Katie tried to see as much of the wound as she could. It looked fiery red. “It’s not your fault—it’s mine for not listening to you and going to the club. I realize now you’ve always been trying to look after me, and I just saw it as you bossing me around.”

Alexis cupped her cheek, and Katie saw tears forming in her eyes. “I didn’t protect you.” Katie watched Alexis pinch the bridge of her nose. “I can’t do this any more. I’m no better than Josie, no better than Victorija Dred,” Alexis said angrily.

Katie had no idea what was going on now. Alexis looked tortured by something. “What are you talking about? You’re nothing like them. You’re the Debrek Duca. You take care of us all and uphold the high ideals that the Grand Duchess gave this clan.”

“No, I don’t. I’m a fraud. I have no nobility.”

Katie reached out to touch Alexis but she pulled away.

“Tell me what’s wrong, Alexis?”

Alexis closed her eyes momentarily and took a breath. “When I lost Anna to the Dreds, my heart was smashed into so many pieces I was certain it would never recover, and that’s what I wanted. I didn’t ever want to feel again. I had a single purpose to my life from then on—do my duty and uphold the beliefs of our clan.”

“And you have,” Katie said.

Alexis shook her head vigorously. “No, I haven’t. I’ve been on this path heading to this destination for five years now.”

Katie was utterly confused. “What path? What destination?”

“The path to my own downfall and betraying everything I believe in. Do you remember when you left to go to college in America?”

Katie didn’t expect the conversation to go in this direction. “Um…yes.”

“Byron, her family, the clan, and your family had a leaving party for you in Monaco,” Alexis said.

“Yes, it was an exciting day. Byron organized the Debrek plane to take me to America. What about it?”

“I watched you that day, so full of excitement, hope, a bright future ahead of you, everything that I couldn’t be, everything that was lost to me so long ago, and looking back now that was the day that the first piece of my shattered heart came back to me.”

“It did?” Katie was lost for words.

Alexis nodded. “And each holiday from college, every time you came home to us, I found another piece of that shattered heart.”

“Oh God. Alexis, but I thought—you took my first blood, and then you ran.”

“When I tasted you, the final piece of the jigsaw of my heart slotted in place, and I ran in terror, because I know what it means to feel that for a human. What happened to Anna…I couldn’t do that again.”