Horror climbed into her expression. Not anger at him. Not yet. “A demon? The one who attacked us in Duluth?”
He picked his words carefully. “I don’t know—”
“Lie.”
Nicholas ground his teeth, faced the man. “I don’t know for certain!”
“Who?” Ash’s voice brought him back to her. “Who?”
He’d never wanted to lie so badly. He couldn’t. Not now—and not because Hugh was listening. He simply couldn’t look into her eyes and pretend he didn’t know. “Madelyn. Madelyn killed them.”
Everything in her face stilled. The hold of her fingers slackened. “You knew this and didn’t tell me?”
“I didn’t know they were your parents.”
“But you knew they mattered. That they were important to me.”
He wanted to plead ignorance. To say he didn’t know, that he hadn’t believed it, that he’d thought she was a demon who couldn’t truly feel, that it was all a trick.
But he’d known. He’d held her while she sobbed for parents she couldn’t remember, and he’d known that emotion was real.
“Yes,” he said. “I knew.”
“So you brought her out here,” Lilith said. “And you waited for Madelyn to come to you.”
He looked into Ash’s face. He couldn’t read all of the emotions there, but he recognized pain, horror, disbelief. God. She had to know everything had changed.
“Yes—”
“Truth.”
“But not now! Goddammit, I wouldn’t have used you as bait now! I can only think of protecting you.”
And silence. Awful silence.
Ash’s hands dropped away from his waist. And though the wall prevented her from backing away, he could feel her withdrawing.
“Ash,” he pled softly. “Please. Believe me. Believe me.”
Her voice was wooden, her face stone. “I don’t know what to believe, Nicholas.”
“I swear my only thought was protecting you,” he said, but there was only more damning silence from Hugh. Did Ash see what they were doing? “They want you to leave with them, or he would say that is the truth, too.”
“We can train her to protect herself far better than you can, Nicholas,” Lilith said. “You’re only a man who needs to eat, to sleep. You can’t protect her all the time. Can you? Because all it would take is a word from her, a letter sent, a shout from down the street, and Ash is lost to you.”
Would it be that easy? Suddenly stricken, Nicholas looked down at her. Completely naked, she stood with her face set and her eyes averted from his, and though he knew Ash didn’t care that the others saw her nude, though he knew her strength, she suddenly seemed so exposed, so vulnerable. God. Could he be so certain, when it meant risking her life?
“And Ash—if Madelyn finds you together with Nicholas, she’ll order you to kill him. Because that would cause you the most pain, and because that is what a demon would do.”
Ash shook her head. “But I wouldn’t do it. I wouldn’t obey.”
“Then you’d be back in that frozen field as soon as she sacrifices you to the spell. And she wins either way.”
Back in the frozen field. Ash continued to shake her head, but he saw the terror fill her eyes, the fear that would be her choice: to kill him, or to suffer an eternity of torment—a torture that she already knew too well.
No doubt, Madelyn would order Ash to do it. Nicholas wouldn’t care if he died for her. But if Ash refused to carry it out, he couldn’t bear the thought of her in that field, tortured for eternity for saving him.
He couldn’t bear it. And if Lilith had been searching for his limit, she’d just found it. So what now?
It would be Ash’s decision. It had to be hers alone.
Without taking his eyes from her, Nicholas said, “Will you two give us a minute? Let her take a breath, get dressed.”
“So she doesn’t run around like that all the time? That’ll disappoint the novices,” Lilith said. “But go ahead.”
With a quick, grateful glance at Nicholas, Ash turned toward the bedroom. Nicholas’s throat tightened. This wouldn’t be the last time he was with her there. He’d follow—
“Ashmodei.”
As if struck, Ash stumbled. She caught herself against the wall and slowly faced Lilith, her eyes wide. “What?”
“Your name. I finally saw it when you moved—it’s written here.” Lilith touched her own chest, and Ash mirrored the movement, flattening her palm over the large symbol between her breasts. “Lucifer named you after a demon who betrayed him. It would be considered an insult to Ashmodei, giving the name to a halfling. I take it a good sign.”
“Ashmodei,” she repeated softly. When she looked at Nicholas, a smile had transformed her face. “So you helped me discover it, after all.”
“I didn’t—”
“You’re the one who stripped me naked.”
God, and she made him laugh. He followed her into the bedroom, memorizing the sway of her blond hair against her back, the square of her shoulders, the dimples above her perfect ass. Then she looked down at herself and her clothes formed, with boots matching the one that still lay with a broken heel near the bed.
The Guardians could probably tell her how and why she did that. Nicholas hadn’t even been able to tell Ash her name. They could train her, better than he ever could.
She faced him, and her smile had already gone, her eyes glowing crimson. He knew what her choice would be. What it had to be.
And he knew what his had to be, too. “I’ll go with you.”
“They’ll lock me up, you realize. Not in a cell, but the effect is the same. They’ll lock me up tight—and you’d be locked up with me, too, because Madelyn might find me through you.”
“Then I’ll stay locked up with you.”
Her tearful smile gave him hope. Until she spoke. “You can’t come.”
Feeling sucker-punched, he shook his head. “What?”
“You can’t.” Her breath hitched. “The Guardians aren’t perfect. They can be defeated. They have their limits. You forced one to leave us in Duluth by pointing a crossbow at her friend’s head. They’ll work harder than that to protect me, but there’s always a chance Madelyn will get through and I’ll have to choose whether or not to kill you.”