Slowly he went, down a set of spiral stairs to the bottom floor. The bedrooms.

He stood at the end of the carpeted hallway looking down the corridor. All the doors were open except one, at the far end, which was locked.

And vibrating. She was hitting—or kicking—it from the inside. If it hadn’t been reinforced she would have easily kicked the door right out of its frame, but as it was, she was doing a fine job of trying. He wondered what the inside of the door looked like.

Not pretty, he’d bet.

“Eliana,” he called. The blows on the door abruptly ceased. He took several steps forward, listening, hearing nothing but the pounding of his own pulse in his ears. “Ana, it’s me.” He cleared his throat, feeling suddenly like the biggest fool on the planet. Of course she knows it’s you. Nicely played, idiot!

Ignoring that snarky little voice inside his head that never failed to demoralize him, D reached out, put his big hand on the doorknob, turned it, and pushed the door open.

It swung back on silent hinges, revealing the room in all its chaos.

She’d torn the sheets and quilted duvet from the bed and upended the mattress against the bed frame so it stood on end, a queen-size padded wall concealing the far corner of the room. All the drawers in the bureau stood open, their contents rifled through, clothing pulled out and left in piles on the floor or hanging haphazardly from the backs of chairs or over the desk, which also had all its drawers ajar, a few upside down on the floor beneath it. The two bedside lamps had been smashed, though one had survived the attack and lay on its side against a wall, uplighting the room in a wash of intermittently flickering yellow.

The crystal vase with the flowers he’d brought lay shattered at his feet, the flowers scattered over the dark rug in bright confusion, drenched and half demolished.

That actually hurt.

“I’m coming in,” he warned, his voice harder than he intended because he was feeling sorry for himself about the flowers.

Silence. He took it as an affirmation and eased into the room.

His first mistake was assuming she’d hidden behind the mattress; he realized that as he saw movement from his right and heard something whizz by his head, parting the air with a sinister hiss just as he jerked out of its way. He whirled around and leapt back simultaneously, barely avoiding another slashing blow aimed at his jugular, and had exactly two seconds to appreciate the vision of Eliana—dark eyes ablaze, lovely mouth pinched in concentration—before she thrust again with the blade.

He wrenched away and got himself clear of striking distance before she could take aim again and left her standing, arm raised, dagger clenched in her fist, next to the open bedroom door.

“Hello, Demetrius,” she said coldly, gazing at him with what appeared to be perfect composure. “I’ve been looking forward to this for a long time.”

Insanely, he wanted to laugh. He was so happy he could have danced. She clearly hated him and wanted to kill him, but she was here and she was alive and she was all he’d wanted for so long he couldn’t remember a time when he didn’t, and the relief and euphoria he felt lit him up inside like a Roman candle.

His face split with a big, goofy grin, the first time he’d truly smiled in years. “Me, too,” he said. “But obviously for different reasons.”

Very slowly, never letting her intense gaze leave his face, she shifted from one foot to the other, repositioning her weight. He marveled at how she seemed perfectly poised and confident, totally in control, and then he noticed the throbbing pulse in the hollow of her throat that betrayed her.

Not so cool after all. Perversely, it satisfied him.

“I’m unarmed,” he said as she advanced toward him with the dagger held out. He took a slow step back and held his hands up, wondering where she’d found it while at the same time cursing himself again for not clearing the room before he’d settled her in it to sleep off the anesthesia. Rookie mistake, one even a less experienced soldier in the lower class of Legiones would have avoided. She short-circuited his brain, as always.

“An unfortunate oversight on your part,” Eliana replied, not sounding sorry for him at all, “as it’s pretty idiotic to come to a knife fight without a knife.”

Dressed in a black pair of men’s boxer shorts rolled over at the waist so they didn’t sag down her legs and a white men’s undershirt she must have found in one of the dresser drawers, with her choppy blue hair sticking up in every direction and her wild, glittering eyes, she looked like an insane, cross-dressing pixie.

An insane, cross-dressing pixie with glowing skin and perfect breasts that were, unfortunately, clearly visible in all their creamy glory beneath the thin cotton undershirt. He avoided glancing at them but knew they were there, and his body responded.

Feeling that flush of heat to his groin, he smiled even wider.

Eliana turned beet red. “I’m not the innocent little princess you used to know, Bellator,” she hissed. “She died when you killed my father!”

Then she lunged forward, dagger aimed at his heart.

He spun out of the way and she followed, thrusting, leaping forward when he danced back, slashing out with the blade, her face grim and determined. He didn’t think himself in much danger—he was far stronger and had trained in all kinds of fighting since he’d been selected as a child for the king’s elite guard because of the strength and purity of his Bloodlines—but he was careful not to let her see his confidence, and he kept a safe distance while letting her advance and lunge while he feinted and leapt clear.

“Stop playing with me and fight!” she spat as he deflected a vicious thrust with a quick turn of his wrist. He had to admire her technique, he grudgingly admitted to himself. She’d obviously trained with someone who knew what they were doing.

“We are fighting. You’re lunging at me with a knife, and I’m trying not to get stuck, so it’s definitely a fight. And for the record, I didn’t kill your father.”

In response to that, Eliana froze. He froze as well and stared at her warily as she looked back at him, her chest rising and falling erratically, that pulse still fluttering wildly in her neck.

“Right to my face,” she muttered and shook her head.

This time when she lunged forward with a savage snarl—teeth bared, eyes alight with demonic fury—D was a little less certain he’d be getting out of the room alive.

Damn! Eliana barely missed D’s face with a well-timed swing.

The fact that he kept looking at her like that wasn’t helping her concentration. How he had the audacity to stare at her with such rampant glee after what he’d done—it made her even more determined to kill him. She lunged at him again.

“I’d almost forgotten how beautiful you are when you’re mad,” said D, feinting from her lunge so fast he was a blur. He wasn’t even breathing hard, damn him, but she was sweating, her hands were clammy, and the adrenaline blasting through her veins was making her shaky. She adjusted her grip on the dagger and breathed in, trying with no success to slow her pounding heart.

This was nothing like fighting with Alexi.

“I don’t want to hear anything you have to say,” she spat. “I just want you to die!”

“Ouch.” He looked pained and leapt clear as she lunged again.

She spun around and faced him. Big and brawny and utterly masculine as she remembered, he was still a masterpiece of agility, nimble and graceful with every move. He wore boots, black leathers slung low on his hips, and a half-zipped hoodie that revealed a distracting expanse of chest. Of tattooed, corrugated chest. His presence filled the small room, and she felt almost suffocated by the nearness of him, his size and scent. Just being close to him was overwhelming. She needed to get this over with, and quickly.