Oh, gee, wait, I did. On Ryodan’s word alone, I’d turned on him.

The accusation of betrayal in the beast’s gaze hadn’t been an illusion. It had been Jericho Barrons in there, staring at me from behind that prehistoric brow, baring his fangs, reproach and hatred blazing in his feral yellow eyes. I’d broken our unspoken pact. He’d been my guardian demon and I’d killed him.

Had he despised me for not seeing through the hide of the beast he’d worn to the man within?

See me. How many times had he said that to me? See me when you look at me!

When it mattered most, I’d been blind. He’d been dogging my every step, treating me with that characteristic Barrons’ combination of aggression and animal possessiveness, and I’d never once recognized him.

I’d failed him.

He’d come to me in a barbaric, inhuman form, to keep me alive. He’d set himself up as IYD regardless of what it might cost him, knowing he would be turned into a mindless, raging beast capable only of slaughtering everything in his immediate vicinity but for one thing.

Me.

God, that look!

I cover my face with my hands, but the image won’t go away: beast and Barrons, his dark skin and exotic face, its slate hide and primal features. Those ancient eyes that saw so much and asked only to be seen in return burn with scorn: Couldn’t you have trusted me just once? Couldn’t you have hoped for the best, just once? Why did you choose Ryodan over me? I was keeping you alive. I had a plan. Did I ever let you down?

“I didn’t know it was you!” I gouge my palms with my nails. They bleed for a brief moment, then heal.

But the beast/Barrons in my mind isn’t done torturing me. You should have. I took your sweater. I smelled you and granted you passage. I killed fresh, tender meat for you. I pissed around you. I showed you in this form, as in any other, that you are mine—and I take care of what is mine.

Tears blind me. I double over. It hurts so bad I can’t breathe, can’t move. I hunch over, curl in on myself, and rock.

Beyond the pain, if there is such a place, I know things.

Things like: According to Ryodan (if he’s not a traitor, and if he is and somehow still alive, I’ll kill him as dead as we killed Barrons), I have a brand on the back of my skull placed there by the Lord Master, who probably still has my parents, because Barrons is here, so obviously he never got through to Ashford.

Unless … time passes differently in the Silvers and he did have time to get to Ashford before I punched IYD, summoning him here to the seventh dimension I’ve been in since entering the Lord Master’s slippery pink corridor back in Dublin.

I have no idea how long I was in the Hall of All Days or how much time passed in the real world while I sunned with Christian by the lake.

Once, courtesy of V’lane, I spent a singleafternoon on a beach in Faery, with an illusion of my sister, and it cost me an entire month in the human world. When I returned, Barrons was furious. He’d chained me to a beam in his garage. I’d been wearing a hot-pink string bikini.

We fought.

I close my eyes and embrace the memory.

He stands there, furious, surrounded by needles and dyes, about to tattoo me—or, more accurately, pretend to tattoo me where he’s already tattooed me but I haven’t discovered it yet—so he can track me if I ever decide to do something as stupid as agree to stay in Faery for any period of time again.

I tell him if he tattoos me, we’re through. I accuse him of never feeling anything more than greed and mockery, being incapable of love. I call him a mercenary, blame him for losing his temper when he couldn’t find me and trashing the store, and, while I scathingly concede that he might get an occasional hard-on, it’s undoubtedly for something like money, an artifact, or a book—never a woman.

I remember every word of his reply: Yes, I have loved, Ms. Lane, and although it’s none of your business, I have lost. Many things. And, no, I am not like any other player in this game and I will never be like V’lane, and I get a hard-on a great deal more often than occasionally. Sometimes it’s over a spoiled little girl, not a woman at all. And, yes, I trashed the bookstore when I couldn’t find you. You’ll have to choose a new bedroom, too. And I’m sorry your pretty little world got all screwed up, but everybody’s does, and you go on. It’s how you go on that defines you.

In retrospect, I see through myself with pathetic ease.

There I am, chained to a beam, nearly naked, alone with Jericho Barrons, a man who is so far beyond my comprehension, but, God, he excites me! He plans to work slowly and carefully on my naked skin for hours. His hard, tattooed body is an unspoken promise of initiation into a secret world where I could feel things I can’t begin to imagine, and I want him to work on me for hours. Desperately. But not to tattoo me. I goad him to the best of my naÑ—ve, sheltered abilities. I want him to take from me what I lack the courage to offer.

What a complicated, ridiculous, self-destructive feeling! Afraid to ask for what I want. Afraid to own up to my own desires. Driven by circumscription of nurture, not nature. I’d come to Dublin wearing shackles on my bonds. I’d been all nurture.

He was all nature—trying to teach me to change.

Like I said: degrees of denial.

He’d leaned into me, in that garage, sex and barely leashed violence, and when I’d felt his hard-on, it made me feel so alive and wild inside that later I’d had to peel off my bikini and take care of myself in the shower again and again, fantasizing a very different outcome in his garage. One that had taken all night.