Then he released her. He pulled his sword and one of his guns. She pulled his second gun from its holster as he turned away. He let her take it. He ordered her telepathically, Stay behind me.

And let him get shot to pieces right in front of her?

Oh phooey! she snapped. She hopped out from behind to stand at his side. It earned her an infuriated growl.

Carling stood not five feet in front of them.

Drywall dust floated in the air. It lent a hazy dreamlike quality to the strange scene. Rhoswen stood unmoving in the center of the hall. The Vampyre who had first attacked Tiago was frozen in the process of crawling back through the hole where he had slammed through the wall. Another Vampyre lay sprawled on the floor, his chest singed black. The third male Vampyre had not reappeared from the stairwell. Eight humans dotted the hallway, each one held stationary by Carling’s Power.

Five guns were still trained where Tiago had stood just moments before. He nudged her gently with the back of one hand and moved sideways with her until they stood several paces to the left.

Carling mirrored their shift down the hall in a loose-limbed prowl, her hands relaxed at her sides, an elegant and barbaric woman in bare feet and Chanel suit. She regarded Tiago with her head cocked, her lovely dark almond-shaped eyes bright with interest. Her earlier anger and its accompanying disfigurement of cruelty appeared to have vanished as if it had never existed. And, Niniane noted with a surge of baffled irritation, Carling looked even more radiant than ever.

“You would have sacrificed yourself for her,” Carling said. “Interesting.”

Niniane rolled her eyes. Carling was too strange. She gave up trying to figure out what made the old Vampyre tick. Instead she turned her worried attention to Tiago.

The slashes on his face were already healing. He was no longer the monstrous Wyr caught in midshift. His bones had settled into a more familiar shape, and the terrifying hot white blaze that had taken over his eyes had darkened again. But lightning still flickered at the back of his black gaze, the muscles in his arms were cut with rigidity and his Power felt razorsharp, held in readiness for battle.

He exhibited a roaring disinterest in conversing with Carling. He said in Niniane’s head, I want you to move toward the stairwell. Do it now while she has her people in stasis.

She took in a slow, deep breath and cast a leery glance down at the huge weapon she had pulled from his shoulder holster. It was a large-bore .50 Magnum Desert Eagle. It probably fit the width of Tiago’s hand quite comfortably. In her much smaller grip it looked and felt like the hand cannon it really was. She had fired large-bore handguns before. They always knocked her on her ass unless she braced herself back against something. She found the gun’s safety and clicked it on.

She said to Carling, “You created this mess. What are you going to do to fix it?”

“What, indeed.” Carling lifted an eyebrow, turned her head to the side and said, “Rhoswen, make sure the guns do not fire.”

The blonde Vampyre flowed into smooth motion as if she had never been frozen in time. She moved from human to human down the hall, taking their guns, ejecting clips and placing them on the floor.

Niniane never took her attention fully away from Tiago. She was already braced when he lowered his head and gave her a goaded look. He bared his teeth at her in a classic sign of Wyr aggression. She put her hand on his forearm. She could feel the current of tension jumping through his body like a live wire.

He was incredible. His outside appearance was scary enough. Inside, his Power was barely held in check by the uncertain leash of his temper. She had heard that he called the lightning when he lost his temper. She had not realized he contained the lightning. She felt like she had been given the merest glimpse into the vast unseen landscape that lay cloaked inside him.

Raw emotion flickered in his dangerous face, and her heart melted.

I know, I’m sorry it’s hard, she whispered gently in his head. She stroked the hot skin of his forearm with a light touch, then she slipped his gun back into its holster underneath his arm. I didn’t do what I was told again. But Tiago, I am supposed to become a monarch. I can’t take orders and I can’t just run.

If she had not been touching him, she might have missed the slight ragged edge to his indrawn breath. Her heart melted further.

Carling spoke another foreign word. Her Power pulsed in the unnatural stillness. Down the hall, humans jerked in surprise and cursed to find themselves disarmed. The Vampyre Tiago had thrown into the stairwell raced back into the hall and slowed to a stop, his gaze locked on his mistress. The lightning-struck Vampyre twitched and groaned as his rapid healing resumed.

A feral growl sounded behind Niniane. It came from the Vampyre climbing through the hole in the wall. His glowing red eyes focused on Tiago, his long fangs distended. Tiago swept Niniane behind him with one hand as he shifted to meet the threat.

Carling said in warning, “Cowan, stop.”

The Vampyre launched with a hiss at Tiago. Tiago flowed into a defensive posture, sword held en garde.

Carling blurred. She caught hold of the Vampyre by the back of his neck. Her beautiful face was winter-cold, dark eyes twin shards of ice. In a move so fast Niniane couldn’t track it, Carling tore the Vampyre’s head from his body. The Vampyre’s body fell to the floor. Carling looked down into the face she held between her hands. The Vampyre’s mouth worked, as if he would say something, to plead for his life or to scream. Then his head and body crumbled into dust. Carling brushed her fingers together. She murmured, “He was always such an impetuous child.”

Niniane stared at the small pile of dust on the floor that used to be a thinking, reasoning creature. She stuffed her fingers against her mouth. Tiago shifted, holstered his own gun, put a heavy arm tight around her shoulders and hauled her against his side. She leaned against him, rested her head on his chest and closed her eyes. She wanted to crawl into that hidden country inside of him.

A noise from the stairwell made her jump. She made a muffled noise against Tiago’s shirt and his hold tightened on her.

The Dark Fae Commander Arethusa stood in the stairwell doorway, along with Hughes and a couple of the hotel security staff. They stared at the wreckage in the hallway, at Niniane and Tiago, and at Carling.

Niniane cleared her throat. She forced herself to say in a calm voice, “Everything is fine now. Scott, the bill for repairs on this should go to the Elder tribunal.” If the tribunal had an issue with that, they could take it up with Carling. Elder politics tended to be hard on architecture and the general population. Niniane looked at Carling and silently challenged her to deny it. Carling curled a nostril, but as her Vampyres had been the ones to initiate an actual attack, she kept silent.

Hughes nodded and backed into the stairwell. His expression was a study in horrified dismay.

Niniane’s gaze met the Dark Fae Commander’s hard stare. Arethusa had the tall, lean build that was typical of most Dark Fae, but instead of giving her a willowy look, her leanness was coiled with long muscles that gave her a pantherlike grace. Her black hair was pulled into a tight queue at the base of her neck, and her large gray eyes and angular face were cold with censure as she regarded Tiago’s arm around Niniane’s shoulders.

The Commander said, “You meddle where you do not belong, sentinel. Release the Dark Fae heir now or face the consequences.”

Niniane’s temper spilled over. She straightened and stepped away from Tiago, her hands in fists. “That will be enough, Commander,” she snapped. Arethusa’s gaze swept up to her face. “Please inform Chancellor Aubrey and Justice Kellen that I will meet with the Dark Fae, along with Councillor Severan, in the penthouse in two hours.”

“Your highness—” began Arethusa, her gaze turning flinty.

Niniane said between her teeth, “I am not having a good week, Commander. It is not a good idea to try my patience right now because at the moment I don’t have any. That will be all.”

The Dark Fae Commander’s mouth tightened as her gaze flicked back to Tiago then to Carling, who lifted one slender eyebrow. After a moment Arethusa gave a curt nod and stepped back from the doorway.

Niniane concentrated on getting her breathing under control. She focused on a mote of drywall dust dancing in the air. She growled, “Now I am going to take a shower. I am going to put on some real clothes, and I am going to calm down. Does anybody on this floor have a freaking problem with that?”

No one replied. Okay, fine. She took that as a no. She nodded to herself and headed for the stairwell.

The leashed lightning that was Tiago shadowed her. She had just stepped into the doorway, when Tiago said, “Just one thing.”

The rich, strong sound of his voice shocked her. She realized he had not spoken aloud since he had appeared. She swiveled.

He stood in the doorway facing Carling. His broad shoulders filled the space. Niniane could just see the outline of his profile. The planes and angles of his face were serrated. He hadn’t sheathed his sword. The tiny hairs at the back of her neck rose as he pointed the tip of the sword at Carling in naked threat. Every one of Carling’s people took a step toward him.

“If you do anything that puts her in danger again, I will burn down your world,” he said. The lightning was in his voice.

Carling’s eyes lit up. She smiled at him and said softly, “You might try.”

Tiago’s savage aggression. Carling’s sinuous deadliness. It was just too scary.

Niniane shouted at both of them, “Oh, for crying out loud!”

She left them to their standoff and stomped down the stairs.

Death prowled behind her. She couldn’t hear him but she knew he was there. She wouldn’t turn around again. She wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of showing him how freaked out she really was.

She reached the next floor down. That stairwell door was guarded by two uniformed police who stood aside as she approached. She smacked the door open with the flat of her hands and stormed down the hall. Last night she had been too sick to notice the number of the suite they had occupied, but it was easy enough to find. It was the only door with another pair of guards, a male and a sandy-haired lanky woman, standing at attention. Their bright smiles at her appearance vanished, and they paled as they looked at what followed in her wake.

She paused in front of the suite door and glared at it because she didn’t have a keycard. The sandy-haired woman opened the door for her. Not trusting herself to speak, Niniane gave the woman a curt nod before she stomped inside.

Then she reached the suite’s living room and came to a stop. Someone had come in to clean while she had been kidnapped. The breakfast dishes had been removed. The table gleamed with polish and a fresh bouquet of flowers. The coffee table was bare of gun parts, Tiago’s canvass duffle set against one wall. She could see the corner of her bed in the other room. It had been neatly made. The second bedroom door was closed. The heavy living room curtains had been drawn to reveal a bright, sunny Chicago day outside. A cerulean sky was dotted with fluffy white clouds.

She pressed her fists against her temples as she struggled with a sense of disorientation. It looked so normal out there in the sunshine, outside of this hotel filled with crazy people. She turned as Tiago entered the room and finally sheathed his sword. He unstrapped the scabbard and laid it on the table. Then he removed one of the shoulder holsters and put that on the table too.

The cataclysm that had consumed his expression had vanished as if it had never existed. His face had become a smooth blank.

Had he calmed down already? How did he do that? She hadn’t calmed down, not in the slightest.

Then he looked at her.

No. He wasn’t calm at all. The cataclysm still raged inside him.

Her breathing grew ragged and her mouth shook. Something breakable uncurled inside her, causing her to open up her arms to him. For the space of a single heartbeat she pleaded with him in silence. Please don’t reject this. Don’t turn away from me.

Tiago took the short distance toward her in a lunge. He snatched her up. She wrapped her arms around his neck and clung tight as he held her in a grip that threatened to cut off her air supply. His dark head lowered, and he buried his face in the crook of her neck.

She cupped his head with a hand, stroked his short hair and murmured to him. She hardly paid attention to what she said. The words didn’t matter. “I know. I’m sorry. I was scared too. I was so scared. Thank you for coming after me. Thank you so much for finding me.”

He sank to the floor and sat on his heels, bringing her down with him until she straddled his lap. He rocked her, savoring with desperate focus all the sensual evidence of her, the weight of her body and shape of her graceful, delicate bones, her arms holding on to him as tightly as he held on to her, the touch of those small, gentle fingers.

When Niniane had disappeared, he had gone to a place he had never been to before.

He had panicked.

He reassembled his guns in seconds. He informed Cameron so she could mobilize police and call in a forensic witch to analyze the Power in the bedroom before it could fully dissipate. He called New York. Then he strapped on his guns and his sword and came to a complete standstill, because he did not have a clue how to track Niniane through the maelstrom of energy that had taken her.

She had vanished into thin air. She was just gone. The horror of it, the wrongness, had opened up a black hole inside of him that sucked away everything else—any sense of decency or perspective or moral compass—it all vanished until what had been left behind was a howling beast that would savage anyone or anything that got in its way.

Desperation drove him up to Carling’s floor, which had turned out to be a stroke of sheer dumb f**king luck. He hadn’t been capable or clever. He went to ask Carling to help him track Niniane down. He had been prepared to do something he had never done before. He had been ready to beg. Then he caught a whiff of Niniane’s delicate fragrance in a place where it should not have been, and the beast consumed him.