Page 154 of Veil of Death and Shadow

Rina raised her hands, calling them off, her attention locked on me now. “What about her?”

“Is she here?” I asked. The casual disinterest in her voice was gutting. “That’s why I came. She’s missing and when the trail led to Claude, and I showed him a picture, he pointed me here.” Realization settled like a stone in my gut. “He thought the girl in the picture was you.”

Of course. Sora would never have joined Wrath, would never have kept this secret life from me.

Rina’s eyes widened, her brows softening in surprise, but the momentary concern was gone in a flash—back in its place, was a hardened mask.

Then, she turned away from me, clustering with a few of the other members of her house, their words whispered and hurried, impossible for me to decipher.

The man behind me grabbed my arms again, linking them behind my back, as if expecting me to try and run now that theircluster had dispersed. As if I stood a chance against a dozen armed guards.

As if I could just walk away, knowing what I knew now.

Rina was alive. And, more than that, she’d been living nearby.

I watched her, clocking her militant posture, the lean lines of muscle running over her body. Small scars freckled her face, her hands, the visible patches of skin on her arms. She still looked like Sora of course, but the differences between them were so much starker now than they’d ever been growing up.

Gone was the bubbly personality of my first real friend.

There was a hardness encasing her now, edges where Sora was soft.

“People just can’t stop saving you, can they?” a voice whispered in my ear.

I flinched, then found Thorne standing by my side, his expression trapped somewhere between frustration and reluctant curiosity.

“At this rate,” he continued, arching his brow at Kieran, “I’m starting to suspect we’ll see the death of your guardian angel before we see yours.”

Tension lined Keiran’s face as the two men squared off in a silent conversation.

“What do you mean?” I asked, keeping my voice all but silent. “He’s already dead.”

Thorne’s gaze dipped to Kieran’s hand, which was now hidden behind his back.

Before he answered, Rina was back in front of me. With agile fingers, she tied my hands together with a zip tie and grabbed my upper arm with a grip tight enough to bruise. Then, not so much as even meeting my stare, she tugged me away from my captor and started ushering me down the street.

“Rina—”

“Not here,” she whispered, her voice cold, her lips barely moving.

“Rina, not so fast,” someone from the group yelled, and she froze. “The keys?”

The tension in her shoulders eased slightly as she tightened her grip. “Where did you put the vampire’s keys?”

“In my front pocket,” I responded, though her fingers deftly located the fob before I’d even finished speaking.

She tossed the keys back, then pushed me forward, both of us locked in heavy silence until she ushered me into a small house.

Only when she closed the door behind me, Kieran and Thorne materializing through the wall, did she ease up. She fished a switchblade from her pocket, and I flinched when the knife sprang open a few inches from my face.

“Relax.” She rolled her eyes, then moved behind me, the zip tie cuffs breaking free with a soft snap.

Rubbing my wrists, I looked around. We were in a small house, standing in a kitchen that looked like it hadn’t seen visitors in months. A thin layer of dust coated everything, the scent of must inescapable.

Rina jutted her chin towards the dark green table in the corner, one that looked like it had been rescued years ago at a vintage shop, the hardware relatively new and polished. “Sit down.”

But I waited until she sat in the opposite chair, her dark eyes somehow both familiar and not as they tracked me.

“Where’s my sister?” she asked, her voice hard, curving strangely over the word sister, like she hadn’t used it in years. “Why did Claude point you here?”

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