The Viscount’s eyes narrowed, his lips parted. I could feel his quickening breaths against my mouth. “What did you say?”

  “I said, you’re late.”

  “How did you—?”

  I wagged my eyebrows. “Did that get your neurons firing the way they’re supposed to?”

  The Viscount licked his lips, his breath still hot on mine. “I’m not sure,” he said.

  I grabbed the back of his neck and pulled my face toward his again, taking another deep drink of his lips. I could feel my own heart starting to race now, my own breath rapidly speeding up. My heart was beating so hard and so fast, I thought I was about to pass out at any moment. I wasn’t sure how this man could have such an effect on me, but then again, he was from a literal other world.

  One of his hands worked its way down my side, from my ribs to my waist. His other snaked its way deeper into my hair—at least, hair that wasn’t mine. He suddenly spun me around and pinned me to the wall, and in a flash of heat and want, his lips jumped from my mouth to my jaw, to my neck, to my collar-bone, leaving tingling eruptions wherever they touched.

  The Viscount jerked away all of a sudden, as if in an instant he’d decided he shouldn’t be kissing me anymore. I watched him wipe the back of his hand against his mouth. For a moment I thought I had him, I thought I had helped him connect the pieces of the puzzle he wanted to solve… but now, it felt like I’d lost him again.

  “Stay here,” he said, his voice stern and harsh.

  “What? But you just—”

  “—do not move.”

  He turned on his heel and left, slamming the door shut as he exited the room. I wasn’t sure what he’d told the guard, but there had been an exchange of some kind. I couldn’t move; equal parts flustered and confused. I had been sure he’d realized what I was trying to tell him, that I wasn’t Kady—that I was Avery.

  He’d shattered that confidence, though, and once more, I was left alone.

  Chapter 22

  This bedroom felt way too big for me. The ceiling was too tall, the bed was massive, and the wardrobe—I was never going to use even a fraction of the space. As I took stock of my surroundings, I realized, it wasn’t the fit of the room that worried me, but the fact that I just didn’t fit in Kady’s shoes.

  For the past year, she’d pretended to be just another girl from the city. A little eccentric, a little flirty, a little flighty and prone to her own whims, but she was never the kind of person to want to stand out in a crowd or soak up the attention of all of her peers; maybe just one or two.

  She had this way with words, with people; everything came easy to her. Everything she touched, she was good at. At music, and art, she excelled. She had a knack for fashion, for colors, and for saying just the right thing at the right time. I had never spoken to a single person who would dare say a bad word about her. Kady was universally loved, and loveable. The easiest person to get along with.

  That was before I found out she was some kind of Fae royalty.

  I didn’t think I could measure up to her before I found out. Now, I felt like a mouse trying to fit into clown shoes. I was totally out of place here; way out of my depth. I disliked most people, I was abrasive, and quick to temper, and I hated wearing dresses. That I knew these things about myself didn’t make those traits any easier to bottle in.

  I had to get out of this somehow. The only problem was, I was fresh out of ideas, and even more out of portals. I had to find one if I was going to get back home, but Kady had made sure the only one I knew about was closed, which left convincing someone to take me back home as my only choice.

  The odds of that happening were a flat zero, so I needed another option.

  Another way out.

  I started pacing around the room, occasionally catching the words I’d carved into the walls out of the corner of my eye. I am Kadeera Nightbloom. I wasn’t, though. I didn’t want to be Kady. I didn’t want her life, her clothes, her home. Sure, I’d bitched about not being famous enough, or rich enough before, but this wasn’t the way I wanted to achieve those things.

  I had always done things on my own, and I had never accepted something that was given to me on a silver platter. I believed in hard work, sweat, and tears. That was how I wanted to reach all the goals I had set out for myself in life. I was a little late on those achievements, but Kady was deluded if she thought that what I wanted was her life.

  “That bitch,” I grumbled to myself. “To think, I let her eat my ice cream.”

  I heard a noise outside, like a thud, and it stole my attention like a gunshot. Spinning around on the spot, I looked first toward the bedroom door, where I thought I’d heard the noise. It was shut. Nothing to see here. My eyes then moved over to the window. It was open, the curtains fluttering gently in the night breeze.

  Swallowing the ball of mild panic that was in my throat, rushed over to the window, shut it, then I backed away from it a step. I waited, listening to the soft breath of the night wind against the glass. My heart calmed, I inhaled deeply, exhaled, and I walked over to the bedroom door.

  Pressing my ear to it, I tried to catch what—if anything—was going on outside, but it was dead out there. I couldn’t hear any footsteps, or talking, or even the soft sigh of a bored guard waiting for his shift to be over. It was eerie, and a little unnerving. It was possible the door was soundproof; how would I have even known?

  Resigned, I turned away from the door—that was when I got a face full of dust. Hacking and coughing, I staggered back, against the door, trying not to breathe the sickly-sweet substance that had just been blown into my face.

  I tried opening my eyes, but they were stinging hard and refused to cooperate. My throat felt like it was closing on me, my mind was all over the place, and as I backed into the door, I thought I heard someone moving around me. I lashed out with my right arm, but found only air in its path.

  “Who did that?!” I shrieked.

  Nothing.

  I went to slam my fist against the door, to bang for help, but someone grabbed my arm and yanked me away from it. Not being able to see or hear properly had thrown my center of balance completely off, so I went down fast, tumbling to the floor with a loud thud.

  I turned around, rubbing my eyes to try and stop them stinging, but I was coughing, too, and almost unable to breathe. Someone was in the room with me, someone light on their feet and difficult to track with a few of my senses out of commission. I didn’t need to see or hear them to know who it was, though.

  “Stay back,” I warned, though my voice was croaky and weak. I probably hadn’t sounded very threatening at all.

  “You should’ve let me take what I wanted in the maze,” came a voice, cold and menacing. “I would’ve taken it and left. But you had to fight back, didn’t you?”

  I took a wild swing with one leg, but hit nothing. “That door is going to open in a few seconds,” I croaked, “And you’re gonna be sorry you broke in here.”

  “In a few seconds, you’ll be dead, and I’ll be gone.”

  The world was spinning, my throat was closing, and my eyes were still struggling to make sense of anything that was going on around me. I did catch what I thought was a dark, shadowy shape darting from one side of the room to the other. A moment later, darkness fell, black and thick. The intruder had snuffed the gas lamps out, killing whatever illumination may have helped me spot his stealthy movements.

  I managed to pick myself up from the floor, but I still couldn’t see, and my heart was pounding hard and loud enough that I couldn’t hear him moving from place to place. I struck out with my hand again, trying to hit the intruder, but I wasn’t going to hit him like this.

  I wasn’t going to win like this.

  “Rell!” I yelled. “Now would be a good time to help.”

  “Your pet can’t hear you,” came the response.

  I spun around to face the noise, to see if I could spot him, but it was impossible. Whatever he’d blown in my face was messing with my eyesight; it wasn’t just the darkness that was making it difficult for me to see anything. The ground felt unsteady beneath my feet, my head felt like it was way too heavy for my own shoulders, and I was struggling to take in any air at all.

  It felt like I’d been poisoned.

  “Because I’ve made sure no one can hear you in here,” he said, “It’s just us.”

  I sensed him coming just as he started dashing in my direction. I wasn’t sure how I knew where he was coming from, but as soon as my instincts kicked in, I followed them. Ducking off to the right was enough to dodge his initial thrust. It still felt like he was moving slowly, but he was much faster than he had been during our last fight.

  It was probably the dust he’d blown into my face; he’d done that to slow me down, to level the playing field. Although he’d done more than level it, because I was blind and having trouble breathing. Once again, I was on my own, in a fight for my life against someone who knew what they were doing.

  Just once it would’ve been nice for me to know what I was doing.

  After dodging against his initial attack, I made a break toward the furthest wall, skirting around the four-poster bed and reaching the vanity on the other side of the room. I couldn’t see, but I wasn’t using my eyes to guide me. I was letting my nose do the work, allowing it to guide me toward where I thought I could smell perfume.

  He was behind me, right behind me, so as soon as I reached the vanity, I grabbed the first thing that I could, and I swung it around hard. It was a hairbrush, but it was made of metal, and it hit something. I wasn’t sure if I had struck an arm or a cheek, but the crack was loud and satisfying.

  My attacker groaned and shoved off to the side, giving me a moment to think, but only a moment. I felt around the vanity for something sharp, but all I could find were more brushes, tiny palettes, and little bottles… and a mirror. It was large, and attached to the vanity, but with one good, hard yank, I thought I could pull it off and hit him with it.

  I grabbed hold of it with both hands just as my attacker wrapped his arms around my chest. He tried pulling me back, but I had my fingertips dug into the mirror’s supports as if my life depended on it—because it did. This man was about to kill me. I could feel his blade pressing against the skin of my neck, his breath pushing on my ear.

  “I’m going to enjoy killing you for that,” he growled.

  “Assassins aren’t meant to talk this much,” I roared, and I tore the mirror off its supports and slammed it hard against the guy’s forehead.

  I heard the glass shatter and felt pieces of it sprinkle across the floor at my feet, but I still had the thing in my hands. Turning on my heel, I felt around for a piece of glass I could use as a weapon and wrapped my fingers around it. The broken glass bit and tore at my skin as I tried to free it. I was bleeding, and cut, but the pain was worth it if it meant I had a weapon I could use to end this fight with.

  Once I had the shard of glass I wanted in my hand, I threw the mirror down and tried to sense for my attacker once more. That was when I felt the cold, sharp sting of metal piercing my abdomen. I coughed, and I thought blood had come up because I could taste copper in my mouth.

  There was a moment of pause, of quiet, as I absorbed what had just happened to me. But something inside of me clicked, adrenaline surged, and I roared again. Gripping my shard of glass as tightly as I could, I wound back my arm, and drove the glass into my attacker’s body—whatever part of him I could find.

  The moment that came after hung in the air like a wobbly note from a broken piano. I stared into the dark, my heart surging, my breath coming in fast and ragged. I felt the man’s grip on his blade loosen, and then he toppled to the floor somewhere in front of me.

  Shaking, my heart racing, I touched the dagger that was still wedged in my stomach and winced at the sensation. Cold turned to burning hot in an instant. I needed to get the dagger out of me, but I knew that doing that would cause me to bleed out much faster than if I left it in.

  With the dagger in my gut, I took a step forward, then another, and another. I wanted to find the door to the bedroom, to try to get it open. I was bleeding; I could tell. It was trickling out of me slowly, that sickly feeling drawing me closer, and closer into unconsciousness.

  The man on the floor suddenly grabbed my leg, and I went down again. Kicking, yelling, flailing, I tried to free myself from his grip, but I noticed he wasn’t putting up much of a resistance. I stopped kicking and waited, breathing, bleeding.

  I knew I had to get back up, but I was already feeling weak, and my neck wanted desperately to let my head fall to the floor. To rest.

  My mind conjured a memory from a long time ago, to the last time I had been stabbed. I wasn’t new to the sensation, to the experience. It was after a gig. I was already a little buzzed, but I had wanted to keep the party going, so I’d gone to a late-night liquor store.

  I stepped out of it with a bottle of jack in my hand. Freddie was waiting for me in the car—he couldn’t have been more than twenty feet away. Twenty feet was all it had taken for a bunch of kids that had been lurking in the alley to jump me, dig a shiv into my side, and steal the bottle of booze.

  I remembered wondering, the instant after I’d been stabbed, if one of those kids had slapped a bag of ice against my skin; it had been that cold. By the time I noticed the makeshift knife sticking out of my side, the kids were already making off with the booze. Stupidly, I pulled the knife out of me and tried to get after them, but I only made it to the alley before the wound started burning and I realized just how fast I was bleeding out.

  That kid had known exactly where to hit me.

  Instead of following them, I went back into the store, got another bottle of booze, and headed to the car. I collapsed on the hood and left a bloody handprint on it for good measure. I may not have woken up if he hadn’t gotten me to the emergency room as fast as he did. Frankie never got over trauma. I took it as a lesson; or two, actually.

  Don’t pull the knife out.

  Don’t fall unconscious.

  I couldn’t see the door, I was still having trouble breathing, and now I was bleeding, too. So, I did the only thing I could. I held on. I held on, clutching my wound, as the seconds passed. I held on as I felt Rell’s psychic presence begin to descend into the bedchamber. Maybe my attacker had died, and whatever magic he’d used to keep Rell from checking in on me was gone.

  It didn’t matter.

  It would be some time before someone found me. Rell hadn’t told the Viscount the truth about Kady, so why would he help—the bedroom door burst open, and the Viscount came rushing in like he had a purpose.

  Light.

  I was able to see again, but the world was still blurry, and swimming. I knew it was the Viscount because I could smell him, his cologne, his lips. It was weird that I thought I could smell his breath, but there I was, laying on my back with a knife in my stomach.

  He knelt beside me, looked me over, and then placed a hand on my chest. “This will hurt,” he warned.

  “Do your worst,” I said.

  I felt him grab the hilt of the dagger the instant before he pulled it. The pain was exquisite, and sharp, and bright—like fire—but I didn’t scream. I held it in, I held on, because screw dying, and screw looking weak. Yeah, the Viscount had helped me through a few things already, but this time, I’d held my own and killed the man who had come to kill me.

  “Do not move,” said the Viscount, after he’d ripped my dress open enough to expose my stomach.

  I couldn’t speak, otherwise I would’ve shrieked. Instead, I gave him a thumb’s up.

  Keeping my eyes on the open door, the rectangle of light, I saw the two guards standing there, dumbfounded at how it was I had just been attacked. Fuckers. They had one job, and they’d failed. A soft, green light erupted somewhere near me, its sparkle touching the shards of glass scattered around me.

  One shard in particular that jutted up and out of the ground. Its long end was wet with blood, my blood… the other was wedged into the eye socket of the man who had come to kill me. His other eye was wide, and open, and filled with shock and surprise. He hadn’t seen that coming.

  Good.

  Blood trickled from the corner of his eye, went around the side of his face, and touched the floor. I realized, then, that I wasn’t in pain anymore. Lifting my neck, I found the Viscount with one hand placed on my abdomen. His palm was… glowing, warm and green. It radiated light, and heat, and it smelled like… like life itself.

  Vitality.

  I could feel the wound closing, the skin stitching, my strength returning. But something was wrong. I could see it on the Viscount’s face. He’d had a stern, concentrated expression until now, because now he looked surprised, and maybe even a little afraid, too.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked, but he didn’t reply.

  Instead, he focused all of his attention on trying to pull his hand away from my body. I watched him grab his right arm with his left, and tug at it, as if it wouldn’t come off on its own. When it finally did, I saw the light emanating from his was still pouring into me—no, it wasn’t pouring into me, it was being pulled toward me in a whirlwind of light that swirled, and shifted, and drew into me as if I were calling it.

  Eventually, it faded, leaving the room dark again. In the gloom, I saw the Viscount’s eyes, and they were locked with mine. He was breathing hard, and for a moment, I thought I could hear his heart thudding inside of his chest; a sound like rolling thunder, like the galloping of horses.

  “What are you?” he asked, the words falling out of his mouth.

  For the first time since I’d gotten here, I didn’t have a reply.

  Chapter 23

  The Viscount stood upright, checking his hand as if for damage; as if I had somehow hurt him. His eyes moved quickly to me, then back to his hand, then back to me again. I could see them flicking from place to place, despite the darkness around us.

  He finally turned his attention toward the guards at the door.