Chapter 8

On cue, a tunnel gate rolled open and a cage was rolled out into the light.

The moment Vivienne saw who was inside, her eyes went wide. Her breath stopped.

"Vivienne, darling, save your mother! Vivi, I don't want to die—"

The sobbing wouldn't stop.

The woman inside the cage looked at Vivienne like she had just seen God.

Vivienne's gaze slid off her and away. "Don't call me. I don't know you. I don't know any of you—"

The woman's eyes went wide with disbelief.

A second later she was screaming at her. "Vanessa Ashford! I gave birth to you! I raised you! Now I'm about to die in here and you won't even say my name? You'd turn your back on your family for a man?"

"Don't forget it was the family that trained you to get close to the Blackwood boy. Without us, what would you be?"

Vivienne's face went white as bone.

Damien turned his head toward her, slowly.

"Vanessa. Ashford."

A thought was starting to surface that he did not want to see.

Vivienne was shaking her head at him, over and over. But the Ashfords in the cage had already broken.

"You useless little fool—if you hadn't let the Harrington girl slip out of your hands we wouldn't be here right now. We nearly had everything. The Blackwoods gone, the Harringtons gone, the Ashfords the only family left standing—and you lost it for us!"

The screaming went on.

Damien stopped moving.

He looked back at Vivienne, slowly, and caught the flash of guilt in her face.

Inside his chest, something that had been held together by sheer will finally fell apart.

Hearing it a second time, spoken aloud, my eyes burned in spite of everything I'd told myself.

Just as my knees were about to give, a long arm came around me from behind and steadied me at the shoulder.

Sebastian Sterling's face was still. His dark eyes gave away nothing.

He swept his gaze over Vivienne the way a man looks at garbage.

Then he turned the weight of his attention on Damien.

"The Four Founding Families have always been linked by blood oath. The old Blackwood patriarch and the old Harrington patriarch were sworn brothers. The day the Blackwoods were slaughtered, there was no house on earth the old man would have trusted except the Harringtons."

"He told you to go to them because he knew they were the only ones who could keep you alive."

"And you, after a decade of planning, spent every one of those years plotting to destroy the family that saved you. I've never seen a man so spectacularly stupid."

The old steward behind Sebastian stepped forward and dropped a thick folder in Damien's lap.

My fingernails had already cut into my own palms. I thought about what was left of my family and wanted to tear every person alive in that room apart.

Damien read.

The doubt in his face shifted, as the pages turned, into something close to broken horror.

A long time passed. Then he raised his head, and the smile on his face was worse than any scream.

"This is a lie. All of it. Tell me this is a lie."

The old steward couldn't help a cold breath through his teeth. "After the Blackwoods fell, my master started quietly digging into what had happened. It took him three years to be sure. This is no lie."

"We thought the Blackwood bloodline had ended. We thought this file would stay sealed forever. I never imagined there would be a day it was opened again."

"The old man Harrington was a brilliant man his entire life. And he opened his door to a wolf. He trusted a man like you."

I reached down, grabbed a fistful of Damien's hair, and pulled the dagger strapped to my thigh. I pressed the edge to his throat.

I looked him in the eyes, and everything I had been holding in came out at once.

"Now I understand why Grandfather was so insistent you be at the memorial."

"It wasn't just the engagement. He had known who you were for a long time. He was going to announce your true name that night. He was going to give you back what you lost."

"And you—"

My hand began to shake. I couldn't finish.

Damien's eyes came back into focus.

He tipped his head back. Tears ran sideways from the corners of his eyes.

It looked, from the outside, like watching a man lose his faith.

"Damien, please, don't do this. I didn't mean to deceive you. The Ashfords made me—"

"I fell in love with you for real. I wanted us to be together—"

Vivienne was crawling to Damien's feet.

The second she raised a hand, a flash of silver cut through the air. Her tongue fell onto the floor.

Damien had taken the knife from me.

His eyes were flooded red. "Get out. I never want to hear another word from your mouth."

Vivienne was dragged away like a dead dog. Sebastian glanced, without interest, at her and at the cage.

"Whatever they did to the Harringtons. Return it to them a hundred times over."

"And later tonight, send a present to Harold Ashford. Tell the old bastard to get his affairs in order."

I tipped my head back and forced the tears back into me.

Sometime during that, Damien had crawled to my feet.

He knelt the way he used to when he had done something wrong. When his eyes fell to my stomach, something in him convulsed.

The child he had killed with his own hand. He slapped himself across the face, hard, over and over, until the skin swelled red.

"Adeline. I'm a fool. I was wrong."

He beat his own face until it was purple.

When he saw I still hadn't moved, he lifted the dagger. His eyes were dead.

"I know I can never wash off what I've done."

"Adeline. Kill me."