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Whose side am I on?

Fishing her phone out of her bag, she dialed Rinaldo. It rang a few times before the line picked up.

“You’re fucking kidding me.”

She smiled at the sound of the angry older priest on the other side. “Is Ally okay?”

“She’s fine. What the fuck, Maggie?”

“Don’t pretend like you didn’t have orders to keep me your prisoner at the Vatican, Rinnie,” she said in a hushed voice, even though she was damn certain Gideon couldn’t hear her. He was too busy letting out muffled cries of pain from the bathroom.

Rinaldo didn’t answer. That was as much of a confirmation as she would ever need.

“Listen up, priest. I’ll do this. I’ll find Gideon’s phylactery. But I’ll be the one to decide what to do with it. And I’m going to do this my way, not yours.” She hung up on him.

Sitting back in the chair, she let out a long, tired groan. Algernon let out a small squeak, and she smiled down at him and scratched the critter’s bony head.

“I really am the most fucked up Disney princess, aren’t I?” She scratched under Algernon’s one remaining ear. The rat started kicking its back leg like a dog, and she chuckled. “I even have a cute animal sidekick.”

When the shower turned off, she looked up at the bathroom door. It clicked open, and there stood Gideon.

Shirtless.

His black pants clung to a damp form, and he had a white towel pressed to his chest. It was stained a dark shade of crimson. He moved to the edge of one of the queen beds and sat down hard on it. His white hair was slicked back, but she knew that some of the beads of liquid on him were sweat.

His expression was drawn tight in pain. A roll of bandages was in his hand along with a large square of gauze, but how he planned on putting it on himself when he couldn’t even sit up straight from the agony of his wound, she had no idea. Putting Algernon on the windowsill, she stood and crossed the room to him. Taking the bandage from his hand, she nudged the towel away from his chest.

She winced at what she saw. The center of his chest was a large, raw cut. It was already closed, and the bleeding was slowed to a mild ooze, but it looked hideously painful. She carefully pressed the large square of gauze to the cut and began to wrap it around him, over one shoulder and over the other side in an X.

His eyes were shut, and his head was tilted forward toward her, as if her presence were enough to soothe his pain. “Nice to have it back,” he whispered. “Thank you.”

“I don’t forgive you.”

“I don’t expect you ever will. The more you learn, the deeper my grave will become.” His hand touched the back of her knee, resting there, and she straightened from her work bandaging him to meet his gaze.

He was looking up at her with that damnable longing again, that strange expression that came hand-in-hand with heartbreak and adoration. He was so beautiful. She wondered if they had ever kissed before. He said that they were not lovers—but had they ever made love, even once?

“Are you my prince or my villain?”

The warmth left his eyes, and the coldness of the grave was all that remained. “That remains to be seen. You need your memories, and I need my phylactery mended, before you will be able to decide which I am.”

She sat on the bed beside him and looked out at the view of the city. She could see dark smoke rising into the sky a dozen or so blocks over, peeking up over the spires of the Vatican.

Taking a deep breath, she held it, and then let it out in a rush. She made her decision.

Fuck this fairy tale.

“Where do we start?”