The Dare Collection September 2018. Stefanie London

across the face comes before I have time to anticipate it. I cry out and then taste blood. “Gag her,” my mother says to a member of the Watch without glancing back. “Let my daughter spend her last few hours on this earth in silent contemplation of her many sins.”

       CHAPTER SIXTEEN

      Damien

      THE FLOOR BENEATH me jerks, and I get the sensation of falling. My stomach roils, and my head throbs against the cold, hard ground on which I lay.

      Snatches of images play against the screen of my closed lids like a strange kaleidoscope.

      Dressing a wound on Juliet’s knee.

      Juliet riding next to me in the Alfa Romeo, my hand between her legs.

      Juliet naked and beautiful and trusting in the hotel penthouse, my hands on her, my fingers in her.

      Juliet assuring me that she isn’t fertile, that it is safe for me to be inside her like this.

      My eyes open wide, and I scramble to my knees only to fall forward, so dizzy my stomach threatens to empty itself right here on the floor. But I fight the nausea, fight the searing pain in my head. Then I grip the metal bar that runs the perimeter of the cage I’m in—the hospital elevator—and I pull myself to standing just as I stop moving and the door slides open.

      “Jesus, Damien. What the fucking hell have you done now?”

      My brother Nikolai and his wife, Princess Kate, stare at me, mouths agape.

      Then Kate swats him on the shoulder. “He’s hurt, Nikolai. Help him.”

      I reach a hand for the spot on my temple where that bastard nailed me with his gun. I feel the drying blood even as more trickles from the still-open wound.

      “Juliet,” I say, my mouth dry and voice hoarse. “They took Juliet. Someone needs to get to her now.” I take a step forward across the threshold of the elevator doors. Then I stumble. Nikolai grabs my shoulders, righting me before I hit the ground.

      “Nightgardin?” he asks, and I nod.

      “He needs stitches,” Kate says. “We need to get him to the ER. I don’t think there’s anything they can do—”

      “No,” Nikolai says. “If they didn’t kill him, it’s because they meant for him to be found once again. If anyone from the Black Watch is still here, they’ll expect him to end up in emergency care. We can patch him up in the prenatal ward as well as anywhere else.”

      Something registers that didn’t before. The sound of babies crying—a nearby nursery.

      I look from Kate to Nikolai, from Nikolai to Kate. The reason for their visit to the hospital now snaps into place.

      “It appears congratulations are in order,” I say, and Kate’s cheeks flush. “You’re pregnant?”

      “Eight weeks along. It seems there will be cousins growing up together in the palace,” Nikolai says with a grin, and I realize it is the first he’s smiled in my presence since my return.

      I open my mouth to respond, but Nikolai cuts me off.

      “Someone is coming,” he says. “Can you walk?”

      I nod, though it may be a lie.

      “I’ll distract whoever it is,” Kate says. “Just get him to safety.”

      “Juliet,” I say again, then splay my hand on the wall to find purchase as dizziness strikes again.

      “She’s safe,” Nikolai says. “At least until nightfall.”

      He doesn’t explain further, just leads me to a small hallway and then to a door. He grips the handle only to find it is locked, but this doesn’t deter him. He grabs a small, sharp tool from his pocket and expertly slides it into the lock, the door clicking open as he does.

      Then we are inside a storage room. But this is no room full of cleaning supplies and rolls of bathroom tissue.

      “Surgical supplies?” I ask as my brother flips on a light.

      “You can’t leave like this,” he says, his eyes full of concern. “It’s a bad gash. If you keep bleeding you might lose consciousness behind the wheel, and—”

      I clear my throat as he swipes items from the shelves. Hydrogen peroxide. Iodine. Gauze. A surgical needle and thread.

      “I know you think I was drinking. That you need some bigger answer as to why I left with Victoria that night,” I say. “But you know the truth. You know she did not leave with me against her will. And you know that I never would have put her in harm’s way. If I’d known that storm was coming—that the streets would be so slick...”

      His jaw tightens as he readies the materials. “She’s dead, Damien,” he says. “Don’t you think it was bad enough she wanted you instead of me? It doesn’t change the fact that I loved her and lost her twice in the span of one night. But I will not let you die for it.”

      He puts on a pair of latex gloves and cleans the wound over my eye, but he won’t look directly at me. So I grab the collar of his shirt and force him to.

      “I loved her, too, Nikolai. I loved her and lost her and wasn’t even allowed to fucking mourn her. At least you got that. And now you have Kate. And a baby on the way. I’m sorry for what I did, but I can’t change it. I can’t take it back. I get it,” I say. “I’m poison to anyone I love. I can’t seem to escape that. But you can at least acknowledge that I lost something, too.”

      He raises a syringe. “This is gonna hurt.”

      Then he stabs my skin with the needle, and I hiss through clenched teeth. But by the time he depresses the plunger, I can already feel the cool prickle of the numbing agent kicking in.

      “And here I thought you’d sew me up without anesthetic,” I say. “Where the hell did you learn this little trick, anyway?”

      The corner of his mouth twitches. “Spend enough time with X, brother, and you’ll learn a thing or two.”

      “He teach you lock-picking, too?” I ask as he begins to suture the wound.

      Nikolai shakes his head. “Learned that when I was thirteen and wanted to get into the wine cellar for a little taste.”

      I wince as the needle hits a piece of skin that isn’t quite numb.

      “Sorry,” he says, and I actually think he means it. “But we need to get you patched up and out of here.”

      “How do you know Juliet is safe?” I ask.

      My brother’s jaw twitches, a subtle nervous tell. “X called and told me what happened after Juliet’s sonogram. He wanted to make sure Kate and I were safe since he knew we were here as well. He mentioned something about a live broadcast Nightgardin had prepared for this evening but assumed it had nothing to do with Juliet since she was safe.”

      “But she’s not,” I growl.

      Nikolai shakes his head.

      “Three times I failed her,” I say. “Twice today—and the first time when they took her from me in Nightgardin.”

      Nikolai’s eyes widen. “You remember?”

      He ties off another suture, and I nod. “It’s my baby,” I say. “I have no doubt.”

      “You love her,” he says with realization.

      “Since the moment I laid eyes on her after the Nightgardin Rally. Though now, after what happened before they took her, she must think...”

      “Done,” Nikolai says. “Eleven sutures. You lost a lot of blood, but the dizziness will hopefully subside soon.” He pulls something from his pocket and places it in