She rolled onto her back and Night pulled her to him, tugging her like a ragdoll into his arms as he turned onto his side. He nestled against her back, his breath fanning her neck as he sighed, and she pieced together the spell to record her memories.

Cast it.

And then closed her eyes.

Images emerged from the darkness, dim at first, but they grew brighter as they sped past her, flickering before her eyes. A hundred thousand moments swept around her, scenes building and falling away at a dizzying pace. As time passed, the stream slowed, allowing her to see moments in Night’s life.

Through his eyes, she saw the attack on his commander and on him, and felt his pain and how close it had come to destroying him. She studied the faces of the two witches, hoping she might recognise them so she could help him have his revenge. Only she didn’t recognise either female.

Time skipped forwards and she saw how desperately he had tried to find the ones responsible, his almost constant search for them. She witnessed what he had done to the coven and how a black rage had consumed him when the witches had escaped him.

She felt how driven he was to hunt them down and have his revenge.

He couldn’t let it go.

She let the next few decades rush past her and slowed when she felt she was nearing the end of his memories, catching up with the present.

A paper with a date of two months ago flashed before her, followed by memories of what appeared to be an office, and conversations with vampires, and a mission he had carried out.

And then her.

Lilian stopped there, denying the desire that rose within her. She wanted to know how Night felt about her, but she didn’t want to discover it this way, by snooping at his memories. She wanted to hear it from him.

She jerked awake and stared at the pillow before her.

Night hadn’t attacked her coven.

But someone had made it look an awful lot as if he had and had pointed her coven at his brother. Why? To draw Night out into the open?

She carefully extricated herself from Night’s arms and hurried to her dress, picked it up off the floor and found her phone. She fired off a message to her coven, telling them that Bastian wasn’t to blame and neither was Night, and that she had proof and wanted to meet them to clear his name.

A message came back almost instantly this time.

A time and a place.

She swallowed her racing heart as her hands trembled.

They wanted to meet.

Chapter 23

Lilian was avoiding him. Again.

She had been gone when Night had awoken and Antoine had kept him busy until close to midnight, talking to him and introducing him to his daughter, Helena.Helena. That had been Night’s mother’s name and the baby resembled her, with a shock of pale hair and large eyes, and the way she laughed. Night had somehow ended up holding the squirming bundle and staring at her.

Unable to believe his cousin had a family now.

With a turned human of all things.

That and the fact Grave had mated with a phantom gave Night hope that his family might accept Lilian. He wasn’t sure Bastian would, felt certain his brother would never let him hear the end of it, but he didn’t care. If only part of his family accepted her, that was enough for Night. He wasn’t giving her up. She was his now. His forever.

Finally, Antoine had left, but only after issuing a request. He wanted Night and Lilian to move into one of the guest rooms on the floor below now that Night was starting to feel stronger. Antoine had taken great pains to explain how comfortable the guest quarters were and Night had stopped him by telling him it wasn’t a problem.

The room was Snow’s after all, and Antoine wasn’t the only one hoping that their sibling would come home soon.

Night set the final stack of books from Snow’s room on the dressing table next to the rest and arranged them neatly. Spell books. Lilian had a glow to her whenever she looked at them, one that made it clear she was excited about reading them. Would she find any new spells in them?

Maybe she already had.