At that instant, she knew she could strike a blow that would be a sledgehammer to the strange, nameless, precious thing between them, the connection that had formed the first day they came eye to eye. He’d grinned at her as she notched a crossbow bolt in place, then blown her a kiss and moved with the rapid grace she’d come to associate always and only with him. She’d almost smiled in return before remembering she was there to bring him in to face a very irate angel.

That angel had pulled the hunt order seventy-two hours later, after Janvier made nice. She’d walked into the angel’s residence to find him laughing with Janvier, while the damn Cajun who’d led her into a swamp, before escaping with a slickness she’d reluctantly admired, lay sprawled in a heavy green armchair, long legs kicked out. It was the first time he’d called her cher, asking her when they’d play again.

Et quand en va rejouer, cher?

“I have photos of all my family on my phone,” she whispered, unable to destroy their relationship with a lie that would forever alter the honesty at its core. “You just saw Arvi’s that day . . . my brother.”

Janvier released a harsh breath, a shudder rippling through his body. “He’s at least twenty years older than you.”

“Nineteen,” she said. “I was a late-in-life oops baby.” A mistake, a regret. “In many ways he was my father. That’s why he talks to me like that, assumes I’ll do what he says.”

“Your parents?”

“You didn’t already hack into a database and look it all up?” It was stupid to avoid the question, but she’d been doing it so long it was habit.

Thumb moving over her skin, Janvier waited until she met his eyes to say, “That would’ve been against the rules.”

Ashwini couldn’t pretend she didn’t know the rules. “My mother and father died when I was nine.”

“An accident?”

“Yes. That’s when we lost our sister, Tanu, too.” The words were a lie wrapped in a devastating truth but this one secret she couldn’t share. Not today. Not until she no longer had a choice. “After they were gone, Arvi stepped up, took charge of everything.” She’d thought he hung the moon, her smart, handsome brother.

“Love does not cause such shadows as I see in you, my fierce Ashblade.”

9

Unable to bear the naked emotion in his eyes, because it was a mirror of her own, she used her Guild training to break his hold. The fact that she’d waited until now was another danger sign, another warning. “I didn’t fit,” she said, and it was all she could say right then without breaking completely.

Moving to the very edge of the cliff, the snow crunching beneath her boots, she turned the conversation back to what she could handle. “My brother is a neurosurgeon.” One of the most revered in the profession. “Dr. Arvan Taj does not do house calls, not for anyone. And he definitely doesn’t treat cattle.”

“Giorgio was once a renowned physician.” Janvier’s boots broke through the ice crust over the snow as he came to join her. “He was responsible for a number of significant breakthroughs in his time and remains respected in medical circles. Perhaps because it is only in the past four decades that he has chosen to abandon his vocation for the pursuit of a selfish pleasure that does not care who it hurts.”

Catching something unexpected in his tone, she frowned. “He called you mon ami. You were friends?”

“No, but there was a time when that address would’ve made me proud.” Pushing a hand through his hair, he said, “I spent a month in his château in the Alps a long time ago. He was having a salon featuring a select number of the world’s best minds and I stumbled into it when I was tasked with delivering an important letter.” Eyes distant, he shook his head. “For some reason, he invited me to remain, though I was an ignorant courier with barely half a century of vampirism behind him.”

“You’ve always been smart.” It was a flame in him, the desire to grasp at life with both hands, absorbing knowledge in a thousand different fragments.

“I am happy to know you think so, cher, for your mind seduced me long ago.” The faint hint of a smile lay on his lips, Janvier a man who was never dark for long. “But I was out of my league there, the others around the fire scientists and artists, philosophers and explorers.” A sigh, his throat arched as he looked up at a night sky become hazy with clouds. “It could be those great men and women decided they needed an audience. It doesn’t matter—I drank in the knowledge they shared as if it were rain and my soul a thirsty plain.”

It was an image that tugged at her soul, made her want to lock herself in a room with him for days, weeks, months, just so she could hear of the roads he’d traveled, the places he’d been, the people he’d met. Time was running out from between her clenched fists, and she had so many things she didn’t yet know about him.

“Did Giorgio have cattle then?” she asked through the ache of need.

“Yes, and he has always had an eye for nubile beauty, but such is true of many men, mortal or immortal, non?”

Ashwini nodded, thinking of the septuagenarian who lived in her building, his companion a foxy redhead in her thirties.

“But back then,” Janvier continued, “Giorgio treated the older of his cattle with love and respect even after their youth faded—during my time in the château, I met one who was in her sixth decade. To her, Giorgio was family, and the feeling was reciprocated.”