It took me three tries to turn the brass key in the lock because my hands were shaking so hard. Becs had tried to convince me to go back to my office, to sit down and talk things through, to draw up a plan to learn more about Nick’s past.
I’d decided on a more direct approach.
When I finally got the lock open, I straight-armed my way into the foyer., letting the door crash against the wall. I was halfway across the marble tiles when Nick swung around the doorway that led to the living room—knees flexed, arms locked, hands folded around a pistol that was pointed straight at my heart.
“Jesus, Ashley!” Nick exclaimed, and if he’d been capable of gasping, I’m pretty sure he would have. His index finger jumped off the trigger, and he pointed the muzzle toward the floor.
I brushed past him, heading directly for the stairs.
My palm slammed against the light switch in his bedroom. The sheets were tangled; it looked as if he hadn’t made his bed since the last time we’d tumbled there. My stomach twisted as it always did when I thought of Nick’s weight on top of me, but this time I swallowed nausea instead of the hot coil of excitement.
I stalked over to the nightstand and ripped the drawer out of its slot. Pens. A crossword puzzle. A strip of condoms.
No blue folder. No Empire flag, surrounded by a spray of golden stars.
I whirled back to the door, where Nick loomed like a bad dream. “Where’d you hide it?”
“Hide what? What the hell is going on here, Ashley?”
“Where’s the folder? What did you do? Steal it from the Night Court?”
“I don’t know—”
“Don’t lie to me!” There. Maybe a banshee wasn’t the loudest imperial in the world.
Nick pitched his voice low, the same croon he’d offered when he’d held me the night before, when he’d comforted me about my hopeless past with my mother. “Ashley, I don’t know who’s been telling you stories. But whatever you’re thinking, it isn’t true. Come downstairs and let’s talk about this. I’ll answer whatever questions you have, and you’ll see this is all a huge mistake.”
“Were you or were you not investigating the Eastern Empire in your job as a Secret Service agent?”
He started to lie. I saw that in the set of his lips, in the minute narrowing of his eyes. Sometime in the past week, I’d learned to read Nick Raines.
So I also saw the moment he decided to tell the truth. “Yes,” he said.
“And were you still building your case when you were hospitalized at Empire General?”
He met my gaze directly. “Yes.”
“Did you hand over the information I gave you?” The Welcome the Night packet. Everything I’d told him the night I dragged Musker into my office, explaining about familiars and warders and witches. Everything I’d said about elementals the night we kissed for the first time, when I kissed him, never realizing he was building a case to destroy everything I knew, everyone I loved.
He closed his eyes for a moment. He swallowed, hard enough for me to hear across the room. But he had the courage to look me in the eye when he answered one more time. “Yes.”
I was a doctor. I knew my heart couldn’t literally fracture into a million jagged pieces. But I swear to Hecate, I felt it shatter in the center of my chest. “Oh Nick,” I whispered.
But now it was Nick’s turn to sound outraged. “You went to the Night Court without me,” he said.
“I had Becs.” My voice sounded distant, like I was listening through a mountain of wound-packing material.
“You went back to where that animal attacked me.”
“Don’t make this about me.”
“I would have died that night if I hadn’t been trained to fight.”
Instead, he’d been turned. James Morton had deemed him a serious enough threat that the Eastern Empire could only be preserved by Nick Raines’s execution. But because Nick was a Secret Service agent, because he’d become the superlative lawman his father had demanded, Nick had survived. Transformed, but survived.
“You have to see that, Ashley,” Nick said. “You have to understand what those freaks meant to do.”
“I’m one of those freaks!” I shouted.
“Ashley—”
He reached for me, both hands extended, desperate. I looked down at my own hands, realizing I still held his key. I threw it at him, full force, and he stepped back in surprise.
I pushed past him, through the door, down the stairs, out to the street. I careered down the sidewalk, gasping for breath, desperate to put distance between us. But by the time I got to the corner, I realized Nick wasn’t coming after me.
I stood in the darkness and sobbed.
Alone.