Horror flashed across his face, so quickly she wasn’t sure she had seen it at all, before his expression became unreadable. But his eyes lingered on the locket she still wore around her neck.

“You tame her will,” she whispered, intense, “and I will make sure every Virtue in that room believes she is Daniel’s murderer.”

Abraxas’s gaze was hooded. “You said that Tabor implied that Daniel had impregnated a Fallen girl, and she had come asking him for money.”

“That’s right.”

“Celeste, that was Mariel.”

Her mouth tightened, and her gaze flickered in annoyance. “And so you think she should be executed?” she asked, voice rising. “If that is true and this Daniel used her and threw her over, then he’s the villain, is he not?” She was angry now. She had come up with the perfect solution, and he was telling her it was no good, implying that she was no good for thinking of it. “I know you don’t like Mariel, but I didn’t realize you’d be happy to see her dead.”

“That is untrue.”

“Is it? You’ve always hated her.”

“I have never hated her. I’ve hated the way you use her as a shield.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” She bristled.

“This, what we did tonight, this could be us every night for eternity. But you refuse because Mariel might need you.”

The same argument they had had a hundred times. She thought that sleeping with him, again, would change things, but still he demanded too much. “I am not giving up my family for you.”

“I can be your family. Do you not understand that? Why won’t you let me in?”

“Because if I leave you, you will be fine. But if I leave Mariel, what will she have?”

His face was incredulous. “You think I am fine?” He gestured around his cabin, so far from his luxurious manse. “Does it look like I am fine?”

She could see that she had caused him pain, and that was something she would have to atone for one day, but now was not the time. “She needs me,” she said simply.

“The way she needed Daniel?” he scoffed.

“What does that mean?”

“She killed him, Celeste!” he yelled, his frustration finally breaking into fury. “She killed him! In a lover’s quarrel, a fit of rage, who knows? But if she was begging funds from Tabor for their unborn child, their relationship had already soured. And now you want me to enthrall an innocent woman as her scapegoat? And you are willing to offer her up to die under Azrael’s sword to save your murderous sister?”