The only way out was through the doorway where Elara stood. If the little girl ran to her, the beast would catch her before she could.

“Deidre,” Elara said, her voice calm. “Crawl toward me. Do it very slowly.”

The girl swallowed. Slowly, ever so slowly, she shifted onto her hands and knees. Elara took a slow gliding step sideways toward the bed and the gun.

The beast watched her, Lisa’s blood dripping from its mouth. It licked its fangs, running its tongue on the shreds of human flesh stuck between its teeth. Outside the dogs snarled in a frenzy.

Deidre crawled to her. An inch. Another inch.

Another.

Elara took another step.

Ten feet between them.

Nine. Deidre was almost at the edge of the bed.

Eight.

The creature leaned forward, lowering Lisa to the floor, its gaze locked on them. Elara held her hand up, palm toward Deidre.

They froze.

The monster stared at them.

Elara took short shallow breaths.

A moment passed, long and slow like cold molasses.

Another…

The creature dipped its head and bit Lisa’s neck.

“Deidre, when I say run, I want you to jump off the bed, run outside, and scream as loud as you can. Scream and keep running. Don’t stop. Do you understand?”

The child nodded.

Elara shifted her weight onto her toes.

The beast tore another shred of flesh from Lisa’s throat, exposing more of the broken vertebrae. She’d make it pay. Yes, she would.

Deidre perched at the very edge of the bed.

Now. “Run!”

Deidre jumped off the bed and dashed to the door. Elara lunged forward and grabbed the shotgun.

A piercing, desperate scream tore through the castle. “Hugh! Hugh!”

The beast sprang at her. There was no time to aim, so she drove the butt of the gun into its face. The creature reeled. She pumped the shotgun and squeezed the trigger. The shotgun barked. Pellets tore into the beast’s face, knocking it back.

Elara sprinted to the hallway, slammed the door shut, and threw herself against it, back to the wood. She had to buy time.

The beast let out a screech behind her. It lashed her senses, whipping her into a frenzy.

“Hugh!” The terror-soaked shriek sounded further away. Run, Deidre. Run.

The beast slammed into the door from the other side. The impact shook it like the blow of a giant hammer. Elara’s feet slid. She dug her heels in.

The door shuddered again, nearly throwing her. It would break through on its third try.

She leaped aside and pumped the shotgun.

The door flew open, the creature tumbling out all the way to the other wall of the hallway. Elara jerked the shotgun up and fired.

Boom!

The blast tore through the beast. Blood spatter landed on her face. The monster surged upright, its face a mess of bloody tissues, its left eye leaking onto its cheek.

Pump. Boom!

The creature jerked back, then lunged at her.

Pump. Nothing.

Elara flipped the shotgun, brandishing it like a club.

Hugh came around the corner, running at full speed and plowed into the beast, knocking it off balance. As the monster came back up, Hugh grabbed it, twisting it around to face her, muscling it, his face savage, and caught its throat in the bend of his elbow. His forearm pressed against the beast’s neck. It kicked, jerking and flailing, claws ripping the air only a foot from her face as it struggled to break free, and for a second, she didn’t know if Hugh could hold it.

Hugh caught the creature’s head with his left hand. The powerful muscles of his arms flexed, crushing. Bones crunched. The beast’s head lolled. It went limp.

Relief flooded her. She lowered the shotgun.

Hugh dropped the beast like a piece of trash and turned to her.

“Hurt?”

“No.”

“Others?”

She made her mouth move. “I only saw one.”

Deidre ran to them and wrapped herself around her, trembling uncontrollably.

“It’s okay,” Elara cooed. “It’s okay. Safe now. It will all be okay.”

“What if it comes back?” the little girl whispered.

“If it comes back, Hugh will kill it. That’s what he does. He protects us. It will be okay.”

Hugh gave her an odd look, but she was too tired to care. Exhaustion mugged her like a wet blanket, smothering her thoughts. The danger had passed. Hugh’s sentries had failed, and he would take it personally, which meant not even a fly would make it into the castle for the rest of the night. And, knowing Hugh, probably for the rest of all nights.

Lisa was dead. Lovely, kind Lisa.

She was so tired.

Iron Dogs, hounds, and a couple of her people charged up the stairs, pounding into the hallway. The dogs tore at the corpse.

Hugh grinned at her, showing even white teeth. “You were right. There were fifteen.”

She didn’t have any witty comebacks. She put her arm around Deidre and walked toward the stairway, heading for her room.

The door to Elara’s bedroom stood wide open. Serana stood on the side, guarding. She snapped to attention as he passed.

Hugh stalked through the doorway. Elara lay on the bed, fully clothed, her eyes closed. Her breathing was even.

Asleep.

An assault rifle lay on the night table, within her reach. She’d washed the blood from her face, but small red drops peppered her dress. The child curled next to her, asleep.

He moved closer and sat on the edge of the bed. She didn’t stir.

The adrenaline still coursed through him. He came to tell her that the beast had come over the wall and scaled the tower. The grate on the window had been loose and it ripped it out. His people checked the creature’s hands and found no sign of injury. The silver in the metal of the grate would’ve burned most magical beings, but not that one.

The creature was fast and sly. It must’ve watched the patrols and waited for the best time. There was less than thirty seconds between the walking sentries. It timed the assault perfectly and by the time the dogs picked up the scent, it was already scurrying up the tower.

The creature could’ve caught them in the forest. It was fast enough. But it must’ve weighed the odds and realized that it was outmatched. That likely meant it wasn’t telepathically controlled by its master. A telepathic bond required a blank mind, and the moment the warrior controlling it died, the beast would’ve taken off into the woods, to freedom. That’s why loose bloodsuckers slaughtered everything in sight. Without navigators to direct them, they acted on pure instinct.

This creature followed them, waited for the right moment, then got inside hoping to kill Deidre. Still, it wasn’t too bright, otherwise Lisa’s presence wouldn’t have distracted it. It likely killed Lisa to get to the child, but once it started chewing on her, it didn’t want to stop. He’d seen similar behavior in feral dogs.

He came to tell Elara that this would never happen again. She didn’t wait for his assurances. She trusted him enough to fall asleep.

If it comes back, Hugh will kill it. That’s what he does. He protects us.

The world had sat askew, until he’d come to the castle. All the cornerstones of his life had fallen: Roland gone, his position as Warlord eliminated, his immortality over. But now he had a place, here in the castle, and a purpose.

If it comes back, Hugh will kill it. That’s what he does. He protects us. It will be okay.

When he’d heard the child scream, he had imagined the worst. If someone had asked him this morning what was the worst that could happen, he would’ve had to think about it. Now he knew. The worst would be Elara dying.

The fights, the compromises, the maneuvering, pissing her off until she turned purple in the face and forgot to keep a hold on her magic, so it leaked from her eyes, all of it took up so much of his time. It was fun. If she was no longer here, he wouldn’t know what to do with himself. Would he leave? Would he stay?

This new life, it was just his. Hugh didn’t owe it to anyone. He was building it himself, brick by brick, one shovel of cement at a time, the same way he had built that damn moat. He was building his own castle, and for better or worse, the harpy wormed her way into his world and became its tower.

When he’d thought she might be dead, fear had scraped him raw. For a moment he felt the piercing icy pain of what must’ve been panic.

But she’d survived.

Hugh reached out carefully and rested his hand on her chest, just under her breasts, to reassure himself that he wasn’t imagining it. She felt warm. Her chest rose and fell with her breath.

She’d survived.

All was good. Tomorrow it would return to normal. The crisis had passed.

He raised his hand and walked out the door.

Elara’s eyes snapped open. She saw Hugh’s wide back disappear through the doorway.

He had reached out and touched her. It was such a light touch, hesitant, almost tender, as if he’d been reassuring himself she was alright.

Hugh d’Ambray cared if she lived or died.

He’d given himself away. It was a fatal mistake. There was so much she could do with it. Now she just had to decide how to use it.

What did she want from Hugh d’Ambray? Now there was a question.

If she wanted Hugh – and she wasn’t ready to say she did – but if she did decide that she wanted him, she would have to approach it very carefully. By tomorrow the man who’d gently touched her would disappear and the old Hugh d’Ambray would take his place. That man wouldn’t respond to overtures of peace. If she came to him, looking for relief or reassurance, or offering him either, he would either view it as a weakness or try to use it to his advantage. Nothing that went on between the two of them was either tender or loving. She would have to back him into a corner or let him think he backed her into one. And if she ever let him into her bed, she would fight him in there too.

Was it worth it? She still wasn’t sure.

Elara closed her eyes and went to sleep.