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More laughter came from under the rafters and I watched, unable to move as Isabel struggled to break free. At first, I couldn’t understand why she didn’t just overpower the younger vamp, but as Émilie sank her teeth into Isabel’s throat, I remembered again why they were so strong.

Isabel fell limp as Émilie drank, like a puppet whose strings had been cut. Loosening her hold enough to drag a long thin blade jaggedly across my friend’s throat, she tossed her aside into the sunlit patch in the centre of the barn.

I bounded across the short distance, heedless of my injuries, to drag her out of the light. A slippery trail marked the ground as what was left of her blood poured forth from her throat, marking a clear line in the dirt between us.

Her skin was hot under my hands, which couldn’t be good. Resting her as gently as I could manage against the wall of the barn, I turned back to Alistair but was stopped before I could speak. Something sharp poked into the small of my back – Émilie’s knife.

“Would it be murder to kill a vampire, Erin? Please enlighten me. How isheany less selfish and manipulative than before you knew the truth?” Her voice was a loud whisper in my ear, as she pulled my hair away almost delicately with the half-healed stump of her arm.

I flinched away, but she forced me forward, pressing a small golden dagger into my hand as she did so. My fingers curled around it instinctively, but there was no way I could use it against her – and she knew it – not with her knife still sharp in my spine.

“Look at him, the sole survivor of your rescue team – that is, assuming Wyatt cops it,” she giggled. “Do you think this man – who you claim to love – do you think he tried to save Tommy when I took him? Or do you think he tried to save himself, as he always does?”

I pulled away from her physically and mentally, her breath cold at my throat. Nicholas wouldn’t have let Tom get hurt. He knew how much he meant to me.

“You know what he did, Erin. You see what he is when you look at me, I know you do. You understand.” An undercurrent of anger ran beneath Alistair’s words. He jerked Nicholas’s head back, exposing his throat. “End him now, by your own hand, or watch as I make him suffer every torment he left me to endure.

“He deserves to die for what he has done, and for the countless others he has destroyed or abandoned. How many of his kind have you killed? I see no reasonce monstreshould be an exception.”

I said nothing as Émilie’s knife broke the skin on my back, urging me forward. I could feel Nicholas watching me. He would let me do it, I realised. If I chose to kill him, he wouldn’t fight back. The tension around his eyes softened infinitesimally – a subtle surrender that said he understood, whatever happened next.

Alistair kicked Nicholas to my feet, by the edge of the circle of light. I fell to my knees before him, the knife still in one hand, the scalpel hidden in the other. No longer noticing the other pains in my body, I could only find concern for the man before me – because a man was what he was. Not just a vampire.

“No.” The word came out stronger than I felt.

“Then you condemn him to far worse,” Alistair spat, splashing Nicholas with clear liquid from a small bottle in his hand that made him flinch and roar. The air filled with the sharp, acrid smell of chlorine, and the sizzle of burning flesh. “His pain will be legendary,ma petite chasseuse. And you shall watch every moment, knowing you could have granted him a merciful death.”

“This thing,ce monstre– he left me todie, Erin. Did he tell you how we went to fight together, or did he tell you the truth – that I did not want to go?Ma mère, she was ill. He knew that when he insisted I accompany him. It was not my war. I did not care for the freedom of the humans.”

Alistair paced, walking the perimeter around them as he spoke, punctuating each word with precise dashes of acid so that Nicholas growled and jerked away.

My hand trembled on the blade. I could end his suffering now. But as I met Nicholas’s eyes again, I saw past his agony to the fierceness that had drawn me to him. The man who’d searched centuries for me. Who’d fought his way back from darkness and looked at me now with love, even as he burned. He would die for me, here and now, if I asked it.

I let Émilie’s blade clatter to the ground. “I won’t do it.”

Triumph flashed in Nicholas’s eyes even as Alistair’s face tightened with controlled fury. He sank to a crouch beside Nicholas, forcing the knife I’d dropped to his throat, his movements stiff and obviously painful.

“Then you do not understand the lies he has told.” A singledrop of blood fell from the knife as he wrenched Nicholas’s head back further.

“He knew I was too young, you know. That I would not survive if they took us. There would be no way to feed and no way out, and so he made me a promise. We would leave together or die together. That was the deal, and I would seema mèreagain. But he abandoned me.”

He paused, his scarred face contorting with the memory. “He fled while he still could, thinking me dead. But I would not die, you see? No matter what they did to me.” His voice dropped, venomous. “That is how they learned what I was. The torture that would kill a man… I lived through it all. And then –mon Dieu– then they truly began their work.”

Nicholas strained against his bonds as Alistair’s words poured forth like poison. “They took my blood, making more of us. More subjects for their experiments.” He emptied a fine trail of liquid down Nicholas’s chest, watching it eat through his shirt with detached interest as Nicholas twitched and snarled. My heart ached to see it –the proud warrior destroyed by his greatest shame.

“Can you imagine what it is like to drown in acid, Erin? To choke on your own lungs until you beg to die?” He turned the bottle in his hand, examining it. “When we were liberated… the hunger was…” He shook his head, disgust clear. “The only ones left breathing were those they had made from my blood. I did not think about what I did until after. Only that I must survive.”

“And see what surviving has made me,n’est-ce pas?” He gestured at his ravaged form. “This ruined body functions onlyon vampire blood. Your precious Nicholas thought me dead and ran, though he could have killed them all. Andma mère…” His scarred fingers curled into fists, knuckles white against his ravaged skin. “After all she did for him… she died alone. I did not make it back to see her before she left this world.” His scarred face broke with fresh pain. “He left me to become something even our kind considersmonstrueux.” He stood stiffly and pointed at Nicholas as he poured more of the liquid onto his chest. Nicholas gritted his teeth against it. A muscle jumped in his jaw.

I heard his words. I heard the list of crimes. But all I could do was focus on the face before me.

Nicholas’s nostrils flared each time the liquid touched him, but he had stopped resisting, his back straight as he stared at the ground and took his punishment. There was no fight in him now – only acceptance, each burn penance for his sins. I reached out to touch him, drawing his eyes to mine. I tried to tell him I’d never hurt him, that I loved him, though I couldn’t speak.

Émilie had retreated when I’d fallen to my knees, but her blade returned now, digging a little further into my back. Her hand and arm were exposed to the sun without apparent consequence, her skin merely pinker than usual. The sharp pierce of pain as her knife sunk into my flesh made me yelp, drawing Nicholas’s gaze back to me.

I flicked my eyes in the direction of the ropes binding Nicholas as he winced away from another splash of acid, grasping at his hands with my own and hoping he understood. Taking care to hide it from Émilie’s view, I handed over thescalpel I still held. His pupils flared and he shook his head, the movement almost imperceptible. Alistair was still talking at us. I nodded, ignoring Nicholas’s alarm.

“… have been searching for you ever since, you see. There would be no satisfaction to my revenge if I were to take from him only his pitiful attempt atréparation. I knew I must wait; must rip away that which he loved.” I almost heard him smirk. “I could make this torment last for days, or you could accept the truth – that it must be you that takes his life. The ultimate betrayal, as he betrayed me.”