Chapter Five
The Girl They Lost
Briana
They want me back.
The words should terrify me. They do.
I’m not stupid. Whatever else the vampires took from me, they didn’t take that. Fear has teeth, and mine sinks deep as I stare at the black envelope on the bar. The wax seal gleams beneath the low lights, dark and slick like dried blood.
My stomach twists.
For one awful second, I smell smoke. Sweet and cloying. I hear music pulsing through the walls. I feel hands under my arms, dragging me down a hallway while someone laughs and says something about unmarked skin.
My fingers tighten around the towel in my hand.
Then Knox says my name. “Briana.”
Low. Rough. Careful. The sound pulls me back into the bar.
The Gin Room is closed, though it doesn’t feel empty. It never really does. There are too many secrets pressed into the walls. Too much violence beneath the floor. Too many monsters pretending they aren’t waiting for the next thing to bleed.
Cruz stands near the door beside Krishka, his usual easy smile nowhere to be found. The witch looks calm, but there’s a sharpness to her eyes that makes me think calm is just another weapon in her collection.
Knox stands in front of me. Between me and the envelope. Between me and everything else. Of course he does.
He is still dressed in black because, apparently, that’s the official color of emotionally repressed Minotaurs. His sleeves are pushed up, showing thick forearms. That shouldn’t make my chest feel strange, and yet it does.
I force my gaze away from him and back to the envelope. “What happened?”
No one speaks quickly enough.
I laugh, and the sound is ugly. “Don’t do that.”
Cruz shifts. “Do what?”
“The thing where everyone decides who gets to tell the fragile human the scary news.”
Knox’s jaw flexes, but Krishka steps forward first. “The Crimson Door is operating out of an old theater in Gowanus called The Marrow House. There’s an event tomorrow night.”
Tomorrow. The word slides beneath my skin and opens something cold.
I nod once because nodding is easier than throwing up. “And the invitation?”
Krishka’s gaze flicks to Knox, but he doesn’t move.
“It belonged to Moira Vale,” she says. “A banshee. She was invited to entertain.”
“Entertain how?”
Cruz grimaces. “Banshees hear death before it happens.”
“Oh.” My mouth tastes like metal. “That kind of party.”
No one laughs, and that makes it worse.
I set the towel down on the bar with careful fingers. “What else?”
Knox’s eyes lock on mine. There it is. The hesitation. The beast in him wanting to wrap the truth in softer words, maybe hide the sharpest pieces behind his back.
I lift my chin, and his nostrils flare before he tells me.
“They know you escaped. They want you back because you heard something you were not supposed to survive knowing.”
My breath catches. Not because I am surprised. Because some part of me already knew.
My dreams knew. My body knew. The memories scratching beneath my skull knew. I heard things when they thought I was too weak to understand. Names. Places. Bits of business were discussed over my head like I was furniture.
Like I was food.
“What did I hear?” I ask.
“We don’t know yet,” Krishka says. “Moira said Lucius is building something beneath the city. A court. Old blood families. Exiles. Creatures who oppose Malichai’s rule.”
Ari is not here, but I imagine her face when she hears that. Bright, fierce, and fucking furious. I have only known her for a short while, but it doesn’t take long to understand that Ari loves hard enough to become dangerous.
Good. I like women who know how to become dangerous.
“Crimson Door is part of it?” I ask.
Krishka nods. “A feeding ground. Recruitment. Blackmail. Pleasure. Punishment. All the dirty sins and secrets in one place.”
My skin crawls. The words are too close to memory. I look down at my hands. They are steady, and that feels wrong. I want to shake. I want to cry. I want to crawl out of my body and leave it behind for someone else to deal with.
Instead, I am steady. Maybe there’s something broken inside me after all.
“They’ll be expecting monsters,” I say.
Knox goes still.
Cruz mutters, “Here we go.”
I ignore him. “They’ll expect Aldron. Malichai. Witches. Shifters. Big scary men with fangs and claws and horns.”
“Briana,” Knox says.
“No.” I look at him. “They won’t expect me.”
His eyes darken. “Absolutely not.”
A laugh bursts out of me before I can stop it. It’s sharp, humorless, and a little unhinged. “You didn’t even let me finish.”
“I know where this is going.”
“Do you?”
“Yes.”
“Then tell me.”
His jaw tightens. “You want to use yourself as bait.”
The word bait hits harder than I expect because he is right. Because I hate that he is. Because some part of me already made the decision the second I saw the envelope.
“They want me back,” I say. “That gives us leverage.”
“That gives them a target.”
“I already am one.”
The black floods his eyes so fast that Cruz takes a step forward.
Knox doesn’t look away from me. “No.”
There it is again. That fucking word.
Something inside me snaps, not loudly or dramatically. It’s quieter than that. Worse. A thread pulled too tight finally giving way.
I step around the bar. Knox tracks every movement, body locking like mine is a blade coming for his throat. Maybe it is.
I stop close enough to make him uncomfortable but not close enough to touch.
“I need you to understand something,” I say.
His voice is rough. “I am trying.”
“No. You are trying to control yourself. That’s not the same as understanding me.”
Pain flashes through his face, and I hate that I notice. I hate even more that I care.
He swallows whatever he wants to say. “Then explain.”
The fact that he asks rather than arguing takes some of my anger away. Not all of it, though.
“They took everything they could reach,” I say. “My blood. My sleep. My body’s sense of safety. My ability to stand in a room without counting exits. They made me afraid of curtains, Knox. Curtains.”
His hands curl into fists at his sides. I keep going because stopping now might kill me.
“And now they want me back. Not because I am special in some beautiful, magical way. Not because I matter. Because I overheard something. Because I am useful. Valuable. A thing misplaced.”
“You aren’t a thing.”
“I know that.” My voice cracks, and I despise it. “I know that here.” I tap my temple. “But my body is slower. My body still waits for the door to open. It still expects hands. It still thinks surviving means being very quiet and very still until the monsters are done.”
Knox’s face looks carved from pain. Good, let him hear me. Let all of them hear me.
“If I hide upstairs while you all fight for me, then some part of me stays in that room. Some part of me keeps waiting. I can’t live like that.”
“You don’t have to be bait to prove you survived.”
“No,” I say. “But I need to be part of ending this.”
Silence follows. Heavy and dangerous.
Krishka watches me like I have become more interesting. Cruz watches Knox like he is preparing to tackle his brother through a wall. Knox watches me like I am standing too close to a cliff, and he has promised not to grab me unless I ask.
My chest aches. That’s the worst part. He is trying. I can see it.
The beast in him is not built for this. He wants blood and simple answers. Instead, he stands there, breathing hard, letting me speak.
It makes me want to touch him. That thought is so inconvenient, I nearly laugh.
The back door opens before anyone can say another word. Ari storms in first, all bright hair, yellow boots, and fury. Malichai follows behind her with the controlled expression of a man who knows the woman he loves is about to set something on fire and has decided to support her lifestyle.
Aldron comes last, and the room’s temperature drops with him.
His gaze lands on the envelope. “Moira was useful, then.”
Krishka snorts. “Useful is a generous word.”
Ari looks from the envelope to me. “Are you okay?”
“No.” Her face softens.
I point at her. “Don’t hug me.”
“I wasn’t going to.”
“You were thinking about it.”
“I think loudly.”
“Apparently, that’s contagious among magical women.”
Akasha enters from behind Aldron, Korvin at her back. “We do, yes.”
Wonderful. Everyone is here—exactly what a traumatized woman wants. An audience.
Aldron comes to the bar and lifts the envelope, studying the seal. For a second, the mask slips. He looks old. Not in the human way. Not wrinkled or weak. Old, like grief has been carved into his bones and polished by centuries.
“Lucius always did enjoy theatrics,” he says lowly.
“Tell us about the Marrow House,” Malichai says.
Aldron sets the invitation down. “It was a theater in the early nineteen hundreds. Burned down twice and rebuilt once. But it closed after a series of disappearances in the eighties.”
“Vampires?” Ari asks.
“Among other things.”
“Of course,” she mutters.
Aldron looks at me. “You shouldn’t go.”
Knox’s entire body tightens, as if he expects me to explode. I don’t. I am tired of exploding. Tired of pleading. Tired of making my pain loud enough for people to respect it.
So I look at Aldron. “But?”
His pale eyes narrow slightly. He hears the warning in my voice.
“But,” he says slowly, “I understand why you believe you must.”
Knox growls.
Ari whispers, “Oh, boy.”
Aldron ignores them. “But you aren’t trained, you are human, and you are still physically recovering. Those facts matter.” I open my mouth, but he lifts a hand. “They matter,” he repeats. “They don’t make you helpless. They do mean we plan around them instead of pretending rage is armor.”
I close my mouth. Annoying fucking vampire, being all logical and making sense.
Aldron turns to Akasha. “Can you mask her scent?”
Akasha frowns. “From vampires? Maybe temporarily. From shifters, yes. From a banshee, no.”
“I’m standing right here,” Knox says, voice low.
“Yes,” Aldron replies. “We’re painfully aware.”
“Don’t plan this as if it’s decided.”
“It’s not decided.”
“It sounds decided.” He is breathing hard.
Aldron’s eyes cut to him. “Then perhaps listen better.”