I woke up on the cold floor of my bedroom, the silence of the apartment feeling like a tomb. Viktor had been gone for hours, but the air still tasted of his expensive tobacco and his cruelty.
My body ached. My face throbbed where he had struck me. But the pain in my chest was worse.
Leo was gone. The machines that kept him breathing were gone. Viktor hadn't just taken my dignity; he had taken my heart and locked it in a lab I couldn't reach.
Forty-eight hours.
I pulled myself up, my fingers trembling as they brushed against the "V.M." tattoo on my waist. I felt sick. Every time Viktor touched me, he tried to remind me I was his slave. But for a few hours at that ball, under the gaze of a man with hazel eyes, I had felt… human.
Lucien De Rossi.
The realization hit me like another physical blow. The stranger who had held me with such strange tenderness, the man I had felt safe with for the first time in my life, was the man I had to kill. The "Monster" I was sent to destroy was the only one who hadn't treated me like a monster.
How was I supposed to slide a blade into the heart that had beat against mine during a dance?
I looked at the blackened-gold key sitting on my nightstand. Viktor didn't know about it. He thought he had stripped me of everything, but he didn't know I carried a door in my pocket.
But I had a problem. To warp, I had to see the destination. I knew the Lumière Gallery. I knew the De Rossi ballroom. But I didn't know where Lucien slept. I didn't know his private offices. If I warped into the ballroom now, the De Rossi security-men just as professional as Viktor's-would gun me down before I could blink.
But I didn't have a choice. I had to get close to him. I had to finish this, or Leo would never wake up.
I didn't have a plan. I only had a knife.
I dressed in a blur, pulling on dark clothes over my aching skin. I didn't reach for the jeweled mask. I didn't brush my hair. I looked at my reflection in the hallway mirror—my eyes were dull, my lip was swollen.
I gripped the key. Usually, I had always used it to go to places I had seen—fixed points in space. But what if the key was smarter than that? What if it didn't just open doors to rooms, but doors to people?
I pictured the way his hazel eyes had burned with a strange curiosity. I pictured the warmth of his hand on my back. I focused every ounce of my desperation onto the image of Lucien De Rossi.
Take me to him, I whispered in my mind. Take me to the man I have to kill.
I slid the key into my bedroom door.
I gasped. I was standing in a room that looked like a temple built for a dark god. It was massive—high, vaulted ceilings of black stone that met modern, floor-to-ceiling glass walls overlooking the Italian coastline.
The interior was a sea of black and gold, with a king-sized bed draped in silk that looked softer than a cloud. It was a king's sanctuary, cold and beautiful.
Then, I heard it.
The steady, rhythmic hiss of a shower.
Panic surged through me. It worked. The key hadn't taken me to a place; it had taken me to him.
I moved quickly, I ducked behind the massive frame of the bed. My hand went to the small, razor-sharp blade tucked into my belt. My fingers shook as I gripped the hilt.
Do it for Leo, I told myself. Kill him and this ends. Kill him and Viktor lets Leo go.
The water stopped.
But as I heard the bathroom door open, my hand shook. Why was it different this time? Why did the thought of plunging this blade into him feel like I was stabbing myself?
A moment later, footsteps approached. I caught a glimpse of his legs as he moved past my hiding spot-bare, damp skin and a towel slung low on his hips.
Lucien stopped. He didn't turn around, but I saw his shoulders stiffen. He scanned the room, his head tilting slightly as if catching a scent or a shift in the air.
"I know you're here, Phoenix," he murmured, his voice deep,
"I've been waiting for you to come home."