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Loren pulled up her hood and walked carefully down the slick steps to meet him on the sidewalk, Darien shadowing her every step of the way.

“Sorry I’m late,” Roark said, his amber eyes flicking between them. “I had a bit of trouble finding the place.”

“That’s okay,” Loren replied at the same time that Darien said, “Don’t worry about it.”

Roark tipped back his umbrella and squinted through the sheet of rain, at the townhouse where his old friends lived. “Are they home?”

“Doesn’t look like it,” Darien said. He blinked the Sight into his eyes and scanned the front entrance. “Their auras are cold. Doesn’t look like anyone’s been here in days.”

Loren suppressed a sigh. So much for getting answers.

Suddenly, the world starting turning like a rain-drenched carousel, and she practically fell against Darien, her fingers latching onto the sleeves of his jacket for balance.

“Whoa—baby, what’s going on?” He wrapped a strong arm around her waist and blinked away the black. “You all right?” He tipped her chin up, his eyes—brimming with concern—roving over her face.

“Yeah, just—” She blinked rapidly, but the world wouldn’t hold still, and she was seeing three of Darien instead of one. “A head rush, or something.”

Darien wasn’t convinced. Angling his body in such a way that it would be easy for him to catch her should she fall, he took her hand into his and tugged up both of the sleeves on her left arm—the rain jacket and the baby-blue long-sleeve she wore underneath.

The moment he saw the bead of white light pulsing through the Caliginous on Silverway tattoo on the inside of her wrist, he ground his teeth and muttered, “Fuck.”

“Maybe the rain will help if I take off my hood?” Loren suggested, breathless.

“It won’t be good enough, baby,” he said, a muscle in his jaw ticking as he clenched it. “And besides, you’re freezing.” He unzipped his jacket and pulled her into a hug. She slipped her arms around him—underneath the shelter of his jacket—and rested her cheek against his warm, solid chest. She shut her eyes and concentrated on the feel of his heart beating steadily against her as the world continued to spin. It was so much stronger than her own, that heartbeat.

She’d missed this more than she’d realized. Being close to him was almost enough to make her forget all about her gyrating head and her weak, fluttering heart.

Please don’t stop beating,she begged her heart.I still have to save him.

“I don’t know if you recall,” Roark began, “but the last time we spoke before you left for Yveswich, I mentioned there was a chamber being built at Lucent Enterprises.”

“Yeah, I remember,” Darien said, a note of hope in his voice as his hands rubbed her back in comforting circles. “Is it ready?”

“They just finished the final touches. If you’ll allow me to glamor you, I can get you in so she can have a treatment.”

“How risky is it?” Darien’s deep, inviting voice rumbled from his chest into hers, making her shiver for a reason unrelated to the cold and the rain.

“The wing it’s in is newly renovated and isn’t open for use yet. There aren’t any cameras, but the others in the building will need to be masked, and I’m afraid that’s beyond my capabilities.”

“That won’t be a problem,” Darien said as he got out his phone, typing with one hand while he kept his other arm wrapped snug around Loren’s waist.

As he made a call, the ringing line barely audible over the drumming of the rain on her hood, Loren made eye contact with Roark. He was usually so impossible to read, but right now she swore he looked…concerned. A father who genuinely cared about the wellbeing of his daughter.

“Kylar,” Darien said as his friend picked up. “I’m going to need you to do us a favor.”

Darien kepthis arms wrapped around Loren from behind, doing everything in his power to keep her warm, as Roark pressed buttons on the touchscreen by the door to the reverse chamber at Lucent Enterprises.

The hallway they stood in was painted a blinding shade of white, the air so cold they might as well be standing inside a refrigerator. Even to Darien and his stupidly high body temperature, it was freezing.

True to Roark’s word, no one was around but them, no cameras mounted on the walls. Kylar had kept up with them as they’d made their way through the massive building, masking the security tapes as they went from hallway to hallway and stairwell to stairwell. Glamors didn’t work on cameras, so masking the feeds was their only option.

Despite how hard she tried to hide it from him, Loren was still shivering so violently, he could hear her teeth chattering. The shaking hadn’t stopped since she’d nearly fainted out front of Erasmus’s townhouse. And now that she was barefoot and wearing nothing but the white two-piece bathing suit Roark had grabbed from a room across the hallway, it was only getting worse. Darien was so damn worried about her, he felt likehewas going to faint.

Roark said, “Do you remember which colors you used the last time she was in one of these?” Buttons beeped as he pressed the screen.

“All except black and gray,” he replied, rubbing his hands up and down Loren’s arms to warm them. Her skin was icy and pebbled with chills.

Roark pulled up a color wheel on the screen and activated every color, apart from black and gray, which had its own wheel that was separate from the rainbow option. That particular wheel consisted of a gradient that started with a light shade of gray and ended with the deepest black. Darien could only imagine how many of those shades made up his aura. A dark and ugly mess was probably what he’d see, if he ever had the chance to look at his inner self.