Dee froze with her fingers curled along the torn hem of my shirt, like she was about to rip it straight off me, and at that point I honestly wouldn’t have been surprised if she had.

“Do you think he’d be like this now? Adam loved everyone, and he would’ve hated this war—hated what his kind was doing to innocent people.” I watched the white light fade from her green eyes. “He would’ve hated what has become of you. Can’t you see that? You’re better than this. You’re—”

Dee threw her head back and she screamed—screamed like I was trying to murder her, and I eased off, raising my hands. The horrible, wretched sound was like a wounded animal, something dying. She shuddered under me and squeezed her eyes shut. Both of us were still for a handful of seconds, and then she screamed again, until the sound was raw and pained, until I thought there was a good chance she might be dying.

“I’m sorry,” Dee whispered as another great tremble rocked her lithe frame. As I stared down at her, trying to catch my breath, trying to process the two words, her beautiful face crumpled and big, fat tears streamed down her cheeks. “I’m so sorry.”

20

{ Daemon }

As the last Luxen dropped to the floor in a messy pile, I whipped around to where I’d last seen Kat and Dee. There was a massive hole in the plaster, exposing the wooden frame inside the wall, and that had also taken a hell of a beating.

They’d gone through the wall.

“Good God.” My stomach dropped as I stepped over the dead Luxen and darted toward the open doorway that led into the other room.

I kept telling myself they had to be alive—both of them—because I would’ve felt it if either of them suffered a mortal wound. It did nothing to slow my racing heart or to ease the sick feeling curdling in my stomach.

Archer was standing just outside the den, his shoulders rising and falling in deep breaths. He didn’t say anything as I pushed past him, stumbling to an abrupt stop. The room was absolutely destroyed—the couch broken, TV smashed, and vases shattered on the floor. Piles of dirt and shredded petals were embedded in the carpet.

My desperate gaze zeroed in on the middle of the room, and damn if my knees didn’t almost give out on me.

They were on a smashed coffee table, Kat on top of my sister. They weren’t fighting, but both seemed frozen. I was frozen. Then I heard it. The deep, destroyed sounds of a person breaking wide open.

Kat, her hair half in the ponytail and half out, lifted her head and shuddered, then rolled off my sister and slowly rose to her feet. She backed away, running shaky hands over her messy hair. She looked over at me with wide eyes. Blood trickled from her nose and mouth, and each breath she expelled seemed to wheeze out of her.

I started toward her, but stopped. My gaze swung back to my sister. When Kat had climbed off her, she’d rolled onto her side, curled up into a tiny ball. The sounds—the sounds were coming from her.

“Dee?” My voice cracked.

“I’m sorry,” she said, her arms folded over her head. “I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry.” And that was all she kept saying, over and over again between the sobs.

Glass crunched under my feet as I walked to where she lay, and when I reached her side, my knees did give out. I landed next to her and gently placed a hand on her shaking shoulder. “Is it really you, Dee?”

Her sobs grew more ragged, and there was a stream of words from her bouncing around in my skull. Most of it incoherent, one giant run-on thought, but there was no mistaking what it meant.

Somehow the connection to the rest of the Luxen had been broken. I didn’t know how, but it didn’t matter.

I gathered her off the ruined table and glass and sat back, pulling her against me, and she scrambled closer, like she used to do when she was small and was afraid of everything. As I held her close, I carefully picked out the pieces of glass stuck in her hair, in her clothes.

“God, Dee . . .” I tucked her against my shoulder. “You about killed me, you know?”

She was shaking as her fingers gripped my arms. “I don’t know what happened. They came, and what they wanted was all I could think about.”

“I know.” I closed my eyes, smoothing my hand up her back. “It’s okay now. Everything is okay now.”

Dee didn’t seem to hear me. “You don’t know the things I did or what I was thinking, what I was okay with them doing to people.”

But I did. At least some of it from the short period of time I’d been around her while she’d been connected to them. The things I’d seen and heard her do were things I forced myself not to acknowledge, because they hadn’t been her fault.

And so I told her, over and over, that none of it mattered and none of it was her fault. She started spouting crazy shit, like her being evil, and the crap broke my heart. Tore me right up.

“What you did was their fault. Not yours. If you ever believe anything I’ve told you, you believe that.” I folded my hand over the back of her head, willing her to accept my words. “You don’t have an evil bone in your body. Never have, Dee. Never.”

The trembling eased a little as I held her, and I don’t know how long we sat in the wreckage, but when I opened my eyes finally, the room was a little blurry.

“It was Kat,” she said, her breath coming not as fast as it had been before. “She did it. I wanted to kill her. Oh God, Daemon, I really wanted to kill her, but . . .”

“But what?”