had to happen eventually," he said. "I've been waiting for it, though you hadn't really thought it through until today. And it won't be the last time. Word is spreading. Maybe some of them are going to want help… and some of them…" He paused, seeming hesitant to finish. "Well, some might offer a great deal of money."

"We don't need their money!" she responded.

It was a lie. She knew it and so did he.

"Yes, right, of course we don't," he said, mockingly agreeable. "But for the moment, I'm not talking about us, and you know it."

Leesil crouched on the floor in front of her, bringing them face-to-face.

Amber eyes just slightly almond shaped, and not as slanted and large as Loni's, stared back at her from under thin white-blond eyebrows. Magiere wanted to look away but wouldn't. It was so hard to look him in the eyes without memories surging into her thoughts—frightening and bloody memories. She wanted to see no more pain on his face and no more scars on his body. Her gaze drifted down to his wrist and then back up.

Even with his thin-lipped mouth always on the verge of a wry smile, he seemed almost sad—or perhaps bitter.

"Loni may be rude," Leesil continued. "But some of what he said is true. I burned that warehouse down and… I'd do it again without a second thought—given the same need."

Magiere remembered nothing of their flight from the warehouse, when Leesil had set the building on fire to cover their escape. But from what she'd later learned, he'd been rather thorough and zealous in executing that chosen task. They'd tried to take the family of undeads in their underground tunnels beneath the building. The heated memory of fighting Rashed flashed unwanted into her head. She'd been in bloodlust, her dhampir nature consuming her with hate and hunger as she fought with the warrior vampire. Then his longsword sliced through the side of her throat, and she collapsed into darkness.

There was no memory of how Leesil had gotten her out of there. The only thing she did remember was awaking to Leesil healing her by feeding her blood from his own wrist—and wanting him to go on and never stop.

The start of a cold sweat broke out across Magiere's skin, and nausea rose in her stomach. She swallowed hard, not wanting Leesil to notice.

"Miiska now suffers for what I did," he continued with a shrug. "There is a chance to make amends. Plus maybe something for ourselves. The payment will be made to you, not the town, regardless of what that letter implies. And a rebuilt warehouse run by the town doesn't mean we can't get a piece of it for having funded the whole thing."

His schemes aside, Magiere couldn't believe what she heard, and then realization struck her.

"You want to go. You want to do this."

He dropped his head until his long hair hung forward around his face and across his ear tips.

"No. It's not about what I want. I don't see how we can refuse."

"Easy, I just did. Or weren't you listening in the kitchen?"

Leesil rubbed his temple with one hand, pushing his hair back and letting it fall again like a curtain.

"You want to stay here and have us run this business forever? Fine. What if things continue the way they're going in Miiska? Where's our business going to come from with no spare coin in anyone's pocket? What happens to Karlin and Geoffry? To Aria and her family? How are we even going to pay Caleb enough to properly care for little Rose?"

Magiere couldn't see Leesil's expression hidden behind his hair, and a numb feeling crept through her. There was more behind his words than Miiska's welfare. He'd never wanted the Sea Lion in the first place. She'd purchased it on her own, and he'd fought her, conceding in the end only when she wouldn't change her mind. Now it seemed his mind was changing. She leaned against the stones of the hearth.

"If you want to do this," she returned, "then be honest about it and stop hiding behind concern for the town."

Leesil's head jerked up, anger plain on his face.

"It's not that way, and you know it!" He dropped onto one knee, bringing him close enough to lean his hands against the hearth's ledge to both sides of her legs. "You're just trying to make it simple enough to ignore, and it's not."

Magiere was forced to look him in the eyes again.

Leesil leaned farther toward her,