Merle stared at the note in her hands, reading it for the second time and not comprehending it any better than the first.

“She what?” Lily snapped.

“She rejected the prisoner exchange,” Hazel said, her voice calm, though her brown eyes glittered hard.

Crumpling the note up into a ball, Merle ground her teeth. “That fucking bitch.”

Two days. Juneau sat on the offer for an exchange of Lydia Novak for Rhun for two whole days, only to send a curtly worded rejection now. What the fuck was she thinking?

“She’s batshit insane.” Lily crossed her arms. “Seriously, there’s no reason left in that woman.”

“Or in the rest of the Draconians.” Merle threw the note in the trash. “I mean, how can the others not even step up and talk some sense into her? This was a good proposal. It made sense. It would have saved lives.”

“Well,” Hazel said, “now we know that’s not what any of them care about anymore.”

Anger a sizzle in her veins, Merle turned to the hall. “I’m going to pay a little visit to our guest.” Time to start interrogating Lydia for real. So far the captured Elder witch had refused to discuss anything.

“I’ll join you.” Hazel started toward the door as well but stopped, turned to the open French doors leading from the kitchen into the dark backyard.

Merle followed her glance. Rose stood on the back porch, Isa near her, and cleared her throat.

“Talk?” Rose asked Hazel, her Fae accent still strong. She was picking up English words here and there, making an effort to learn the language of her birth family.

And she slowly, hesitatingly, made moves to get to know Hazel, her real mother, whom she only met recently. Hazel, who’d been restraining her instincts to pounce on her lost-and-found child and hug her breathless in favor of giving Rose time, and allowing to her seek contact on her own terms.

So of course when Rose now wanted to talk to her—with the help of Isa as Fae interpreter—Hazel threw Merle an apologetic glance.

“Go,” Merle said with a smile. “I’ll handle Lydia.”

Hazel nodded and joined her daughter, who looked at her twin sister Lily with wide indigo eyes and waved her over as well. Merle’s best friend, so assured in most everything else and always taking life in stride, still battled speechlessness when it came to her newly returned real twin, and walked to the back porch in uncharacteristic silence.

Merle made her way down to the basement and opened Lydia’s cell, but didn’t step inside. Leaning against the doorjamb, arms crossed, she glared at the Elder.

“So,” Merle said, “Juneau doesn’t want you back. Fancy that.”

Lydia raised her head from her knees. She was sitting on the cot, legs drawn up to her chest, wrists and ankles still magically shackled to subdue her powers. Dark rings under her eyes spoke of how little sleep she’d managed.

Merle should have no sympathy for her. She made her bed with Juneau, had refused to help the Aequitas in any way. But knowing of the staggering loss the other woman had suffered recently, Merle’s heart still ached for her.

Didn’t mean she’d be going easy on Lydia, not when the other witch could tell them where Rhun was held.

“Are you going to torture me now?” A flat question, Lydia’s expression impassive.

“I’m going to ask you one last time—nicely—where Juneau is keeping Rhun. If you still refuse to talk, we will have to resort to other methods to get the information.”

Lydia snorted. “You can hurt me all you want. I’m not telling you anything.” Her facial muscles tensed. “No matter what you do, I’m not helping you demon-loving blood traitors.”

“I find it remarkable that you still spew this kind of hatred after what happened with Aveline.”

The youngest witch of the Novak line—Lydia’s granddaughter—was kidnapped and turned into a pranagraha demon, like Lily and Sarai Roth. Unlike those two, however, Aveline did not make it out of her captivity alive. She slit her own throat—and both arteries in her thighs, according to Lily, who had to witness the whole bloody scene—in order to kill her mate, the leader of the pranagraha group, and thus give Lily a fighting chance to escape. Pranagraha mates were bound together in life and death—if one of them died, so did the other.

Aveline sacrificed her life to help Lily flee.

“She would still be alive,” Lydia hissed, “if it weren’t for demons. My entire family is gone because of these abominations, and our line will end with me. Hatred is all I have left.” She spat on the floor.

Goosebumps prickled over Merle’s skin. Marissa, Lydia’s daughter and mother of Aveline, had been so consumed by grief over her only child’s death that she took her own life as well. Which indeed left Lydia as the only living witch of the Novak family, and she wouldn’t have any more children, not at her age.

So, yes, the Novak bloodline would fade with Lydia’s passing.

“I’m sorry about Aveline’s death,” Merle said. “I truly am. And about Marissa’s. But to go from valid hate of deranged individuals to hating the entire race?” She shook her head. “There has to be some middle ground. We’re trying to find it.”

“And I’ll have no part of it.” Hard eyes in a face etched with unforgiving grief. “So go ahead, start the torture. You’ll get nothing from me.”

Merle pursed her lips. “Well, I don’t think we’ll have to go that far.” She shrugged. “We could always hit you with a truth spell. I hear Hazel has a knack for them.”

Lydia blanched.

“I’ll let you stew on that for a bit,” Merle said. “And when I come back down here with Hazel, it’s either you telling us voluntarily what you know, or Hazel will rip it out of you with the spell.”

Leaving a decidedly uncomfortable-looking Lydia in her locked cell, Merle went back upstairs and asked Hazel to tell her when she had finished talking with Rose. The Elder witch did so about twenty minutes later, and Merle filled her in on her unsuccessful talk with Lydia.

“You can do the truth spell again, right?” Merle asked as they took the stairs down to the basement. “The one you used on Tallak.”

Hazel nodded, her expression thoughtful. “It’ll cost me, but yes.”

“You have to draw on a lot of outside power for that one?”

“Yes.” Hazel grimaced. “I haven’t had to pay back for it yet, but I can feel it looming. It’ll hurt.”

Merle pressed her lips together, wincing in sympathy at the thought of upholding the balance, let alone giving back for tapping into great power. She did it recently, and it almost cost her the life of her unborn baby.

“I’m sorry for asking you to do this,” Merle said softly. “If there was another way…”

“No.” Hazel shook her head. “It’s all right. Everything else would take too much time.”

Time they might not have. With every passing day, Juneau might yet decide to try to kill Rhun. Not that it would be easy, since his demon species was particularly resilient, but the risk was still too high. Not to mention that he was suffering every minute he spent in the Draconians’ clutches, the faint echoes of his agony along the mating bond a constant reminder of his ordeal.

Merle had to numb herself to most of those echoes in order to even function at all. She poured her worry and pain into various fantasies of how to take revenge on Juneau once she finally had Rhun back.

At the cell, Merle opened the door…and her heart stumbled, her bones icing over.

“No.”

She rushed into the cell, grabbed the slumped form of Lydia—whose wrists were bleeding from raw, shredded wounds. How the fuck—?

Her eyes flicked to a jagged chip of brick on the bloodied cot, the edge just sharp enough to have torn through skin to open veins.

“Fuck!” Merle pressed down on both wrists, tried to staunch the flow. “Hazel, come in here. You have to heal her!”

A thump outside in the basement hall. Merle jerked her head around. Hazel lay on the floor, convulsing in obvious pain, her jaw clenched and hands balled to fists.

No. Not now.

Hazel screamed in agony as gashes opened up on the skin exposed by her clothes, red lines seeping into the fabric of her sweater, her pants. Blood welled up, pouring off her body, carrying her magic. It dissolved in the air, fed the power she’d tapped for her spells back to the layers of the world in the exchange necessary to uphold the balance of magic.

Lydia slumped even more in Merle’s arms, her wrist wounds still bleeding.

Footsteps thundering on the stairs, and the next instant Basil and Lily came running down the hall, followed by Tallak, who was visiting Basil for some father-son bonding.

“Mom!” The cry came from both Baz and Lily, and they rushed to Hazel’s side, supported her through her pain.

Isa and Rose descended into the basement moments later.

Hazel screamed again, her back bowing.

Tallak’s blond brows drew together, his eyes glued to Hazel. “What’s wrong with her?”

“Balance,” Basil threw over his shoulder, crouching next to his mom. “As the head of our family, she’s required to pay back the magic she’s drawn from the world to supplement her witch powers. She’ll bleed until the Powers That Be are sated.”

Tallak tilted his head. “That’s fucking barbaric.”

“Seems about right,” Baz muttered, while he stroked Hazel’s hair off her pale, sweat-slicked face.

Merle’s focus zeroed in on the hæmingr demon, a desperate idea forming in her mind. “You,” she shouted. “Tallak.”

Basil’s father looked into the cell, raised a brow.

“I need your help.”

He appeared slightly bored as he studied the bleeding witch in her arms. “I can’t help her. I’m not a healer.”

“I don’t want you to heal her,” Merle pressed out. “I want you to kill her.”

Every single head in the basement—except for Hazel’s and Lydia’s, of course—whipped around toward her. Slack-jawed, all assembled and in their right minds stared at Merle as if she had grown horns.

But this was the only way. Lydia had been bleeding too long already—an ambulance wouldn’t get here in time to save her. And with Hazel out of commission while she was upholding the balance—which could take a while—and Merle unable to use her magic without risking the life of her baby, there was no way to keep Lydia alive.

“The what now?” Lily asked, her face a mask of shock.

“I need you to kill her,” Merle said to Tallak, “and take her powers and memories.” As a hæmingr demon, that was his special gift—when he killed an otherworld creature, or witch, he could absorb their magic as well as their memories.

Tallak raised another brow. “And why should I do that?”

“Because that way at least we’ll learn what she knows. Kill her before she dies!”

Tallak picked some dirt from underneath his fingernails. “I’m not particularly in a killing mood tonight.”

“Baz,” Lily said. “Can’t you…?” Being half hæmingr demon himself, he shared his father’s powers.

But Basil shook his head, swallowed. “I don’t have the hang of it yet. Can’t guarantee it’ll work.”

“Tallak,” Merle choked out, her heart hammering in her throat. “If you don’t kill her and take her memories, I swear to the gods I will make your life a living hell.”

“Fine, I’ll do it.” With a long-suffering sigh and a roll of his shoulders, Tallak walked into the cell.

* * *

The scent of fresh blood hung heavy in the air as Tallak entered the cell. Lots of it had spilled on the floor already, and he had to step one foot into a pool to reach the dying woman. Eh. He’d waded through much more, though he did prefer to dirty himself like this when he was the one who’d spilled the blood.

With a glance at the ginger-haired witch—Merle was her name, wasn’t it? She could be scary—who held the other woman, he placed a hand on the dying witch’s chin, the other on the back of her head, and snapped her neck with an effortless move. At the same moment he made the kill, he reached out with his demon powers to grasp at the witch’s magic.

It flowed into him with the stopping of the woman’s heart, while her memories, thoughts, feelings, hit him like a mace to his mind. He gritted his teeth, tried to brace himself for the impact…and still couldn’t help staggering back.

Always, always, always, it hurt like acid poured into his head. He could stave off the effect for a while if he was jacked up on adrenaline, like when he butchered the rotten royal court of the fae, or took out the guards when they freed Basil’s sister Rose, but at some point it would catch up with him.

And tonight, when he made a kill out of the blue, absorbed power and memories without having fought, the pain slammed into him right away.

The entirety of the witch’s life, her experiences, the wealth of her emotions and the tangle of her thoughts, all washed over his own thoughts and feelings until he couldn’t quite tell anymore where he ended and her stolen life began.

A life built to lead her family, her pride diminished over time as the Novak line thinned…broke. The wrenching agony at losing her granddaughter, her young life ruined at the hands of soulless demons, the hope and future of the family destroyed. The helplessness at witnessing the bottomless despair of her daughter, wasting away day by day, unable to move on from Aveline’s death. The shattering pain, heartrending grief when Marissa took her own life. Dead, they’re all dead. My family is gone.

Oh, he knew that feeling quite intimately himself, didn’t he?

He breathed past the pain, swallowed it all down and waited for his senses to clear so he’d be in control again.

When the fog did lift enough for him to see once more, he blinked at the expectant face of the scary witch who seemed to be one of his son’s best friends.

“So?” she asked. “Where is he?”

Rhun, Tallak thought. She means Rhun, her husband, her mate, the knowledge supplied by the newly acquired memories of the dead witch. Right, then. How to break it to her?

“She didn’t know.” He stood, dusted himself off.

“What?”

His head still throbbing from taking in the memories, he snapped at her. “She didn’t know! She had no idea where they keep your precious demon.”

Merle jerked back, her face losing color. “No,” she whispered.

Tallak was already stalking out of the cell again. “Yes,” he hissed back over his shoulder. “I can’t believe I slurped down those memories for nothing.”

“Not for nothing.”

He froze at the voice, coming from the witch he’d been trying hard to ignore all night. And every other time he saw her. He attempted to glance at Hazel without actually having to turn his head. Didn’t quite work. Dammit.

So he looked. And gritted his teeth at the sight of her all bloodied and broken by whatever fucked-up games the witches’ gods liked to play with them. Hazel was many things—annoying, overbearing, prickly, and way too Goody Two-shoes—but weak and bruised on the floor shouldn’t be one of them.

“What?” he barked at her, his nerves frayed.

She heaved herself into a sitting position, helped by Basil—Tallak still had to restrain himself from rolling his eyes at the ridiculous name Hazel had given his son—and her daughter Lily.

“You have Lydia’s powers and memories now,” Hazel said. “So use them.”

Newly absorbed witch magic crackled between his fingers, and courtesy of the dead witch’s memories, he knew just how to wield it.

Still, he narrowed his eyes, asked, “What—shall I make a few fireworks tricks for your amusement?”

“Your parlor tricks wouldn’t impress me.” Cold, cold words, those brown eyes glinting. “I mean that since you can shapeshift as a hæmingr demon, you could waltz right into Juneau’s house wearing Lydia’s form and dig around until you find out where they keep Rhun. Since you took Lydia’s powers, you can fake her witch energy and get through the wards, and with her memories you’ll be able to act and talk like her, so no one will suspect you’re not her.”

Merle walked out of the cell, uncaring of the blood staining her clothes. “That is brilliant.”

“And not going to happen.” He resumed walking, headed for the stairs.

“Wait!” Merle shouted. “This is our best chance at getting Rhun out.”

He shrugged. “Fuck if I care.”

“You can’t just walk away and not help us.”

He stopped, turned on his heel. “I think I need to get something straight. I am here for my son”—he gestured at Basil—“and only for him, because I missed his entire bloody childhood due to rotting away in a fucking dungeon. I am not your lackey, and I don’t give a rat’s ass about anything other than catching up with my kid. Got that?”

“If you don’t help us, we need to start back in square one!”

He grimaced, clucked his tongue and snapped his fingers. “Ah, damn. I used to have a bucket of fucks to give, but somehow it got emptied into the rusty drain of a moldy dungeon cell.”

He was heading for the stairs again when Basil said, “Dad.”

The word stopped him cold. He rarely called him that. Slowly turning around, Tallak met Basil’s gaze.

“Please,” was all his son said.

Tallak clenched his jaw. Breathed through his nose. Looked at the ceiling, and cracked a kink in his neck when he glanced back at Basil again. “Your witch friends will owe me for this.”