Agony screamed inside my skin.

I couldn’t fight. I couldn’t flee.

I could only lie there whimpering, immobilized by pain.

When I came to, it took me a moment to figure out where I was.

I blinked in the low light and remained motionless, performing a rapid physical assessment of myself.

I was relieved to realize I was experiencing no current pain—it was all residual. My head was one massive bruise. My bones felt as if they’d been crushed, splinted, and had barely begun to heal.

Internal check completed, I turned my attention to my surroundings.

I was in the bookstore, propped on my favorite chesterfield sofa before the fire in the rear conversation area. I was iced to the bone, wrapped in blankets.

Barrons stood in front of the fire, a tall, powerful shape surrounded by flame, his back to me.

I exhaled with relief, a tiny noise in the large room, but Barrons whirled instantly, a sound rattling deep in his chest, guttural, animal. It made my blood run cold.

It was one of the most inhuman sounds I’d ever heard. Adrenaline erased my pain. I rose up on all fours on the sofa, like some wild thing myself, and stared.

“What the fuck are you?” he snarled. His dark eyes burned ancient and cold in his face. There was blood on his cheeks. Blood on his hands. I wondered if it had come from me. I wondered why he hadn’t bothered trying to wash it off. I wondered how long I’d been out. How had I gotten back here? What time was it, anyway? What had the Book done to me?

Then his question penetrated. I pushed the hair from my eyes and began to laugh. “What am I? What am I?”

I laughed and laughed. I couldn’t help it. I held my sides. There might have been an edge of hysteria in it, but after all I’d been through, I figured I was entitled to a little lunacy. I laughed so hard I couldn’t breathe.

Jericho Barrons was asking me what I was!

He made that sound again, like a rattlesnake—a giant one—was shaking a warning tail in his chest. I stopped laughing and looked at him. The sound chilled me the same way the Sinsar Dubh did. It made me think that Jericho Barrons’ skin might be a slipcover for a chair I never wanted to see.

“Kneel, Ms. Lane!”

Shit. He’d Voiced me!

And it was working!

I crashed off the sofa in a tangle of blankets and landed on my knees, gritting my teeth. I thought I was immune to Voice! The LM’s hadn’t worked on me! But then, Barrons is better at everything.

“What are you?” he roared.

“I don’t know!” I shouted. I didn’t. But I was sure beginning to wonder. V’lane’s comment that night at the abbey had been haunting me with increasing frequency: They should be afraid of you, he’d said. You have only begun to discover what you are.

“What does the Book want from you?”

“I don’t know!”

“What was it doing to you while it kept you there in the street?”

“I don’t know! How long did it keep me there?”

“Over an hour! It turned into the Beast and eclipsed you. I couldn’t fucking get to you! I couldn’t even fucking see you! What was it doing?”

“Learning me. Tasting me. Knowing me,” I gritted. “That’s what it said. Stop Voicing me, Barrons!”

“I’ll stop Voicing you when you can make me stop Voicing you, Ms. Lane. Stand up.”

I pushed to my feet on trembling legs, residual pain in every ounce of my body. I hated him at that moment. There was no need to kick me when I was already down.

“Fight me, Ms. Lane,” he growled, without the aid of Voice. “Pick up the knife and cut your hand.”

I glanced down at the coffee table. An ivory-handled knife with a wicked, jagged blade shimmered in the firelight. I was horrified to find myself reaching for it. I’d been here before. This was exactly how he’d tried to train me in the past.

“Fight!”

And just like in the past, I kept reaching.

“Bloody hell, look inside yourself! Hate me! Fight! Fight any way you can!”

My hand stopped. Pulled back. Moved forward again.

“Cut yourself deep,” he hissed in Voice. “Make it hurt like hell.”

My fingers closed around the hilt of the knife.

“You’re a natural victim, Ms. Lane. A walking, talking Barbie doll,” he sneered. “See Mac’s sister get killed. See Mac get raped. See Mac get fucked. See Mac get crushed in the street by the Book. See Mac dead on top of the trash heap out back.”

I sucked in a sharp, pained breath.

“Pick up the knife!”

I raised it jerkily in my hand.

“I’ve been in your skin,” he taunted. “I know you inside and out. There’s nothing there. Do us all a favor and die so we can start working on another plan and quit thinking maybe you’ll grow the fuck up and be capable of something.”

Okay, enough! “You don’t know me inside and out,” I snarled. “You may have gotten in my skin, but you have never gotten inside my heart. Go ahead, Barrons, make me slice and dice myself. Go ahead, play games with me. Push me around. Lie to me. Bully me. Be your usual constant jackass self. Stalk around all broody and pissy and secretive, but you’re wrong about me. There’s something inside me you’d better be afraid of. And you can’t touch my soul. You will never touch my soul!”

I raised my hand, drew back the knife, and let it fly. It sliced through the air, straight for his head.

He avoided it with preternatural grace, a mere whisper of a movement, precisely and only as much as was required to not get hit.

The hilt vibrated in the wood of the ornate mantel next to his head.

“So, fuck you, Jericho Barrons, and not the way you like it. Fuck you—as in, you can’t touch me. Nobody can.”

I kicked the table at him. It crashed into his shins. I picked up a lamp from the end table. Flung it straight at his head. He ducked again. I grabbed a book. It thumped off his chest.

He laughed, dark eyes glittering with exhilaration.

I launched myself at him, slammed a fist into his face. I heard a satisfying crunch and felt something in his nose give.

He didn’t try to hit me back or push me away. Merely wrapped his arms around me and crushed me tight to his body, trapping my arms against his chest.

Then, when I thought he might just squeeze me to death, he dropped his head forward, into the hollow where my shoulder met my neck.

“Do you miss fucking me, Ms. Lane?” he purred against my ear. Voice resonated in my skull, pressuring a reply.

I was tall and strong and proud inside myself. Nobody owned me. I didn’t have to answer any questions I didn’t want to, ever again.

“Wouldn’t you just love to know?” I purred back. “You want more of me, don’t you, Barrons? I got under your skin deep. I hope you got addicted to me. I was a wild one, wasn’t I? I bet you never had sex like that in your entire existence, huh, O Ancient One? I bet I rocked your perfectly disciplined little world. I hope wanting me hurts like hell!”

His hands were suddenly cruelly tight on my waist.

“There’s only one question that matters, Ms. Lane, and it’s the one you never get around to asking. People are capable of varying degrees of truth. The majority spend their entire lives fabricating an elaborate skein of lies, immersing themselves in the faith of bad faith, doing whatever it takes to feel safe. The person who truly lives has precious few moments of safety, learns to thrive in any kind of storm. It’s the truth you can stare down stone-cold that makes you what you are. Weak or strong. Live or die. Prove yourself. How much truth can you take, Ms. Lane?”

I could feel his mind rubbing up against mine. It was a shockingly sensuous feeling. He was reaching for my thoughts the way I’d hammered at him for his, only he was seducing me into opening my mind, making me blossom like a flower for his sun, beckoning me into one of his memories.