the day we were born, because whatever had happened to us had not transferred over any clothes. She had looked newborn in other ways, too. Her face had been as soft and vulnerable as a child’s, her eyes huge and dark and startled, her body hunched and small, silhouetted for an instant before the manic green fury of the portal.
And then she was gone.
I had lost both of them in one night.
“Shhh,” Louis-Cesare murmured against my hair, his arms tightening around me. “You’re safe. You’re safe and it’s all right now.”
I wanted to scream at him that it wasn’t all right, that it would never be all right again. But I couldn’t. If I did, that horrible mewling cry I was barely keeping behind my teeth might escape and I couldn’t risk that. Couldn’t let him know weak I felt, how vulnerable without my other half.
Sister, I thought, and felt my face crumple.
A strong hand cradled my head, and pulled me against a chest that was warm, hard and comforting. I’d always felt safe in Louis-Cesare’s arms, peaceful and calm, like nothing else mattered. But not tonight.
Tonight, I was about to crawl out of my skin.
I knew he could feel it, could detect the minute tremble I couldn’t control. Could hear the rapid beat of my pulse, the fight or flight response kicking in with a vengeance. Could smell my emotions on the air: sweat, adrenaline, and all the unnamed chemicals that passed humans by without notice, but to a vamp . . .
Said more than I wanted them to.
But he didn’t try to pressure me to talk. Instead, a rhythmic massage of my scalp began, by fingers strong enough to punch through a wall. But with me they were gentle, so gentle, with just enough pressure to ground me and keep me from falling over the edge. I’d always been the excitable one, the fly-off-the-handle one, the impulsive, crazy one.
Or so everyone had said. Tonight, for the first time, I agreed with them. Tonight, I wanted to scream, to cry, to savage those who had destroyed my family.
Dorina, my sister, and lately, my friend. Louis-Cesare, my lover, and brand-new husband. And Ray . . .
Ray hurt worst of all, maybe because he was my direct responsibility. Or because I had seen what happened to him. Dragged through the portal, not by the fey, who had thrown him aside like so much garbage, but by the power of the vortex itself.
My stalwart defender, he’d had no reason to trust a dhampir of all things, had no reason to trust anyone after the life he’d lived, but he’d pledged himself to me nonetheless. Even without the usual blood bond, which I could not do, he’d been loyal, more loyal than anyone, and I’d lost him. I’d lost both of them. And now I was doing it, I was crying and screaming and clinging to Louis-Cesare, who I vaguely realized was rubbing my back in long strokes up and down the spine that did no more good than anything else. The pain was too great. I couldn’t think past it, I couldn’t breathe, I couldn’t—
I couldn’t bear it.
He held onto me when I tried to get up. I didn’t know where I was going, but the crushing guilt and anger and horror all set in at once, making me need to move. And when I couldn’t, to fight the very man who was trying to help me.
“Let me go. Let me go!”
Louis-Cesare did not let me go.
“I understand,” he said instead, his grip gentle but implacable. “It is the worst feeling in the world, when a master loses a Child. I have seen some go mad with grief, have felt the red claws of it shred my own soul. I have lost servants, too.”
“Ray wasn’t a servant,” I said harshly. “He was my friend. And he died because those bastards . . . those bastards . . . and I didn’t . . . I couldn’t—”
“You did everything you could have done.” He pulled back far enough to look at me, and his face tightened at whatever he saw. “This was not your fault, Dory. It was mine.”
“Yours?” I stared up at him, his image blurry through my furious tears. “How the hell was it yours?”
“You would not have been out there except for me. The fey dangled the bait in front of my nose, and I fell for it, utterly and completely—”