“Thanks,” I said to him. “I really needed this today.” I smiled wryly, remembering the bond between us. “But then you probably knew that, didn’t you?”

He inclined his head in acknowledgment. “I sensed your unrest.”

“My best friend, Jen—Jennifer Cassopolis, you met her the other day—her older sister’s been out at the House of Shadows for eight years.” I took a drink of water. “This morning, Jen got an invitation to her sister’s rising.”

“I see.”

I shook my head. “No, see, here’s the thing. I was out there last week. There was an, um, altercation. Under the terms of Lady Eris’s decree, I had a legitimate chance to take down the vampire who’s turning Jen’s sister. And I didn’t do it.” My temper rose like the proverbial phoenix from the ashes of my temporary sense of calm, my anger again directed at my own hesitation. “I mean, I didn’t know at the time that he was turning her. But I didn’t fucking do it, Stefan.”

Stefan pointed at the couch. “Sit.”

I sat.

He sat in a chair opposite me. “Do you think it would have made a difference?”

“Well . . . yeah. Obviously.”

Stefan gave me a look that was hard to describe—rueful, compassionate, maybe a little patronizing without meaning to be. The kind of look that spanned a six-hundred-year gap’s worth of life experience. “Your friend’s sister made her choice years ago, Daisy. Either she would have found another sponsor or wasted away trying.”

“Maybe.” I shrugged. “Okay, probably. But we’ll never know for sure, will we?”

“No.”

I have to say, I appreciated the fact that Stefan didn’t mince words. He turned his head to gaze out the window, and we sat for a moment without speaking. I contemplated the clean, crisp, strongly drawn lines of his profile, his high, rugged cheekbones. I could see the resemblance to the kneeling knight on the shield.

He looked back at me, his pupils steady. “At least she had the luxury of making a choice, no matter how unwise or uninformed.”

“You had no idea that you would become . . . Outcast?” I asked softly. I mean, I assumed it, but I didn’t really know for sure.

“No one does.” Tilting his head, Stefan Ludovic regarded the ceiling. “I loved my father,” he said, apropos of nothing. “I revered and admired him above all men, and I do believe he was worthy of my regard. It was a golden age in the history of Bohemia—indeed, in the history of Europe—and my father was a nobleman in every sense of the word—a just and compassionate ruler, a highly educated and visionary thinker, a valiant knight. But he wed a weak-willed woman.”

I didn’t say anything.