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“Let Catrin go, and we’ll talk about it.”

“Not until you do the spell.”

She gritted her teeth. “You said if we came alone, you would release her.”

“I lied.” He shrugged. “But believe me—I have no wish to harm her.”

“Further,” Regan muttered.

“Further,” he agreed.

“If you lied about this, how do I know you’re not lying now? How do I know you’ll let her go once I’ve opened the portal?”

“I will swear an oath. You know such things are not lightly broken.”

“And what about us?” She indicated herself and Caleb. “Will you let us go free as well?”

“I swear to you, open the portal, and I will let the three of you go free.”

Regan wished it was an option. She wanted so much to go free. For the first time in so long, the future held a sense of excitement and anticipation. She wanted a life with Caleb more than anything she’d ever wanted before. She could almost taste it.

But it wasn’t going to happen. No way would she open the portal to Hell, but she couldn’t let Sardi see that. They needed time to work out how to free Catrin. She didn’t see how—she was closely guarded—but perhaps Caleb would have an idea.

“I need time to think about this,” she said.

“What’s there to think about? You all live, or you all die. It’s that simple.”

“Nothing is that simple. I do this, and I’ll be an outcast. The Council will hunt me down. And Caleb will be tied to me; they’ll kill him on sight. We need to talk. He needs to agree to this.”

She stepped toward Sardi and put her hand on his arm, stifling her sense of revulsion. She spoke in a low voice as though for Sardi’s ears alone. “I can make him cooperate, just give me an hour with him alone.”

Sardi looked from her to Caleb, then back to her. “Half an hour.”

She fought to keep her relief from showing as she turned away to speak to Caleb.

“Regan!” Sardi called her back. “Take longer than half an hour, and I will order my hounds to rip your sister into little pieces.”

She studied his face, searching for some vestige of the man she had fallen in love with. He was so handsome; she could understand how she had fallen for him, but the pretty exterior hid the heart and conscience of a demon.

A thought occurred to her then—it wasn’t his fault. He was a demon. He would always be a demon. And with that thought came another. Secretly, she’d always believed that what had happened between them was because of something bad in her character. Like called to like, but that wasn’t really the case. She’d been young, impressionable, experiencing her first real freedom, and Sardi had set out to make her fall in love with him, hiding his true nature.

She’d made a terrible mistake, but afterward she’d done what she could to put it right, and then spent the rest of her long life making up for it. Now, it was time to forgive herself, and deep inside her, two thousand years’ worth of guilt unraveled.

She turned to Caleb—she needed to tell him something. “Let’s go.”

They walked from the clearing in silence, not touching. At the tree line, Regan glanced back toward her sister. Catrin watched them, her eyes wide, and Regan tried for a reassuring smile. She was pretty sure she failed, but Catrin smiled back, and Regan’s resolve hardened. She could see no way out of this for them, and she had almost accepted that—could only hope that she and Caleb would meet again in another life—but Catrin was going to come out of this alive and well. Anything else was unacceptable.

They walked until they could no longer hear the growling of the hellhounds, then Caleb turned to her. Without speaking, he took her in his arms, backed her against the trunk of a huge oak tree, and kissed her.

They made love without words, slowly, erotically, until the last moments, when pleasure pulsated through her body. She framed his face with her hands and looked deep into eyes darkened by passion.

“I love you,” she said.

“I know.”

“You’d be better off if I didn’t. You’d be better off if you’d never met me.”

“Way better off.” He kissed her forehead, then her cheek and the corner of her mouth.