A cold sweat broke out on her brow. He knew who her parents were. “What did my birth parents do? How do we know each other? Were you there when they died?” He wasn’t her brother, was he? She remembered his gray eyes…

He paused, his gaze locking on hers. “We’re not from England, for one thing.”

“And where are we from?” Her voice was barely a whisper.

“From Maremount.”

The ground wavered beneath her feet. She came from a land of mages?

She took a shuddering breath. “But I’ve been with the Brotherhood since I was five. I was too young to be a mage. They can’t possibly blame me for a spell I cast when I was a little child.”

When he stepped closer, she had to fight the instinct to step away. Don’t show fear, Rosalind.

He touched her hand, and his energy fluttered over her skin—that strange, inexplicable thrill. As he lifted her fingers, he examined her ring. “Iron dampens the magic. If you take this off, you’ll lose your mind. That’s because you’re possessed with an extra spirit. You have two souls. One is your own, and the other belongs to a mage, long-since dead. Your parents imbued us both with a mages’ souls. The spirits they gave us were supposed to grant us powerful magic, and your parents believed they could control the mages within us. It didn’t work out. And without a lot of training, your mind will splinter. You won’t be able to handle both souls.”

She slipped her hand from his grasp, horror vibrating through her skull. For about the tenth time tonight, the world almost seemed to stop, and an overwhelming sense of vertigo flooded her mind.

Two souls? Her mind rebelled against everything he was saying. She was stuck in an unending nightmare.

She was a Hunter, but one corrupted by a dark magic. And her own parents had done it to her. If she took off the ring, she’d devolve into a predatory beast, like Caine.

She wanted to believe he was lying—just another mage trick—but in the darkest recesses of her mind she had the strangest sense that he was telling the truth.

“So that’s what Mason meant about me being corrupted.”

“You’re not corrupted. You could have tremendous power if you accepted it.”

“I don’t understand.” She could hardly breathe as her world crashed down on her. “Did vampires kill my parents?”

“No. Your parents sent you out of Maremount. They gave you to someone from the Brotherhood to keep your power in check. They probably paid someone to keep the magic hidden. To make sure you kept that ring on.”

“Mason,” she said, her pulse racing. “And all this time, my parents let me think they were dead. And they’re alive in Maremount.” Her voice broke.

“Please don’t start crying.”

She tried to force the tears back. “Why did they send me away?”

“They saw what happened to me.”

Something in his tone told her not to ask what he meant—not now, at least.