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“That’s it?”

“You did what was necessary, and for that you have my gratitude.”

“Oh. That’s okay, then.”

Maybe her emotional attachment to him had misled her into thinking he was more vulnerable than he truly was. He might only want to see the bodies to make sure his brother really was dead this time. She paused at the door to the trophy room, which stood open, the guards dismissed. Hopefully there were no black dragons lurking around either.

“Can we go and look in here?”

“Of course.”

He waited for her to walk past him into the vast room.

“I thought most of this stuff would’ve disappeared with the death of the sect.”

Vadim turned in a slow circle, taking it all in. “I suspect there are still other members. We just don’t know about them yet.”

“Good point.” She carried on through the room, heading for the back wall.

“What are you looking for?”

“My face.” She sighed. “I’m going to kind of miss it, and then there’s all that hassle of getting a new driver’s license, passport…”

“Ella—”

“Hey!” She spotted Brad Dailey’s face. “It worked!” She looked over her shoulder at Vadim. “Was Ciaran a blond version of you?”

“Yes.”

“I hoped so.” She whistled. “It was a bit of a risk, but I’m so glad I went for it.”

“For what?”

There was a hint of impatience back in his voice, which made her feel much happier. She moved out of the way so that he could see the three faces on the gold plinths.

“Adam’s replaced you.” Vadim said slowly. “Did you expect that to happen?”

“Well, I thought it might work. The only thing is, what happened to my face? I hope I didn’t end up on your brother. We definitely do need to check out those bodies.”

He caught her hand. “You chose to kill him because youhopedyou’d exchange faces?”

“Yeah, I guessed there needed to be a group of three to spring the spell, and as the Fae Royal thing wasn’t going to happen and Brad and Ms. Phelps were already dead, I reckoned Adam needed one more victim. I still didn’t get my face back, but it did stop him adding me to his list of trophies.” She shrugged. “I bet he didn’t think he’d be the one doing the dying this time.”

“Why didn’t you share this theory with me?”

He was towering over her now, his beautiful blue eyes narrowed.

“I wasn’t quite sure which configuration was going to work. Originally I thought he wanted you, Nia and your father, but when that all changed, I substituted my own plan.”

“And didn’t tell me.”

Each word was spaced out and radiated fury. She gazed up at him and tried a smile. “You were rather stressed at the time. I didn’t want to worry you.”

“Stressed… And when,exactlydid you come up with this idea that Adam was attempting to complete a hat trick of Fae royalty?”

“Dude, I told you that ages ago. When we were in that protected glen. When Adam had me up in the air back there, my theories kind of coalesced.”

“You mentioned only that you believed Adam wished to rule Otherworld.”