She beckoned Felix close with one finger, and then let the power of compulsion fill her. “Escort me to the captain’s tent,” she ordered, her voice quiet but throbbing with magic. “I have business there, but no one else must know.”

His face clouded, and then, inexplicably, cleared. “You must stay here, Madame,” he disagreed. “I have been given my orders.”

Rebekah rocked back on her heels, stunned that he would—that he could—defy her. She could not think of another human who had resisted an Original vampire’s compulsion. That shouldn’t be possible. Maybe it was her own nerves, she decided, and tried again, leveling her powerful gaze into his eyes and repeating her demand.

“We will go at once,” he agreed thickly. It was as if he had never argued in the first place. Felix looked around to make sure no one was watching, then took her arm and led the way.

Together they crossed the camp, crouching low and staying near the walls of other tents. There wasn’t anyone around, but Felix took her command of secrecy very seriously, sometimes shielding her body with his own when he seemed to notice a movement nearby.

Felix stopped at the entrance of Eric’s tent, looking sadly purposeless. “Stand guard,” she ordered, compelling him anew. He shifted as if he wanted to object, but she took no chances, layering her power over and over itself until whatever restless will he had of his own was buried beneath the weight of hers. “Let no one enter until I have returned.” It was unlikely that anyone would attempt to come in while she was there, but in the very worst case she would hear the scuffle if they did. Felix, unable to reveal what he was really doing there, would seem to have gone mad, but such things were common enough even among seasoned officers. His fellow soldiers would be surprised, but hardly suspicious.

Apprehensively, Rebekah lifted the fleur-de-lis–covered flap of Eric’s tent. It was empty, and yet she felt like something was waiting for her.

The outer office looked just as she remembered it. The room was dark, but she could see perfectly well with her heightened vision. Nothing looked amiss, and she wished she could leave it at that. She liked Eric, she had to admit to herself, and she was reluctant to find out his secrets. Exposed secrets usually led to someone dying. And that wasn’t going to be Rebekah.

With a deep breath and a muttered curse, she shoved aside the curtains to the inner chamber with defiant force.

And then she froze.

It wasn’t a bedroom at all. It wasn’t a sanctuary or a place of repose...it was a shrine to death. The fabric walls were covered with crosses and mirrors, and around three sides of the room sat carved wooden chests. They were piled high with stakes, objects wrought in silver, crossbows with wooden bolts, and even strings of garlic cloves. One chest held piles of dusty books stacked among instruments she didn’t recognize with purposes she could not guess. Rebekah approached them carefully, studying each one. This was a room designed for catching and killing vampires.

It was all wrong, she realized with a sigh of relief. Some of the books looked ominously authoritative at first, but most were nothing but fairy tales. She nearly laughed aloud at one pretentiously titled The Mythes and Truthes of the Monstyrrs Known Throughout the Known Worlde as “Vampyrre.” She didn’t see anything in the tent that would especially hurt her. The thing that stung, actually, was that a man she’d begun to like had built a room dedicated to discovering the weaknesses of her kind.

She felt as though a heavy weight sat in her chest when she forced herself to admit just how wrong she’d been to trust Captain Moquet. She could no longer entertain her attraction to his relentless curiosity, not when it was such a clear threat to her. What if she’d been completely blinded by their chemistry, and he was using her much as she had intended to manipulate him?

She had to admit it was possible that Eric had never been interested in the human widow at all, and might have suspected Rebekah’s true nature all along. What if he was keeping her close in order to learn her weaknesses? Her hands shook as she picked up one cruel-looking artifact after the other, inspecting them for anything that might cause irreparable harm.

So far, the Mikaelsons had been both lucky and careful—rumors of vampires hadn’t spread from the Old World to the New. But Eric had recently arrived from France, and the truth was that he had never said much about why. What had really brought him to this distant swampland? Had he come to bring order to a lawless land for the greater glory of King Louis, or had he been sent to follow the trail of vampires?

Her eye fell on something she recognized, and she bent forward to pick it up. A small gold ring set with lapis lazuli hung on a chain that dangled from the corner of a silver mirror. The jewelry was twin to the one on her own finger. There were only six daylight rings in the world, to the best of her knowledge, and they were treasured family heirlooms. Her family’s heirlooms. What was one doing here? Had it been enchanted, like the ones Esther had made, or was it just a copy?

One thing was certain: Eric’s interest in the occult was much less haphazard than he had let her believe. He wasn’t just after “unnatural fiends”; he knew exactly what he was searching for. And in spite of all the things he seemed to have gotten wrong so far, he was also getting some things dangerously right. The lapis ring might look like nothing but a pretty trinket, but it would not have been created—and it certainly would not have been here—unless it had been meant for the finger of a vampire.

She could imagine him turning it over in his calloused hands, studying it. She could picture him prowling around this room, trying to connect all of its pieces into a coherent picture. The way his eyebrows furrowed when he concentrated, the strong line of his shoulders beneath a thin white shirt...Rebekah clenched the ring in her fist, furious with herself.

It was obvious now that she didn’t really know him at all. That brooding strength, that concentrated power...she could not afford to be attracted to the very qualities that would make him an effective killer of her kind.

Of course this was Eric’s secret. Naturally Rebekah had gotten involved with the one man who was the most dangerous to her. It was the same mistake she had made over and over, and every time that she thought she’d learned to choose more wisely, she was proven wrong. It was as if her heart had some instinctual longing for misery and pain.

Gingerly, she put the ring back exactly as she found it and moved on, continuing her investigation.

On the far side of the chest she nearly tripped over something thicker than the piled carpets, and she looked down in surprise at what must be Eric’s bedroll. She had almost forgotten that this was also the place he slept. She would never have thought him to be the type of man who would find rest among such chaos and darkness. He was serious, yes, but she had never imagined him as morbid.

For a moment she could see his dark hair with its sprinkling of gray at the temples on the crisp white pillow below her, his thoughtful hazel eyes gazing into hers. Maybe there was some kind of misunderstanding; maybe Eric’s fascination with vampires wasn’t what it seemed. Maybe there was another explanation entirely, and they could make a fresh start with none of her lies and none of his....

She lowered herself down onto his blankets, wanting to see how it was that he woke up every morning. The mirrors and some of the crosses that ringed the walls glittered in the light that flickered through the tent, and the nearest chest was so close she could have reached up and touched some of the strange instruments within. Vampires were his first waking thought and the last thing on his mind as he fell asleep. Despite lying amongst sheets that smelled of him, and feeling the spot where his body lay every night, Rebekah had to admit that there was no question that Eric’s job was to hunt vampires, and everything else—the army, the city, the king’s law—was nothing but a smokescreen.