Swallowing, she tasted blood and realized that her lip was split. “You don’t … need to do this…”

With a quick surge, he hopped up on his feet and disappeared for a moment—and when he came back, he had a Louis Vuitton briefcase with him. “Yeah, I do have to do this. Because you were going to try to take that Polaroid to your father—that’s what you told Peyton. And you’re such a good little girl, so conscientious, that you’re not going to let it go and you’re going to start thinking about the connection—and sooner or later, you’re going to sneak into the cafeteria and you’re going to go through my shit because you’d realize that someone in the training center must have dropped that photo on the bus and also taken it out of your bag. Nice satchel, by the way. Love Bally. Good stuff.”

As he kept talking, Anslam took out a syringe. “See, because I’m attached to my work, I need to keep some part of it with me always, and pictures are the next best thing, don’t you agree? Just fantastic for spiking the memory. Anyway, that’s when you’d put two and two together—when you found more just like it in my bag. Then I’d be fucked—and I assure you, I am never the bottom in relationships.”

As he tested that the clear fluid was live in the thin needle, her brain threatened to recede on her, the pain, the shock, the confusion, twisting and tying up her neuropathways, making any significant thought patterns impossible.

Except then she remembered what she’d been trained to do in sparring class: You got focused, you stayed focused. Got focused, stay focused.

This was not a training exercise, though—in fact, this was precisely what those lessons were supposed to prepare her for.

Not a class. No one to rescue her.

But herself.

All at once her mind went super-sharp: She was as good as dead if he injected her with whatever that was, and she was going to have only one chance at an escape.

Making a show of being helpless, she surreptitiously looked around for a weapon, something, anything she could use—

“Think of this as a compliment,” he said as he looked down at her. “I’m really sure you’d eventually figure out it was me, because you’re pretty fucking smart, for a girl—”

With a powerful lunge, she reared up and head-butted him right in the face. It was her only move—and she nailed him dead to rights: Anslam howled with pain and anger and fell back on his ass, clutching his nose. And she was on him, pouncing on his chest, ripping the syringe out of his hand. Depressing the plunger so the drug emptied into thin air, she tossed it aside.

With no time to spare.

Anslam roared and punched her shoulders, popping her up off him. And his next move was to clock her so hard in the jaw with his fist, she literally heard bells ringing and her vision flickered. But she couldn’t afford to check out as he jumped onto her. Fighting through the pain and disorientation, she reached between the two of them and went for his ’nads, grabbing them and twisting her grip until he screamed and wrenched to the side.

Up on her feet, she went to kick him, but he caught her ankle and flipped her off her feet.

They began to roll, and in the back of her mind, she heard Butch saying that all hand-to-hand combat ended up on the ground; it was only a matter of time.

Torquing herself around, she prevented him from doing an arm bar on her, but she also failed to get him into a headlock with her thighs. A weapon, she needed—the briefcase. If she could somehow get them over there …

He was stronger than she was. She was faster than he was. Their bodies flopped on the hard floor, arms and legs straining, fists getting worked into torsos, more blood getting drawn on faces.

And then it happened. He somehow managed to pin her by the throat with both hands—and then he drove the back of her head into the marble floor once, twice …

Fuck you! she mouthed, because she had no air.

Reaching up to his eyes, she thumbed into their sockets—

He disappeared.

Anslam just up … and disappeared.

For a split second, she braced herself, ready for some pummeling to hit her. But then she heard a horrible scream.

Looking up, she saw Anslam … levitating off the floor, his face twisted into a horrific expression of terror, blood pouring out of his mouth in a gush, feet kicking uselessly as his legs twitched.

Then he was cast aside like trash.

And Craeg was revealed like the warrior he was, his feet planted, his fangs bared … a bloody sword in his hand.

Dimly, Paradise realized the weapon was the ceremonial blade that her father was supposed to wear as First Adviser on special occasions, the one that his own father had owned first … the one that was kept on the wall directly beside the front door, as tradition required it to be hung.

Craeg came to her and crouched down. “You need medical attention. Where’s your phone—where’s a phone?”

“I’m okay, I’m … all right.”

Wait, she was crying. Or was that blood? She didn’t know …

The sound of struggle brought his head around. “Be right back.”

With quick strides, he raced into the study with the sword, and moments later, Vuchie was by her side, and the butler was on the phone at the desk.

It was right about then that she realized she was seeing double.

“I think I’m going to pass out,” she said to Craeg.

“Doc Jane is coming.”

“Don’t leave me,” she told him. “I want to yell at you some more.”