“You told her about Sera? About her second Skill? How?” It shouldn’t have been possible. The one caveat to his freedom was that he couldn’t tell anyone about where we’d been that day or that Sera had a second Skill.

Mitch glanced at me, then at Julia, obviously asking silent permission for something. She waved one hand at me in a “be my guest” gesture and Mitch dropped his shoes on the floor and zipped his pants, then padded across the concrete toward me in sock feet.

“Your baby sister has no idea what a help she was on that front. I ‘snuck’ in to see her and begged her to break my binding. To free me. She has no idea Sera even exists, and once she’d broken my binding to Jake Tower’s bastard, I was free to renew my vows to the true heir.” He glanced back at Julia, evidently expecting to be rewarded with a smile or a word of gratitude, but as far as I knew, Julia was unfamiliar with both concepts. I also knew that the fact that he’d had information for her was the only reason she’d taken him back instead of killing him.

“Mitch, do you have a knife?”

“Not on me.” He banished disappointment from his face with visible effort. “I thought Kori and Ian would be less likely to shoot me on sight if I was unarmed.”

“Oh, that’s right. You were afraid to take a knife to a gunfight.” Julia rolled her eyes, then held her hand out to one of the two guards standing against the wall. He pulled a serrated hunting knife from its sheath at his side, then gave it to her, handle first.

My temper surged when she started across the floor toward me, wielding the knife like a conspicuous threat. “What do you know about Kristopher Daniels?” she said, and I realized she was talking to Mitch.

He shrugged. “Only what I’ve heard. He’s a Traveler, like Kori. Better with a gun than she is, but less experienced with knives. No word yet on his hand-to-hand.”

Julia stopped two feet in front of me, feet spread in her scary stilettos, hip cocked to the left, knife held ready at her side. “Is he worth keeping, if he could be persuaded to join the cause?”

Persuaded? She meant bound. And the only Binder in the city strong enough to make a nonconsensual binding stick was my little sister.

“It does seem like a shame to waste the resource, if you don’t have to.” Mitch pulled his shirt off and turned it right side in. “He’ll be useful for dealing with his sister, like Kori was. He’ll fight you, though.”

“Oh, good.” Julia held the knife up, and the serrated blade gleamed in the bright lights from overhead. “I love it when they struggle.” She turned to Mitch again and gestured with her knife. Your stuff’s over there on the table. Bring me a sheet of paper.”

I wanted to see what his “stuff”—presumably the weapons he hadn’t worn for fear of Kori and Ian—but I knew better than to look away from a psychotic bitch with a knife in her hand.

Something clattered on my left, and a minute later Mitch padded back into sight sliding a gun into his shoulder holster, a blank sheet of paper in one hand. He gave Julia the paper, and she knelt in her pencil skirt and heels to set it on the floor at my feet.

“She won’t do it,” I said, fighting chills as she ran the tip of the knife lightly down the left side of my neck without breaking my skin. “Kenley won’t bind me to you.”

“Oh, I think she will, if the alternative is your prolonged death and her own long-term suffering. She’ll bind you because she knows that as long as you’re alive, there’s still a tiny chance you could rescue her, or vice versa.” She pressed harder with her knife and my jaw clenched when the point bit into my skin. “Hope is more dangerous than any weapon ever wielded, Kristopher Daniels.” My name sounded like profanity, falling from her lips, and I wanted to tear her tongue out as warm blood dripped down my neck. “False hope, even more so. Your sister is going to bind you into a simple servitude contract composed of too few words to form loopholes, because the alternative is nothing she wants to think about.” She drew her left index finger up my neck, and it slid too easily over my skin, slick with blood, the key to any man’s undoing. “In fact, I think you’re going to tell her to bind you, because the alternative is something you won’t want to see or hear. Something you won’t want to know you caused.”

“I will tear your throat out the first chance I get.”

“There won’t be a chance.” Julia set down her knife and picked up the paper, then made a show of stamping her fingerfull of my blood at the bottom of the page, where my signature would go, if I were to sign the document that would precede it.

But I wouldn’t sign.

And that wouldn’t matter—not with Kenley sealing the binding.

Julia wiped the blade of the knife on her dark skirt, then handed it back to her guard. Then she pulled a pen from the purse she’d left on her chair and held the blank sheet of paper against the wall, so she could write on it. She scribbled for mere seconds. Only two lines.

My heart thumped so hard I could practically hear it. I was too far away to read the lines, but I could tell from the brevity that she was right—there weren’t enough words to form a decent loophole. It probably said something like, “Kristopher Daniels will protect me with his every breath and obey my every order, whether stated or implied.”

Julia Tower was every bit as much of a monster as the one she’d replaced.

“Watch him,” she said to Mitch, who now sat in her chair, putting his shoes on. Then she disappeared through the door, into the short hall that would lead her to the room where my sister was being held.