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W as it another vision or only a horrible nightmare? Destiny couldn’t tell anymore. The two had become so intertwined, so much alike, one might as well be the other.

Either that or she no longer had any dreams other than the visions.

“Don’t go. Please, wait for me.” Jesse’s whispered pleas hovered around her, the words vibrating against her eardrums.

She was in a wide stone hallway, large and airy with small lights disguised as candles spaced along one side of the wall and large windows covering the other side. She moved soundlessly down the passageway, flowing without substance, more a fog of energy than an actual being. Her essence rippled through the air until she reached the place she somehow knew she was supposed to be.

She entered a fabulously feminine room, with chairs and a chaise lounge placed invitingly in front of a large fireplace. Against the opposite wall sat an ornate desk and chair surrounded on both sides by floor-to-ceiling windows, their gauzy coverings dancing on a light breeze.

Crossing to her right, she stopped at a door, knowing to the depths of her soul that whatever she might find behind the carved wooden portal would alter her world forever.

“Please. Don’t go in there. Wait for me.” Jesse’s voice came from farther away, but even from this distance, it pained her to hear it.

She couldn’t stop. She knew it now.

The door opened and she started to enter, pulling up short as she realized there were people in this room.

“Devlin?” She spoke aloud, but there was no sound coming from her—even her words were as the mist.

He stood, arrogantly naked, his side to her, his handsome profile in sharp relief. Only when he spoke did she realize her mistake.

“So sorry for this inconvenient interruption, sweetness. Will you miss me until I return?”

The cruel voice belonged to Dermond, not Devlin.

“I hate you.”

Leah’s voice? Destiny tried to move forward into the room, struggled to see around the large door to where her sister’s voice seemed to come from.

“So you say now. But you’ll change your mind.” Dermond chuckled to himself as he stepped into his pants, pulling them up his long legs, staring straight ahead as he did so. “You’ll learn to enjoy it, pet. Once I show you what I can do. I promise.”

What was that animal doing in the same room with her sister, and without his clothes on? Again she tried to force herself forward and again she met resistance.

“Never!” Leah again, her voice stronger this time, dripping with venom. “You’ll rot in hell first.”

Dermond laughed at her sister’s threat, advancing across Destiny’s line of vision. Only as he swaggered beyond her sight was she able to move a little farther into the room.

Far enough to see around the open door.

Far enough that she wished she hadn’t come inside the room.

Leah sat in the middle of a huge four-poster bed, bare but for the scrap of silk pooled at her hips and a pillow she clutched in front of her. A thin strap tied around one of the posters stretched across the corner of the bed to the girl, where it was attached to her wrist.

Destiny’s heart broke looking into her sister’s face, a splotchy pink, swollen from crying. But her eyes! Her eyes glowed with the intensity of her hatred, and in those eyes Destiny saw what her sister had endured.

What Dermond had tried to do to her.

And Leah’s hatred became her own.

“No, pet. You won’t see me dead.” He reached out, grabbing the girl’s arm with one hand as she swung at him. “But you will see me here again. And next time, we’ll actually finish what we almost started.” He tangled his other hand in her hair, pulling her face close to his, forcing his mouth over hers.

When he broke away, she spit at him, and again he laughed, wiping the side of his face. Still laughing, he turned toward the doorway, leaving Leah behind.

Rage such as Destiny had never known filled her as Dermond strode across the room toward her. She wanted nothing more at the moment than to attack the monster who had done this to her sister. To fling herself at him, hitting, biting, scratching, hurting him in any way she could.

Instead she floated there, helplessly, as he walked right through her and out the door, leaving her empty and shattered.

“Don’t go there. For me.”

Even as she watched her sister curled up on the bed, crying, even as she tried to move toward Leah, wanting to comfort her, she heard Jesse’s voice again and felt herself torn apart, breaking into little pieces scattered on the wind.

She had no choice. She had never had any choice.

And if saving her sister meant losing Jesse, it was a price she’d have to pay.