It was at that moment that Sebastian Thorne, for the first time in fifty years, fell in love.

“My dear child,” he said, deeply moved, “I will. And please don’t concern yourself with such things. From now on, all you have to worry about is your life here.”

She exhaled a quiet, relieved breath, then nodded, as if what he’d said had made her happy. He drew nearer to her, a moth to a flame.

“What were you going to say, before you remembered to ask about the Grand Minister’s health?” he asked, coming closer still.

Lumina looked up at him. He would have sworn he saw a glimmer of hope deep in her eyes. “He . . . at the Hospice the Grand Minister told me I could meet my mother. My birth mother. He said if I didn’t resist, I could be with her.” She moistened her lips, blinking rapidly. Her voice lowered to near a whisper. “And I would like that so much, sir. That’s why . . . I don’t want to be a bother to you, of course, but I thought if perhaps I was good you might let me see her? Or just . . . maybe talk to her? Even if it’s one time. You see, I-I never really had a mother. The woman who raised me died when I was young . . .”

She trailed off into silence, biting her lip again, looking down, and it took every ounce of his restraint not to reach out his hand and stroke her hair.

“If you give me your word you will continue to be as cooperative as you’ve been so far, I will take you to your mother, Lumina.”

She looked up at him then, moisture welling in her eyes, and reached out and grabbed his hand. He nearly recoiled, shocked, but she pressed her soft, warm cheek to his hand, and whispered fervently, “Oh, thank you! Thank you, sir! I’m so grateful to you!”

The door slid open. Half a dozen armed men burst into the room. Thorne held them all off with a lifted hand, staring down in awe at the supplicant clutching him as if her life depended on it. She slid her cheek along his knuckles, pressed the softest kiss to his skin, then lifted her head and gazed at him in wonder as if the sun were shining right out of his head.

Dazed, thrilled, imagining in lurid detail just how grateful she might turn out to be, he said, “In fact, I’ll take you to see her right now.”

He followed behind her. They all did. Handcuffed, barefoot, silent, Lumina walked down a long, sterile corridor. She plainly heard the one called Three trying to quietly urge Thorne to put this off, to interrogate her before rewarding her, but Thorne wasn’t having it.

“Time enough for that later,” he said, and that was the end of that.

Lu wished she’d learned the craft of stroking a man’s ego years ago. How much easier life might have been.

She’d left the book behind in the interrogation room. It was a laughably poor choice by the guard who’d given it to her, and she could only wonder at his motives. She didn’t think he was on Dieter’s side, judging by the way he smirked at her, but then again, she’d learned how appearances can truly deceive.

The book was The Art of War, by Sun Tzu. It contained a quote near the beginning that made Lu think long and hard.

Appear weak when you are strong, and strong when you are weak.

Much like a sheathed knife, her true power lay in concealment.

Thorne watched placidly as the doors to the suite swung slowly open, and mother and daughter saw one another for the first time.

He’d arranged to have Jenna transferred to the suite he’d built in anticipation of her acquiescence to giving him the information he’d wanted about the whereabouts of the rest of her people. She hadn’t given him that information yet, unfortunately, in spite of his best efforts with the Breast Ripper and similar unpleasantries. Because she was what she was, she healed uncommonly fast, and so when her daughter first laid eyes on her, she looked relatively healthy.

If you weren’t looking into her eyes, that is. Then you could really see what she was all about.

At the moment those fathomless eyes, electric yellow-green and impossibly large, were trained on her daughter.

Thorne gestured to one of the guards to release Lumina from the handcuffs. His order was promptly followed. Then the two women stared at one another in a silence that grew and stretched, becoming uncomfortably long.

Why is nothing happening? he thought, frowning. Perhaps this was their way, this stoicism? He shook that thought off because he’d seen Jenna collapse in an emotional heap when showed the video of Leander. So what was this?

Just as he was about to clear his throat and suggest that it was enough visiting for one day, Lumina ran to her mother, closing the distance between them in a bolt of blurred motion. She threw her arms around her mother’s neck. They stood like that, silent, clutching one another, so similar in looks it was eerie, like seeing the older and younger version of the same person at once.

“Well,” said Thorne into the hush, “I’ll give you two a moment. Lumina, when you’re finished here, I’m afraid there are a few things we’ll have to discuss.”

He turned away, leaving, but Lumina’s voice stopped him.

“May I ask you a question?”

When he turned back to look at them, Lumina and her mother were holding hands. Staring at him with faint, ferocious smiles on their faces. Thorne’s chest tightened with a disturbing premonition that he was no longer predator, but prey.

“Do you happen to know what ‘gie it laldy’ means?”

“What?” he asked, confused, irritated, struggling to push aside the growing certainty that something was terribly wrong.

Lumina said, “I heard it recently, and I didn’t know what it meant. Do you?”

His response was curt and cold. “No.” He turned to leave again, but Three spoke up.

“It’s old Scottish slang, sir. It means, ‘give it loudly.’ Give it one hundred percent. Pull out all the stops, so to speak.”

Lumina Bohn threw back her head and laughed, deep and throaty. It was chilling in its exuberance. Then she looked at him, smiling widely, her eyes gleaming animal bright.

Just as the hair atop his head began to lift with the first, sparking crackles of electricity, Lumina said, “Such great advice.”

To his horror, the fused metal collars around both women’s necks popped off simultaneously, falling with a clatter to the floor. Then Lumina waved at him, a tiny motion of her fingers that wasn’t a hello.

And the world exploded into flame.

Sleeping fitfully in his hospital bed, the Grand Minister was abruptly awoken by an earthquake.

He thought it was a dream at first. The clattering windows, the jumping floor, the building groaning and shaking in a way no stationary object ever should. His eyes flew open and he stared around the room in disbelief, not comprehending what his eyes were seeing.

Screaming from the nurse’s station. The overhead fluorescents flickered off and on. The data screen wrenched from the wall opposite the bed, crashing to the floor and shattering. A flare of light from the window, searingly bright. Heavy blackout shades were drawn against the hellish heat of day, but one push on the proper button on the universal remote attached to the metal rail on his hospital bed remedied that, and the shades slid silently back.