She paused, unwrapped the strand of hair. She watched his chin tremble. She knew he was mad, but these were her burdens, not his. Thorne had enough on his plate as a warrior without being stuck with her problems. And she was only telling him now because she needed him to understand why she craved her freedom.

“Anyway, the Convent under Sister Quena’s rule wasn’t much different from the sect I grew up in. I think sister-bitch really enjoyed delivering the canings and whippings. The devotiates were rarely touched, women like your sister, Grace. But then, they abided by all the rules because of their religious fervor, which does make sense.

“But there were at least a dozen of us who had been consigned there by relatives for ‘religious instruction,’ a polite euphemism for ‘beating the sin out of us.’

“I admit I was the worst. I had no room left in my heart for what Sister Quena and her regulators were selling. In my opinion, there was no love in what any of them did. We were simply bad women and were treated in kind.

“But the truth was, most of the ‘bad’ women,” and she succumbed to using air quotes, “weren’t bad at all. They just weren’t there by choice and they didn’t agree with the teachings of the Convent.”

He leaned down and kissed her forehead. His gravel voice flowed over her. “Grace told me you often took their whippings for them.”

“She wasn’t supposed to tell you.”

“You forget, every once in a while I would see the results and even to my mind, you couldn’t have deserved that much of Sister Quena’s wrath, all by your lonesome.”

“I hated her. I know I’m not supposed to hate, but I hated her. Sometimes, it gave me pleasure to pick a fight with her when I could see she was ready to take apart one of the ‘bad women’ for some absurd infraction like not folding your napkin exactly right after dinner was over. I mean what was the point? All the linens went to the laundry. But no, we had to fold them in a perfect rectangular shape, then they could be hauled to the laundry.

“I think sister-bitch used any excuse she could to hurt one of us. I think she used her rage and the whippings to take her mind off her own inner demons.”

“I wanted to take you out of there so bad.”

She thumbed his lower lip. “I know. But then you would have been hauled up on charges for interfering with Convent business and Greaves would have had the excuse he needed to haul your ass in front of COPASS and demand the death penalty.”

His eyes hollowed out at that moment. “I was stuck.”

“We were both stuck. But don’t you see, we’re not anymore. We’re free, or at least I am. And I need this. I need to pick up where I left off during my wild college years. I lost my childhood and I need to be free, and in charge of my life, my days, what food I eat, where I go, what I do.”

He frowned. “So I’m getting more of a picture here. But you’ve never talked about your college years much or how it was you got sent to the Convent in the first place.”

She didn’t want to tell him. He wouldn’t like it, not as a warrior and her breh, but he should know the truth.

“Well, as much as I don’t want to, I’ll tell you straight out. Before I was sent to the Convent, and still in my teens, I totally rebelled. If I was going to get whipped by my father, it was going to be for real reasons. I found pleasure in sex, a lot of sex, with a lot of different men. I took up drinking, too, which fit the lifestyle and really bugged the shit out of my parents.

“Later, when I went to college, on my parents’ dime, I got to partying a little too hard and my grades tanked. When my parents got wind of it, I laughed all through the supposed intervention until I realized that my folks weren’t putting me in some early form of rehab, but rather they’d essentially jailed me in the Creator’s Convent thinking to work religion into me.

“I remember thinking I was going to die but that’s when I met you.” She stroked his cheek with the back of her hand. She smiled. “Do you remember that first time we met?”

He nodded and a low growl left his throat. “I don’t think I’d ever been more turned on in my life.”

“I’d never seen a Warrior of the Blood before. Then there you were: Thorne. The leader of them all. When I think about it now, you were like this unexpected miracle in my life. You were exactly what I needed.”

“I know what you mean, but it wasn’t just the sex. You got me. You accepted me for exactly who and what I was: a warrior.”

She smiled. “I was so bad. I’d been facedown on my cot getting some old-fashioned relief with my hands when suddenly I felt the air move and there you were. I thought, damn, all my prayers have just been answered.”

He laughed, but he kissed her. “I thought you looked a little flushed. Then Grace showed up and you dipped behind the door so she couldn’t see you. That’s when you showed me your peaked nipple.”

“I wanted you to see my orgasm. I think you got the point.”

“Oh, I got the point.”

“And you came back at dawn just like you promised.”

“I couldn’t not have come back. I thought about you all night while I was out there at the Borderlands. Night had never been so long. I thought the sun would never come up.”

“You’d come straight from battling.”

“You didn’t seem to mind.”

She smiled and stroked his cheek a little more. “Of course not. I knew what most of the hypocrites of Second Earth refused to acknowledge, that without all the blood you and your brothers spilled every night, Second Earth would have fallen to Greaves centuries ago.”

He kissed her and ground his hips against hers. “I need you with me, Marguerite. Please don’t do this to us. Please.”

He looked so earnest and she almost wanted to just nod and tell him, “okay,” but she couldn’t. She shifted her gaze to his chin once more. She couldn’t exactly tell him “no” if she kept looking into his eyes.

She shook her head. “I can’t. I’ve … I’ve imagined my freedom for so long, and how I want to spend it that I can’t stop now. I just can’t. But I don’t want to hurt you.”

“So.” Since he offered a long pause, she met his gaze. He continued, “You won’t mind if I bury this”—and here he ground the hard length of him against her—“in another woman, or lots of other women? You don’t feel any particular claim on my body? Seems to me I can remember dozens of times when you’d be holding my cock and whispering in my ear, ‘This is mine.’ Remember, Marguerite?”

“I remember.” Jesus, how guilty was he going to make her feel? She scowled at him. “And, yeah, I’ll hate it, but I’m not changing my mind about anything. I don’t want a life with you on Second Earth, or anywhere. I want my own life.”

But he didn’t let her go. Instead he dipped low and began sucking on her neck.

She shoved at him in earnest now. “No,” she cried. “None of that.”

“I want your blood. Let me have it one last time.” Oh, damn, he’d split his resonance, and she was almost helpless when he did that.

She shoved at him some more, but he didn’t exactly budge and her vein started to rise, willing him on. She grew very still. She had to reach an understanding with him. As much as her body was on fire with sudden need and with the most pressing desire to let him sink his fangs and take what he wanted, she drew in deep breaths and willed all that insane need and want and passion away.

He must have figured it out, because he drew back and frowned at her.

She stared at him for a long time then said, “I have to do this.”

His shoulders dipped slightly. Finally, he nodded and rolled off her. He ended up on his side and looked so serious.

She slid off the bed and turned to face him, pulling the belt of the robe tight. “You should probably…”

But she didn’t get any farther. The goddam future streams suddenly opened up, an intense skyline of light-filled ribbons, stretching across the horizon as far as the eye could see.

One ribbon rose, expanded, and moved toward her then crashed hard, just as it had over three weeks ago when she had first made contact with Fiona, her fellow obsidian flame.

No, not again. She didn’t want this. She didn’t want any of this.

She fell to the floor.

Suddenly she was just inside the future streams, inside one very specific vision. The sky was dark, a beautiful night sky, and the forest surrounded her, a forest of incredibly tall trees with straight trunks, close together. She heard noises in the forest, movement—not of animals but of people—a stealthy sound.

Death vampires.

She turned around and saw lights, many lights, but not from electricity, softer, like candlelight or oil lamps. She began running in that direction. She had to issue a warning. But the death vampires swarmed from behind, moving past her and through her. This wasn’t her future, this was the future of whatever or whoever inhabited the glowing forest lights.

She thought the thought and propelled herself into the air and forward, flying without the usual wings, but soaring, speeding, getting ahead of the attack to try to understand where she was.

Higher and higher she flew, straight up through the tall fir trees. She soared over the tips now and began to fly above the glowing lights. Higher and higher until she saw dwellings, like cabins, some square, some round, some large, some small but all with the glowing lights, a river of lights. Higher she flew until she could see the coastline from a distance of several thousand feet. She recognized Puget Sound and she could feel that this was Mortal Earth.

She let the location seep into her mind.

She returned back to the forest and the glowing lights.

She understood then that she was looking at a hidden colony on Mortal Earth. From deep inside her mind, her obsidian flame power vibrated softly, as though amplifying her intuition. Then she knew, without a doubt, that this colony was a refuge for Seers.