Dad would have recognized the sarcasm and told me not to be fresh. Graves would have rolled his

eyes and snorted.

Christophe’s smile wasn’t nice at all. He directed it at the floor, not at me. It was still cold enough to

chill marrow. “You’ll notice he hasn’t come again himself. He’s frightened of you.”

I choked on a slurp of banana latte. “What?” He’s the king of the vampires, for God’s sake! Why

the hell would he be afraid of me?

“You escaped him, Dru. You held him off until help arrived. You were lucky, true, but you held him

off. Which was more than your mother or even Anna could do.” He was looking at me like I should

have figured this out myself. “He’s sent Ash, and Ash hasn’t returned. He begged, borrowed, or

stole a dreamstealer, and you still survived. He sent a Burner and has had the help of a traitor in the

Order, and you are still alive.”

“Because of Graves. And you.” My chin lifted stubbornly. “It’s not me.”

“It is you, Dru. You’re not like Elizabeth. You’re a fighter. You can help us turn the tide even more.”

His eyes glittered, his face set in hard lines. Even cloudy sunlight was good to him, burnishing his

pale skin. “This is why you’re so important. He’s the closest thing to a king they have anymore. Kill

him, and—”

My stomach flipped over. “Whoa, hold on a second. Kill him?”

“That is certainly the only solution I can see.” The sunlight dimmed even further, and the shadows

under his eyes and cheekbones evened out. “But you have hard training before that’s even possible.

There are other hurdles to clear, too.”

“Yeah. You could say that again. Look, Anna’s still alive, right?”

“She’s never faced Sergej.”

Wow. This was just an eye-opening conversation all the way around. “Never?”

“Not once. She was rescued from an ordinary nosferatu attack, brought in, and hasn’t stirred outside

the Schola’s walls without a contingent of bodyguards and security that makes the President look

like an easy target.”

“But she came to the—”

“She came to the reform Schola where she’d diverted you, yes. Why is that, do you think?”

Wait a second. What?

“She . . .” I absorbed this. The latte began to gurgle in my stomach. Have you ever burped acid, banana syrup, and coffee? It’s not fun. My lips were numb. My heart was pounding like a freight

train’s wheels. “I thought we didn’t know how I’d ended up there.”

“Now I do. What did you think I was doing, other than watching your window? I’ve been gathering

evidence, Dru. And even though you won’t tell me what happened between you and Anna yesterday, I can guess.”