After one last glance around, she let herself into the halfway house. She spiked her windblown hair into place as she came to attention just inside the office door stenciled DAN ENVERS, ADMINISTRATOR.

The man behind the desk leaned back in his chair. “Jilly.” He drew the two syllables out slowly. “You shouldn’t come back here. It’s confusing for the children.”

Flatly, she said, “It’s confusing because there was no reason to fire me.”

“Budget cuts—”

“Oh, please. I didn’t make shit for wages.” She rolled her eyes when he frowned at her cursing. “I don’t do this for the money.”

“Now you don’t do it at all.” He tapped the eraser of his pencil against the desk, as if to rub her out. “I let you do the park outreach as a volunteer, but I can’t have you traipsing in here—”

“I came to make sure Dee and Iz are all right.”

The pencil stilled in his hand. “Why wouldn’t they be?”

“If you don’t know, maybe you shouldn’t have fired me.”

He rummaged across his desk and freed a sheet of paper. “Roll call says they’re both at breakfast.”

A filament of the steel in her spine softened. Liam had kept his word about getting the kids back safe.

So what else had he been truthful about last night?

She shot a reinforcing burst of concrete around the spine steel. “Iz was right. Andre got into some bad trouble.” She hesitated, trying not to remember the burgeoning helplessness she’d felt in the alley, worse even than when Envers had handed over her walking papers. “I saw something last night—something weird I can’t explain.”

Envers lowered his head into his hands, the pencil stuck up between his fingers like a rude gesture. “You aren’t supposed to encourage the children in their mass delusions. Look at you. You’re as bad as they are.”

She gripped the doorframe, anger driving her blue-polished nails into the wood. “Is that why you got rid of me?”

Staring down, he seemed to be addressing the papers more than her. “Do you know how many kids we lose? And don’t count Andre, since he’d already gotten himself kicked out.”

The question rocked her back on her heels. “Too many.”

He tossed the pencil at her, glowering when she didn’t duck and he missed anyway. “You don’t even know actual numbers, because you just deal with the next one, and the next one. You have no idea what it takes to keep this facility operational.”

“It’s not a facility. It’s a home, the only home these kids have, and it may not be safe anymore.”

“Safer than the streets, that’s for damn sure. Ask Andre. If you ever find him.”

He tugged at his shirtsleeves, collecting himself. “This isn’t your job anymore, Jilly. Go find some other oppressed people to save.”

She could follow the sweet tang of pancakes and fake maple syrup to the dining room, get her cell phone back from Dee. But they’d have questions she couldn’t answer.

“Security knows the situation,” Envers said. “Don’t make me call them.”

“I don’t make anybody do anything. That’s your trip, not mine.”

“The children need someone willing to use her authority, somebody who doesn’t get in even more trouble than they do, not another rebel without a chance. We’re done here, Jilly.” He made a note on the paper in front of him, dismissing her like she was just another item to be checked off his list.

As if pretending something didn’t exist made it go away. God, she’d always hated that sort of bullshit. She took another deliberate step forward. His head snapped up at the thunk of her boots.

“Maybe I don’t keep all the stats like you do.” She remembered Liam’s promise and echoed it with her voice pitched low. “But since I have all this free time, I’ll find out what happened to Andre, and I’ll be sure to let you know if he would’ve had a chance.”

The weight of his stare followed her out.

She stalked down the street, fists thrust into her pockets. Just as well she hadn’t tried to go in last night with Liam watching if Envers had told the night crew to toss her out on her ass. What a coward to assign the task to someone else.

“A real man does his own dirty work,” she muttered.

“Yet the women still get to clean up after.”

Jilly whirled to face a slender blond woman in a scarlet trench coat. Her squared stance, light on the balls of her feet, screamed confidence louder than the coat.

She held up her hands, palms out. “Hi, Jilly. I’m Sera. Not too long ago, I was like you. Feeling cut off from everyone, just lost my job, didn’t think I’d ever recover from that wound.” Her hazel eyes darkened. “Or the ones that had come before. And now I’m possessed by a demon. Like you. Liam sent me to reassure you that you’re not crazy.”

Jilly tried to absorb the awkward introduction, then decided to just skip it. “I knew I was being tailed.”

The woman—Sera—tilted her head. “Following the boss’s orders.”

“Your boss. Since you’re possessed by a demon, that would be the devil?”

“Ah, no. That would be Liam.”

“Who is apparently not one of those real men who does his own dirty work.”

Sera sucked a breath of air between her teeth. “He seemed to think another woman would be better able to answer your questions. As if there’s a gentle way to tell you your soul is forfeit to the never-ending battle against evil.”

Jilly pulled off her sunglasses to squint at the woman. “Battle against evil? I thought having a demon would make me evil.”

Sera planted her hands on her hips. “Didn’t Liam at least explain the repentant part?”

Jilly snorted. “The goo dripping off his hammer must’ve distracted me.”

“Okay, then, do you feel evil?”

Jilly pictured Envers standing up to the monsters in the alley last night. “A little.”

Sera grinned, a bright flash that edged her from confident to confidante. “Oh well, that’s why you’re repenting. C’mon. We need doughnuts. It’s my treat.”

Jilly dug in her heels. “It’s my ass. And I don’t need more of it.”

Sera shook her head. “Since Liam didn’t get to any of the good stuff, I’ll enlighten you. A demon-revved metabolism means you can eat all the doughnuts you like. And, anyway, your ass belongs to the league now.”

Despite the chill, they sat outside the doughnut shop, clutching their coffee cups. A dozen pigeons strutted around the table.

“Shanghaied would be more accurate,” Sera said.

Jilly had put her sunglasses back on, but she hoped the other woman could feel her glare. “Was that a cultural slur?”

“ ‘Railroad’ implies a nice straight track going from point A to point B in a timely manner. Joining the fight of repentant demons against the darkness—the tenebraeternum—is more like being shanghaied. You’re blindsided one night and wake up on a ship where no one knows your language, bound for God knows where.” Sera waved one hand. “The analogy works pretty well.” She looked at Jilly. “Except now you’re here.”

Jilly swallowed her bite of doughnut so she wouldn’t choke on the powdered sugar, then let out a long-suffering sigh. “Explain. You know you want to.”

“Shanghaied sailors were all male. They were stronger, of course, more resistant to the horrors of shipboard slavery. Plus, there was that whole ‘women on board are a curse’ wankery. I was the first female talya in the league’s memory. And since the talyan are immortal, living memory is a long time. My appearance marked a change in the teshuva battle plan. Your possession marks an acceleration in that change.”

“I don’t have time to save the world.” Jilly knew how absurd that sounded even as the words popped out.

“You’re immortal now, remember?” Sera’s hazel gaze softened. “What else is there?”

Jilly tried to forget Envers’s mockery. But he was right. “I was busting my butt just to keep a few dozen kids from falling prey to everyday evils like getting caught rolling a joint in the school bathroom. Yet, half the time, they’d disappear from the system and I’d never find out what happened to them.”

“And now you’re not even doing that.” Though Sera’s voice was gentle, the blow of her words knocked Jilly’s breath back down her throat in a hard knot. “Our world falls away, bit by bit. I haven’t figured out if the presence of the unbound demon stalking us makes that happen, or if that’s what makes us vulnerable to possession.”

Vulnerable. How she hated that word. Jilly washed it down with a pull off the bitter chicory coffee.

Sera threw a few pieces of doughnut toward the pigeons. But a blur of black wings descended from the wind-torn awning and they scattered. The crow gobbled up the treat and cocked its head to eye them.

“You shouldn’t feed wild animals,” Jilly said. “Gives them ideas.”

“So very true.” Sera tossed the crow another piece with a smile. “But it’s good to make friends where you find them.”

If the crow was a friend, Jilly thought, this league of theirs needed better networking skills. “If you people . . . you demons . . . What are you?”

“We are called talyan,” Sera said patiently. “Human, but possessed by teshuva demons which lend us their immortality and their unworldly powers to fight. And survive the fighting.”

“Immortality,” Jilly mused. “Here I was, always telling the kids not to think they were immortal.”

“You told them that because thinking otherwise would get them into bad trouble. Which, turns out, was even more true than you knew. The immortality, the speed and strength of inhuman fighting skills, the recovery from heinous injury, all that is just a consolation prize the demon offers while we fight eternally for redemption.”

“Right.” Jilly drew out the word to emphasize her skepticism. “If you win this never-ending battle against evil, does that mean no more monsters?”

Sera tilted her head thoughtfully. “That’s the hope.”

“Hope.” That sounded a little too much like vulnerable to Jilly.

Sera must have heard the note of reservation. “It’ll get you through the next few days.”

“I thought the battle was never-ending-ish.”

“But in the next few days, your demon will make its virgin ascension. It’s a particularly hazardous time for the newly possessed. Until you balance the demonic emanations within you, you could be pulled to the other side.”

“To hell.”

Sera’s open face settled into a stillness that would’ve done Mona Lisa proud. “It has a strange attraction, but you wouldn’t want to live there.”

Jilly stared at her.

“Long story. But speaking of places to live, I’d really like to bring you to the league HQ, introduce you to some of the guys, let you pick out a . . . room.” An incongruous touch of red brightened Sera’s pale cheeks.

Jilly frowned. “What do I need a room for?”

Sera cleared her throat. “Since you’re one of us now—”

“Whoa. Just because I’m intrigued by the idea of ending the threat to my kids doesn’t mean I’m enlisting with any demon army or whatever.”

“You may not survive without the league.” Sera spun her coffee cup in her hands, gaze fixed on the dark slosh. “Not without a talya lover as escort.” She raised her head, and under the hazy sky, her eyes sparked with a faint violet light. “Not without Liam.”

The name and that uncanny glow made Jilly feel sheathed in strangeness. She pushed to her feet, slowly. The gust of blood through her muscles worried her that if she moved too fast, she might inadvertently upend the table, dumping doughnuts, steaming coffee, and a heaping pile of invective over the other woman.

She tried to tamp down the wild rush, unnerved by the reckless thrill triggered by that one word. “He is not my lover.”

“Not yet, but that’s how you’ll balance the ascension.”

“Not ever, if that’s why he came after me.” The unexpected—unwanted—wave of longing knotted within her. But the pain was preferable to surrender. “I’ve had enough of pimps.”

Sera tsked. “Unfair. But I’ve read your dossier, and that pimp stopped after merely sticking a knife between your ribs. What’s coming is far worse, far more intimate, and will leave you with your soul—not just your lung—in tatters.”

Jilly fisted her hands, as if Sera had feinted at her, though the other woman made no effort to rise. “You don’t know anything about me.” Despite the tension in her body from frustrated desire, her fuming breath moved easily through her for the first time in more than a year, and she wondered, did she even know herself anymore?

Sera fanned her fingertips along the edge of the table, the only betrayal of her own tension. “The league has entirely too many tough guys, Jilly. If you have to lower those impressive defenses of yours long enough to let one of our fighters save you, then by God—should I say, by the demon possessing you—that’s what you are going to do.”

If Liam thought he’d sent Sera to be sympathetic, Jilly decided she’d have to disabuse him of that notion. “Whatever info you’ve been collecting on me, at the very least you should know I don’t back down from vague threats.”

“Sometimes vague is all we get. But I do know that one of those talyan saved me from something awful. And I’m not just talking about demons.”

“What could be worse?” Jilly muttered. But she already knew some of the answers, though she couldn’t picture tall, blond, self-confident Sera ever making the sorts of bad decisions where demonic possession looked like a self-improvement project. The uncertainty kept Jilly on her feet, but she didn’t walk away.

Sera must have sensed her victory, but she didn’t gloat. She stood in a rush of red, startling the crow into the sky. “It’s not all bad. Repenting, I mean. You get a place to stay. A mission to last the rest of your potentially very long life. And there are other perks.” She ducked her head and gave Jilly a sidelong glance.

“Nothing else about lovers,” Jilly warned. Bad enough that her breath caught with the vague claustrophobia of sharing her skin with a demon. Sharing it with a daunting male like Liam Niall . . .

“No, no.” Sera’s gaze wavered. “I was just thinking, maybe I get a sister in a houseful of men.”

The genuine wistfulness snagged at Jilly’s resistance, though pain flared as quickly behind it. “I make a terrible sister.” She ignored the flicker of disappointment over Sera’s face; if the other woman had read her file, she’d understand. “I only want to find out what happened to Andre. So show me this league of evil-undoers.”

They fell into step and headed uptown. The crow wheeled once against the white clouds and was gone.

And pounding.

Liam jackknifed up and shoved away the entangling bedcovers. The darkness and pounding endured, but at least he was awake. He touched his temple and winced at the flicker of demon violet that illuminated his shaking fingers.

“What?” He winced again when the word came out as a roar.

The pounding at the door stopped. “Sera called. She found Jilly and is bringing her in.”

Liam rolled out of bed and pushed aside the blackout curtains over the windows. The stark sunlight narrowed his eyes but brought no warmth to his naked flesh. “I’ll be out in a minute.”

“You’ve got ten.” Archer’s voice was brisk. “Use it. I can smell your nightmare through the door. You’ll scare her off before she’s even gone through the teshuva’s ascension.”

“Insolent bastard,” Liam muttered.

“I can hear through doors too.”

Liam waved his upright middle finger vigorously, though Archer was stomping away. Liam dropped back to the bed. He’d avoided going back to Jilly’s apartment last night, knowing Archer was keeping watch. So he had no excuse not to have managed a good night’s sleep.

No excuse except those dreams that always ended in flames and darkness.

He pounded his head once into the pillow and stared up at the ornate headboard above him. Entire grave-yards boasted fewer chubby, cavorting cherubs than this oak behemoth. He couldn’t imagine what the wood-worker had been thinking. It would be impossible to have sex in this bed.

Yeah, that could be the other excuse for no good night’s sleep.

In five minutes, he’d run a cold shower, downed a cup of burned coffee, and ensconced himself behind his desk.

After the league’s last refuge had been poisoned in the tenebrae attack, they’d retreated to one of their holdings fronted by an architectural-salvage warehouse. The warehouse lacked the style of their previous retro hotel, but it had a kitchen, a few apartments, a dormitory, and an armory. If there was one thing the league did well, it was break things and pick up the pieces. The three-legged walnut desk he’d propped up on a knock-off Grecian urn at least had a certain presence. Anyway, it was big.

He gripped the thick edge and waited for Sera’s knock. She entered and stopped just inside the door, while Jilly marched up to the other side of his desk and tossed her puffy silver coat on the guest chair.

She planted her hands on her hips, which puffed up other parts of her. Under her snug short-sleeved T-shirt, the roundness of her breasts seemed counterintuitively soft. He found himself distracted by the butterfly tattoo that rode the upper curve revealed by the V neckline, the navy cotton setting off her anger-flushed tawny skin.

“What the fuck?” she snapped.

Good thing it was a big desk. He slanted a glance at Sera, who grinned and sidled out.

He returned his attention to Jilly and wondered if the oak headboard would have blocked more of the fury that vibrated off her. No. No thinking of Jilly in his bed. “Which part is fucked?”

She glared at him, and for a moment he was mesmerized by the golden snap in her eyes, the tint of flames in straw.

“If you wanted to recruit me, sell me yourself.” She faltered, as if that hadn’t come out as she intended. “You knew I’d come, given the chance to find out what’s happening to the kids on the street. You didn’t have to send Sera.”

“She had the best chance of convincing you.”

“And do you always use people for what they can do for you?”

He steeled himself against the sting of her words. He was spread too thin to regret delegating when necessary. Not when he knew that strain would bring him one step closer to a break the league might not survive.

Not when her burning eyes were the straw to break the beast of burden.

“I save myself for the fun parts,” he said coolly. “I’m sure Sera explained what we’re up against.”

“She explained a lot.” Jilly set her chin off-kilter, as if she was holding back words. “What are we doing to chase these monsters—what did you call them?—these tenebraeternum off the streets?”

“ ‘ We’?” Liam leaned back in his chair and templed his fingers. He waited for the flare of triumph at bringing another tyro aboard. God knew, he needed this ardent young fighter in front of him. Instead, her fierce zeal made him feel older than the dirt that crept into every nook of the league’s salvaged stronghold.

And his need would never be assuaged.

“The tenebraeternum is the place where the demons come from,” he said. As if reciting the chronicles of league history would relieve the ache that arrowed through him. “The lesser demons en masse we call the horde-tenebrae.”

She wrinkled her nose at the impromptu lesson. “Sera already made it clear I might not even survive my demon’s ascension. If I only have another hour or another day, then I want to find out what happened to Andre and make sure the things and the place never bother any of the kids again.”

She paced in front of his desk, all impetuous curves and spiky nerves. He tightened his jaw against the clomp of her impatient boots. She wasn’t much more disciplined than the kids—streetwise teen hooligans, more like—she claimed as her own. But he’d bent wilder spirits to this unending task. “I can’t promise that.”

“I don’t believe in promises anyway. Give me something real I can sink my teeth into.” She swung to face him, her hand cocked on the hip of her low- riding jeans. “Give me something bigger than that stupid box cutter and I’m your warrior woman. For tonight anyway.”

He felt the tightening in his muscles, the prickle of his skin, as the demon in him stirred at the unruly battle cry in her words. He wrestled down its ready and willing mayhem, so in tune with the young woman before him. The demon possessing him might take hungry leaps toward repentance, but every swing of his war hammer thrust him away from the desperate detachment keeping what was left of his soul—what was him—intact.

Once, he’d worked with his hands to create; now he was half ravager. And the molten gold of Jilly’s eyes only lured him closer to his doom, like a stupid moth to singeing flame.

“Come on, then.” He thrust to his feet and strode past her.

“Where are we going?”

“I’m giving you what you want.” Avoiding the jumble of iron railings, reclaimed brick, and unique old tile, he led her through the halls. The stairs down to the basement were hung with empty picture frames, too opulent to hang above any couch and too battered for a museum. At the bottom of the stairs, he slapped his palm over a pale green lit square. When it beeped at him, he threw open the double doors. The lights brightened automatically.

Axes, double-edged swords, daggers, razor-tipped gauntlets, and more lined the sterile white walls. Even under the buzzing fluorescent fixture, the blades shone with brutal, honed beauty.

Jilly cleared her throat. “At least I know where to arm myself if World War Three breaks out.”

“It already has.” Liam strode into the room, then turned to survey her. He tried to keep his gaze critical as he swept her once from blue-streaked locks to heavy black shit-kicker boots. “Good weight on the bottom, at least.”

She stiffened at his perusal. “You saying my ass is big?”

It took all his unholy strength to move his gaze onward. “I’m saying, no sense throwing off your balance with an oversized weapon.”

“I’ve handled bigger weapons than yours.”

Her bold words rebounded between them. The first hint of uncertainty he’d seen in her—even when she faced the ferales in the alley with nothing more than a dull razor blade—flushed her cheeks with color, and she bit her lip.

The hunger that stirred in him at the slight vulnerability had nothing to do with the demon. He swallowed hard against it, and leveled his tone coolly. “No doubt your bravado has served you well. Did the demon come to you with the promise that now you’d finally be able to carry through with all that bluster?”

She stiffened at the question; her cinnamon-honey eyes narrowed.

“The demon always makes an offer we haven’t the strength to refuse,” he explained. “It knows us better than we know ourselves. I suppose that is the nature of temptation.” How fortunate for him that he’d been around long enough to amass scars of resistance.

“I’m tempted,” she said, “to grab that spiked mace and take a swing.”

He forced himself to focus on work. Pairing an unproven talya with the right weapon was vital. “If you want to try it out—”

“Just on you.”

Ah. He balanced on the balls of his feet as the demon shifted eagerly within him. “Always happy to help my tyros, my new fighters.”

“Yours?” When she wrinkled her nose, the piercing there glimmered.

Oh, so the ancient military term didn’t bother her, just the implicit hierarchy. He crossed his arms over his chest. “I am the boss.”

Her hands clenched as if longing to wrap around that mace handle. Or maybe just his neck. “If you’re the boss, you should know human resources regulations don’t allow you to ask how people were lured to the dark side.”

“You’re not a human resource anymore, and technically, we’re the repenting side, which is at least a half dozen steps from the dark side.” Thinking of her hands on his skin wasn’t helping his focus at all. But how had the demon cozened her if not through her boldness?

He took a long step back—physically and mentally—and swept out one hand. “Choose.”

In his many years commanding the league, he’d learned a new talya’s choice of weapon indicated something about the man and the teshuva inside him. He was getting ahead of himself, putting Jilly through his tests so soon, but the urgency that had ridden him since the appearance of her unbound demon strengthened when she was near.

And with her hell-bent attitude, he suspected she might need all the weapons she could get.

He held himself silent and still though every muscle twitched to follow as she stalked past him to circle the room. She paused near the mace, slanted a molten glance at him, and kept moving.

She passed the white- men-can’t-jump wall of massive, double-handed swords representing a wide, bloody swath of European history. The aesthetically organized Asian collection of katanas and throwing stars earned not even a second look. Instead she came around again to the blunt-force-trauma corner. “No guns? No rocket launchers?”

“Rocket launchers tend to get noticed. We try not to be. More important, our teshuva need to get up close and personal with the tenebrae to destroy them.”

“I tracked down my sister’s pimp about a year ago, trying to find out where she’d gone. He stabbed me.” She put her hand against her left side, just under her breast. “Punctured a lung. Nicked my heart. But you already knew that—didn’t you?—from the dossier your people put together. Did it tell you that, even coughing up blood, I managed to knock out a few of his teeth?”

Liam pursed his lips. “So you’re saying you don’t need a mace.”

The protective cup of her hand slid around to settle on her hip again. “I’m saying I don’t need a mace.”

He wanted to argue in favor of the mace, full Kevlar—never mind that body armor interfered with the draining of demonic emanations, which was the sole reason for their immortal existence—hell, throw in a popemobile too. After all, the ferales had sniffed her out for some nefarious reason. And she was the one who’d asked for a weapon.

Ah, of course. He’d dealt with some angry, violent men in his time with the league, but nary a one as prickly as Jilly. She needed a weapon—she might even want one—but she wouldn’t want to need his. Or him.

Understanding didn’t blunt the poke of annoyance at her rejection. Just what he needed: yet another fiercely temperamental, insubordinate diva to go with the others—female and male—he already had. The teshuva seemed inexplicably drawn to the type, himself excluded, which often made him wonder how he had ever become their leader. Despite her rebellious independence, she’d come back to him. He would make her see she needed his protection.

And yet, he couldn’t quite curtail a pang of reluctant respect. Like all incoming talyan, she had to be confused and scared, but unlike some tyros he’d dealt with, she hadn’t collapsed in a catatonic trance, overwhelmed by the teshuva’s energies. Instead, he suspected her teshuva was going to have its hands full reining her in. Much as he himself would.

Refusing to indulge the image of his hands full of her, he gave a deliberately casual shrug. “When you change your mind about the weapon . . .”

“I’ll be sure to let you know.”

He withheld a snort. She’d voluntarily admit to anything that smacked of weakness only after a snowball survived August in Chicago. Which was even less promising than its chances in hell.

She marched out of the weapons room but paused as he closed the door. “Sera said I’d meet the rest of the crew.”

He hesitated, picturing the predatory interest of his wayward, womanless fighters. “Later. They’re recovering from last night’s battles.” When she opened her mouth to protest, he added sharply, “You’ll be one of them soon enough.”

From the defiant flicker of violet in her eyes—obvious in the basement gloom—he thought soon might come even sooner. Instead of stopping at the main floor, he continued up, their steps clanging on the steel treads, until they reached the roof. He shoved open the access door to a swirl of frigid March air.

Thin clouds blanked the sun into a matte white disk that leached the dimensions from the surrounding industrial district. The gray-walled buildings looked flat as cardboard cutouts. Even the graffiti, unreadable at this distance, assuming it was ever readable, had dulled.

The wind rattled Jilly’s blue-spiked hair but couldn’t bend it. “King of all you survey, hmm?”

“Not even a knight,” he demurred. “I want you to see what we’re fighting for.”

“We’ll be hailed as conquering heroes, no doubt.”

He shook his head. This part of the test was always hard for the tyros to swallow. “No one besides us will ever know. Demons stalk the Magnificent Mile as often as the South Side, but the battleground doesn’t matter.”

“Not so different from my day job. I did three-quarters of my work on the street anyway. And just like those horde-tenebrae, the kids are half invisible to most people. Hell, most people didn’t even see me.”

Did she truly understand, or was this more of her bravado? Against the bleak landscape, her bright hair and warm skin tones gleamed. “They’d see plenty more hell if not for us.” He curled his fingers into fists to stop himself from reaching out to her and tilted his face to the sky. “Unfortunately, this is as close as you’ll get to heaven.”

She pivoted to face him. The wind bit through his shirt and he knew she must be equally chilled, but she stood without shivering. Though the top of her head didn’t even reach his shoulder, she sized herself against him with a long, slow look even more deliberate than the one he’d given her. Was it his imagination, or did she linger over places a good repentant demon should make him forget?

She breathed out a soft noise that left him no indication which way she had judged him. “This close, huh? And I haven’t even been properly damned yet.”

She took a step forward, tilting her head as if to get another perspective.

He tightened his hands into fists at his side, not against the cold, but against a rising heat that seemed to spark off those spiced eyes. “You will be. Soon.” Obviously some demon was at work that she would tease him so.

“We have hours before nightfall,” she said. “Hours before I can meet your fighters. Or my demon. So let’s go. Show me something to make me believe I have a better chance if I join you.”

And that latent demon in her apparently still had power to call to him, because he—who of all the talyan should know better than to give in to temptation—followed her.