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And there it was. That was the difference. I could forgive her.

Maybe I already had.

The floorboards groaned under my boots. I stopped pacing and dragged my hand back through my hair, glaring down through the rotted gaps where I could see Grandmaddox shuffling about her dark kitchen. My room spun in dizzying circles. The alcohol was turning on me.

I’d been cold to Lana after the kiss. She didn’t deserve that.

Kissing her was my fault, my lapse in judgment, and she shouldn’t be made to suffer for it. I could at least apologize to her.

I opened the door to the haunted, creaking hallway, hoping to catch her before she went to bed.

Really, I just wanted to see her again.

Lana

I lay sprawledacross my bed, my eyes absently trained on the ceiling. I traced my lips with a finger.

Kissed!

I remembered the sensation of being caught up in Asher’s arms, his body dwarfing mine. That intense personality of his focused wholly on me.

What would it be like to always get to kiss him? To do more with him?

I felt my already flushed cheeks heat at the thought.

That cold human was not so cold when I was in his arms. The stories had gotten it wrong—Primus Dominus had gotten it wrong.

They are lying, calculating creatures,he’d told me.Disloyal to their core.

Asher was loyal to a fault. So loyal that he still avenged his wife and daughter, though their bodies were likely nothing more than bones beneath the earth.

My mind went to his wife and that photo he kept of her. To her lovely, pale hair and her wideset blue eyes.

I got up off the bed and approached an antique mirror propped up in the corner of the room, its silver edges blackened with age.

I frowned at my reflection. I looked nothing like her. Not my violet eyes, not my restless, glowing hair, not the shape of my face.

I closed my eyes, remembering exactly what his wife—what Nicole—looked like. Her face was wider than mine, and her eyes, thinner. She had cleverly arched eyebrows and a small, pert nose. And her smile... That alone would have made her beautiful. I pictured it all, and I didn’t even think when I drew on just enough of the blood culled from Clades for my face to subtly shift.

When I opened my eyes, my hair had shortened and lightened, my irises now cerulean blue.

I wore Nicole’s face, the face of a dead human woman.

And I envied her. I brushed the pads of my fingers over a cheekbone, then over that achingly sweet nose of hers. I smiled, just for the hell of it and felt a pang deep within my chest.

I can’t compete with this.

I ran my hands through my hair—her hair—humming a sad melody as I tilted my head from side to side.

I didn’t hear the door open, but I did hear the sharp intake of breath.

I swiveled around. And there, standing at the threshold of my room, staring at me like I just fulfilled every one of his deepest desires, was Jame Asher.

Chapter 14

Asher

“Nikki?” I whispered.