The men had Lombard tied to a chair.Thoroughly. Everything about him was secured — arms, legs, torso — until the only activity left available to him was breathing.And yet, somehow, they were the ones sweating.That was the thing nobody warned you about with a man like Lombard. You could have him tied down, surrounded, held at gunpoint from four angles — and the room would still feel like a trap that had been set for you.One of the men had put it to their boss plainly, earlier, before they’d even brought him in.“Anthony, if you want to live, we keep this man alive. For all we know, he’s swallowed something that detonates the second we try anything. What kind of man asks you to cuff him? Think about it. What kind of man does that?”So Anthony stood at what he hoped was a professional distance from the chair, trying very hard to project the image of a man who had this covered.“For the record,” was the first thing that came out of his mouth, stupidly, “w

For all the grandness of their plans, Cassian and Sylvie had left the party the same way everyone else had — running, with their legs moving slightly faster than the rest of them.They had watched Lombard get walked out in cuffs. And if the sight had communicated anything, it was that they might have severely underestimated the man they’d spent the evening plotting against. Not that either of them was ready to admit that out loud. The time to get Lombard was still coming — soon, in fact. But underestimation and anger could live in the same chest, and right now Cassian’s chest was crowded.“That boy,” he ground out through his teeth, once his heart rate had finally dropped low enough to permit speech. Rowan. The bottle. The spectacle. The family’s secrets, detonated in a room full of the most powerful people on the continent.Beside him, Sylvie was shivering. She hadn’t been able to stop the tremor since they got in the car. This was the third time now. The third time she had personall

Riley would not be consoled.And she could not be stopped — not by the elders, not by the cousins, not by anybody under that roof. The more they pleaded with her, the harder it became to get anything out of her at all. It was like throwing wind at a fire and expecting the fire to say thank you.“He thinks he can just come into this family and do whatever he feels like doing to us?” she snapped, pacing the length of the sitting room. “Because we are so easy to walk all over?”Sparks were coming off her in real time. Little orange stars spitting from her shoulders, her hair, her fingertips — flaring bright, then dying on the rug an inch before they could catch. Nobody moved close.And here was the thing. Some of the elders should have been asking Mireya the hard questions tonight. Why did you help Rowan get to the attic, Mireya? What exactly were you thinking, Mireya? But none of them could manage even that right now. Riley’s fire was not the kind of thing you stop wit

“We are not spending the night here,” Drake’s wife was telling him as he slumped onto the bed.“Why?” he groaned. “Come on, it’s just one night. And I’m sure our bed in the suite won’t miss us that much. Come here.” He reached out his hands to her, fully expecting she would walk into them.She shook her head instead. “I mean it. Get out of the bed. We have to leave in the next couple of minutes,” she said firmly — and she was already pulling on her hoodie.“What do you think about spending the night alone in the suite, then?” Drake asked.“Don’t even try that with me.”“I’m not going along with you, and we both know that. The plan was to spend the night. When was the last time we came here and didn’t spend the night?” he asked with another groan.“Drake!” she called firmly, looking at him now with eyes that said if he as much as argued one more time, this was about to go really badly.Drake got up from the bed. The playfulness had drained off his face, and a frown had moved in to take

Lombard had a bottle of water in front of him that he had not touched.The patriarch of the C&R Consortium had one in front of him too — already drunk down to half. And they had only been sitting here ten minutes. Lombard was fairly sure that by the end of tonight, this man was going to clear his entire lifetime record for water drunk in a single sitting.The restaurant was quiet in a way restaurants of this size were never supposed to be quiet. Lombard had picked the place himself for exactly that reason — a hall this open, this exposed, gave nobody anywhere to hide. Or so he had thought.“I want you to know one thing, Lombard. When I was around your age — I guess, I can’t really remember now — I lost someone very dear to me too. So I know how you feel right now.”“I wouldn’t appreciate us sitting here bonding over water and loss,” Lombard said, deadpan.“I don’t think that’s the right choice of words. I don’t think I came here to bond, either. I’m just telling