Chapters (42)
- Title Page
- One
- Two
- Three
- Four
- Five
- Six
- Seven
- Eight
- Nine
- Ten
- Eleven
- Twelve
- Thirteen
- Fourteen
- Fifteen
- Sixteen
- Seventeen
- Eighteen
- Nineteen
- Twenty
- Twenty-one
- Twenty-two
- Twenty-three
- Twenty-four
- Twenty-five
- Twenty-six
- Twenty-seven
- Twenty-eight
- Twenty-nine
- Thirty
- Thirty-one
- Thirty-two
- Thirty-three
- Thirty-four
- Thirty-five
- Thirty-six
- Acknowledgements
- Also by Kim Harrison
- Copyright
- About the Publisher
- Cover
Smiling faintly, he sat down, pulling me down with his mere presence. He didn’t say a thing as I sat across from him and pulled my knees to my chin, but just that he was listening without judgment was enough to make me cry. I knew Jenks had killed before to protect his family. Ceri was a bloodthirsty savage despite her elegant charm and beauty—and always had been. Ivy was Ivy. I wasn’t going to pretend that Pierce wasn’t capable of killing someone. It was the thought of me killing someone I couldn’t handle.
“I didn’t want to be like this,” I said softly.
“It was a decision,” he said, safe and nonconfrontational.
“A decision to kill someone,” I said bitterly. “With magic.” That’s all the curse did. There was no pretending that it was to heat bathwater or start the grill. It was able to break through an aura to burn someone alive—black magic no matter how you looked at it.
“You saved Jenks and his family,” he offered. “Would you rather they be dead?”
I pulled back, not liking what I was feeling. “There had to have been a better way,” I said dryly, my gaze going past him to the burnt pool table.
“Perhaps,” he said slowly. “I swan I would’ve killed them straight out to keep Jenks from making a die of it and you safe. I still think allowing them to live is a mistake. It remains to see if you are strong enough to see it through. And how.”
“It wasn’t a mistake,” I said, affronted, and he sighed, burnt hand held loosely in the other as he looked down at them. Okay, maybe it was a mistake, but I’d make it again in a heartbeat. Or maybe find another way to begin with. There just wasn’t an answer that I liked, and exhausted in mind and body, I said, “They’re right.” Pierce’s eyes met mine, and I added, “Vivian. Brooke. Everyone. I’m a demon. I deserve what they’re trying to do to me.” I raised a hand and let it fall, staring at it on my lap and wondering if I could smell burnt amber on it. “I’m filthy.”
Pierce only smiled as if I was endearing, making me want to smack him. “You’re not,” he said, softening my anger. “Surviving the decision of letting such ornery people live will be its own punishment. Don’t look to add to it.”
“I don’t want to be this person,” I said, frowning when I heard Ivy come in and go to her bathroom. Getting something for the scratch on her bicep, probably.
“But this is who you are.”