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“I’m fine,” he said quietly. But he wasn’t fine—she knew that.

So she asked him again, “How are you, really?”

He hesitated, just for a moment, rubbing his brow with his thumb and forefinger. “I’m tired, baby,” he confessed, his voice husky. “I’m very tired.”

A weight tugged on her heart. He looked exhausted, but when he’d said he was tired, she knew he hadn’t meant the physical kind.

He lowered his hand with a barely audible sigh, and opened his eyes.

Black—his eyes were black. He never got a night off, did he? Even after everything that’d happened with the Huntsmen, all the blood he’d spilt, his demons would not let him rest.

He opened his fist and studied the pendant in the palm of his hand. It was the locket—the one shaped like a pair of overlapping angel wings. “I was hoping we would’ve found him by now,” he said.

Mortifer. He was talking about Mortifer.

Before Lace had delivered the final blow to the uncle who’d emotionally scarred her, Lionel had snitched on Gaven Payne in an attempt to save his own life, revealing that it was the weapons dealer who’d taken Mortifer into his possession the night of the break-in. But Gaven’s aura was being masked, and every time the Devils tried to track him, they were met with a dead end.

Loren could only imagine the defeat they must be feeling. So much bloodshed…for nothing.

Gazing blankly at the moonlight glinting off the turquoise water in the pool, Darien whispered, “I’ve watched the security footage from that night more times than I can count. And every time I watch it, I ask myself why he didn’t run. He can teleport, for fuck’s sake. He could have just—poof—disappeared. But he didn’t. He stayed right where he was, on that fucking fridge. And I remembered…before I left to bring you to Yveswich, I asked him to take care of the house. I asked him to watch the house and look after the others. I told him it was an important job and that I trusted him to do it for me.” His throat bobbed. “That’s why he didn’t run. Because of me.” His eyelids fell shut. “He didn’t run because of me.”

She wordlessly slid her arms around his shoulders, holding him closer. “It wasn’t your fault?—”

“I want him back.” Darien’s confession was a cracked whisper.

A minute of silence passed, and then he drew a breath, opened his eyes that were still a charred black, and said, “I’m worried about Travis and Max, too. I feel like I failed them.” He cupped his mouth with one hand and stared out at the yard, his other hand forming a new fist around the locket.

She crouched beside him and laid a hand across his thigh. “Darien, look at me,” she said gently.

He didn’t; he just kept staring blankly at the pool. His expression was so filled with torture, it made the space behind her eyes ache.

She slipped her hand across his chin and turned his head so he was looking her in the eye. As she held his stare, the black of the Sight went away after two blinks.

“They’re going to be okay,” she told him. “I promise.”

He took her hand that was still grasping his chin into his and kissed her fingertips.

“Is there a picture?” she asked him. She got up and sat down beside him on the chair, his thigh warming hers. When his brow flickered with question, she gestured to the locket in his hand.

“Oh—yeah, do you want to see?” Carefully, he opened the locket and passed it to her.

The woman in the picture was his mother. Elsie Cassel.

“She’s beautiful,” Loren said.

“Thank you.” His voice was gruff.

“She has your smile,” she told him, glancing between him and the photograph. She had his dimple, too, in the same cheek. “Did she give you this necklace?”

He nodded. “I put the picture in there myself. After she…” He didn’t finish his sentence.

Gently, she snapped the locket shut and flipped it over. Engraved on the back of it in admirable calligraphy was the phrase,Love Must Always Win.

“What does it mean?” she asked him.

“It’s a reminder. To choose love, kindness. To never lose sight of the things that matter. And that love is a powerful force that always triumphs, no matter how dark the road.”

She turned the locket from side to side, watching as the limited light in the area glinted off the finely carved letters. “Beautiful,” she said. She handed it back to him.