White Hot

Chapter 11

The tantalizing scent of freshly brewed coffee drifted over to me. I opened my eyes.

The ceiling didn’t look familiar. I wasn’t in my house. That meant I was . . .

I sat straight up. I was in Rogan’s command room, on one of his huge black leather couches. Someone had put a pillow under my head and a blanket over the rest of me. At the far end of the room, Rogan poured coffee into a large black mug. He wore a white T-shirt and black pants. The T-shirt molded to his biceps. He looked like he’d spent the last hour working out and had just taken a shower.

He saw me and grinned. It was an evil kind of grin and all of the alarms blared in my head.

“What time is it?”

“Ten past nine.”

Terror shot through me. “Morning?” Please don’t say morning.

“Yes.”

“Oh no. Did you tell my family where I was?”

“No.”

I exhaled.

“But I imagine Cornelius did when he went back to your warehouse.”

Ugh. I lay back on the couch and pulled the blanket over my head. I would never live it down. Grandma Frida and my sisters would be merciless. “So you spent the night with Mad Rogan? How was it? When is the wedding?”

The blanket moved down, revealing Mad Rogan standing over me, way too close for comfort. He looked even larger from this angle, which was a neat trick considering he was already huge. He had shaved, his jaw completely clean. I liked stubble better. It made him . . . more human. Now he looked every inch a Prime, except for a narrow red gash on his cheek.

I see a Prime . . . Prime or not, Rogan and I still weren’t equal. We probably would never be.

“Where is everybody?” I asked.

“We’re waiting on the dispensation from Cornelius’ sister. There was no point in waiting here, so everyone went home.” He smiled a wicked smile, as if I were a delicious lamb who’d somehow wandered into his wolf den. “Except you.”

I sighed. “You might not want to count on that dispensation.”

“I gathered they’re not close.”

“His sister hadn’t seen Matilda since she was a year old.”

“Are you afraid of what your family will think?” he asked, drinking his coffee.

“I’m not afraid. I’m mentally preparing myself for a vigorous defense. You should’ve woken me up.”

“You overextended yourself,” he said. “Your body needed rest.”

“I just closed my eyes for a moment.”

“You passed out,” he said, a grin tugging at his mouth. A man had no business being so handsome first thing in the morning.

“I did no such thing.”

“Did you know you snore?” he asked.

“I don’t.”

“You do. It’s adorable.” He winked at me.

I threw a pillow at him. It stopped a couple of inches from his face and streaked back to its spot on the couch. He crouched by me. The distance between us suddenly shrunk. His coffee mug moved to the side table.

“You know what I think?” he asked. His gaze snagged on my hair. He reached over and touched one blond strand. “I think your family will expect that you stayed over here and you and I had unforgettably dirty sex.”

My mind went straight to the gutter.

“Especially after they see your hair.”

I pulled my hair out of his fingers. “What’s wrong with my hair?”

“It’s the special style called the morning after.”

I touched my head. Last night’s hair spray, rain, and my pillow had clearly conspired to create a once-in-a-lifetime mess on my head. My hair felt like it was standing straight up.

Rogan was looking at me and in the depths of his blue eyes, I saw the same icy darkness. Not again.

“Did you call House Howling?”

“Not yet,” he said. “Why? Would you like to watch?”

“Maybe.”

“Kinky beast.”

“Rogan!”

He smiled at me. It was the kind of smile that blazed a trail from your heart to your mind and popped into your head the next time you wondered why you put up with a man who made you want to punch things.

“You look sexy in the morning, Nevada.” His voice caressed me, his magic dancing on my skin, setting off tiny explosions of desire.

“Stop,” I warned. The magic caress vanished.

“It would be a shame to disappoint your relatives.”

“I make it a habit to disappoint them on a regular basis.” I reached over and gently touched the skin under the gash. “How did this happen?”

“Got nicked yesterday in the crowd.” His voice deepened slightly.

I was still touching him, his skin warm under my fingertips. The faint scent of sandalwood swirled around me. He held completely still, as if worried I’d take my hand away.

“I thought Olivia might have clawed you. She isn’t your biggest fan.”

He smiled. “You noticed.”

“You seemed to like Rynda. Why didn’t you marry her?”

“Because I like her too much.”

That stung. I pulled my hand back slowly. I shouldn’t have started this conversation.

Rogan sat on the floor next to me and rested his arm on his bent knee. “When I was three, my father survived his sixth assassination attempt. He was attacked by a manipulator. My mother killed the assassin, but it fueled my father’s obsession to compensate for our weakness. You can’t kill what you can’t see. If only we were telepathic and telekinetic. Then we’d feel the killers coming. He’d tried to make a telekinetic-telepath hybrid with me and failed. He was determined to succeed with my children, so he started shopping for my bride.”

“You were three.”

“He was a long-term planner. Rynda is a powerful telekinetic and an empath. My father would’ve preferred a telepath, but to get telekinesis and mind manipulation in one Prime is very rare. They almost never occur together. He feared that if I married a telepathic Prime, our child would lose telekinesis. Rynda’s father is a telekinetic, her mother is a psionic, so her set of genes was perfect for his purposes. The tentative engagement agreement between our families was reached when I was three and she was two. That was the first time she attempted to levitate an object and succeeded.”

“What did she levitate?” I asked in spite of myself.

“Her parents were arguing and she tried to put a pacifier into her mother’s mouth to make her be quiet.”

I pictured Olivia’s face with a pacifier in her lips and snickered.

“Rynda was always a peacemaker. She likes when things are calm.”

“So you knew you would marry her your entire life?”

“Yes.” He nodded. “And for most of my childhood and adolescence I was okay with it. Marriage was something that would happen far away in the future and I liked Rynda. Especially after puberty.”

Jealousy stabbed at me with sharp little needles. “Rynda is beautiful.”

“Gorgeous,” he said. “Elegant, refined, exquisite, ravishing . . .”

Now he was just baiting me. I pretended to study my fingernails.

“I get it that you’re heartbroken that she had another man’s children. That’s okay, Rogan. Don’t feel bad. I’m sure you’ll find somebody who’ll take pity on you . . . eventually.”

He laughed quietly. “You’re prickly this morning. I could get used to this.”

“Don’t. Are you going to tell me the rest of this story or should I just go home now?”

“Alright. When I was sixteen, Rynda came to a party at our house. I don’t remember now what the occasion was, but I had caused my mother some grief and she was still recovering from it. I was a difficult teenager.”

“You don’t say.” I rolled my eyes.

“I was sixteen.” Rogan shrugged.

“What did you do to make your mom mad at you?”

He sighed. “Earlier that summer my father and I had gotten into an argument, and he told me that if I didn’t like the rules of the house, I should go live in a cardboard box on the street. I did. I walked out with the clothes on my back and nothing else. It took them almost three weeks to find me.”

“Where did you go?”

“Downtown,” he said. “I didn’t think anything bad could happen to me. I slept on the street, ate at a soup kitchen, and got into a couple of fights with other homeless guys. Then I found people betting on fights under an overpass and beat up a couple of guys for money. I made fifty bucks and got my head bashed in by a guy who could magically harden his fists. A man tried to pick me up with promises of vodka and pizza. I didn’t like the look in his eyes, so I got into his car to see what would happen. Turned out he was fond of strangling. It didn’t end well for him. I never managed to find a cardboard box to sleep in. I slept in the park under some bushes until my father’s security people tasered me, pumped me full of sedatives, and delivered me back to my house.”

I just stared at him. He wasn’t lying.

“So when I woke up in my room, my mother chewed me out. She told me she’d worried. She told me I had no right to scare her like that. It was infinitely worse than sleeping on the street. By the time the party rolled around, we had resolved our family conflicts, so when Rynda asked my mother where I’d been for the past three weeks, my mother told her. Rynda started crying.”

“Why?”

“She picked up some residual traces of stress and fear from my mother. It upset her. She was sitting there, tears rolling down her cheeks, and asked my mother how she could put up with me. My mother told her that I was a gifted child and gifted children do extraordinary things. Rynda said that in that case she didn’t want gifted children. That’s when I knew I couldn’t marry her.”

“Because she didn’t want gifted children?”

Connor leaned closer and smiled again, but it didn’t reach his eyes. “No. Because I didn’t love her. Marriages among Primes are rarely based on love, but Rynda would know that I didn’t love her. It would always hurt her. And, selfishly, I realized that being with Rynda meant being alone. She wanted family, children, and stability. Safety. I didn’t know exactly what I wanted, but I knew I didn’t want that. I would take risks and it would crush her. And if I smothered my will and submitted to the marriage, I would always have to be cold to her. I could never let her feel the full extent of my anger, fear, or worry, because it would be cruel.”

Rogan’s personality was like his magic: a powerful typhoon that swept away everything in its path. I had seen the extent of his rage and the intensity of his desire. When he focused on you, he did so completely and you felt privileged to be the object of his attention in spite of yourself. A true relationship required honesty. When he was scared, or raging, or helpless, he would have to calm down and pull his feelings inward before he went home. He would have to lie to her.

Rogan had never lied to me. It hit me like a ton of bricks. Occasionally he worded his replies carefully, but he had never lied to me except for the time on the balcony, right after we watched his people being murdered. He’d lied on purpose, knowing I would react. He could’ve refused to answer my questions. Instead he always told me the truth, even when he knew I wouldn’t like the answers.

“Something wrong?” he asked.

“No,” I lied. “Go on with the story.”

“Not much left. I officially broke off the engagement at eighteen. They held on to hope for another year, but when I joined the military, it was clear that all bets were off. Rynda married her now husband within six months. He is uninterested in politics and risky games, and by all indications he loves her.”

“Do you regret it?”

“No. She’s happy and I need somebody else. Someone who doesn’t crack under my pressure.”

True. “That’s a tall order.”

His face turned thoughtful. “Do you remember that big speech I made in your garage?”

“Which one?” I sighed. “You’ve made several. I’m contemplating installing a personal soapbox with your name on it.”

“The one where I said you would beg to climb into my bed?”

“Ah. That one. How could I forget? I kept waiting for you to pound your chest like a silverback gorilla.”

“Forget what I said—”

A speaker came on and Bug’s voice resonated through the room. “Nevada, wake up. Bern says call him back right now. It’s urgent.”

I grabbed my phone from the side table. Someone had turned the ringer off. I dialed Bernard.

“Yes?”

“Montgomery is on a video call in your office,” he said. “He’s pissed off. I tried to tell him you’ll call back, but he’s holding the line open.”

Something bad had happened.

I jumped off the couch and spotted my shoes on the side. I pulled them on. Rogan watched me.

“Trouble?”

“Probably.”

“Do you need help?”

“No.” Augustine knew where I was. He didn’t call here, which meant whatever new emergency had occurred was for me and me alone. I would handle my own affairs.

I looked up at him. He was back to the familiar icy Prime, intense, hard, and lethal.

“If I become a Prime, will you be my enemy, Rogan?”

“No,” he said. “You have nothing to fear from me.”

“I’ll hold you to it.”

I dashed into the warehouse. A blue Honda CR-V was sitting in my parking lot. Bern met me at the door.

I pointed to the Honda. “Do we have a client?”

“No.” Bern’s face took on that collected expression that usually meant he was about to methodically recite a sequence of events that led to the Honda being in the parking spot and would probably start his story right around the Great Flood.

I held up my hand, hoping to stave off the flow of information. “Later. What the hell is Augustine pissed about?”

“This might be it.” Bern held up his tablet. A headline crossed it: “The Question of the Lady in Green: Should Primes Do More?”

Just what I needed. I landed in my office chair, pulled my hair back the best I could, and pushed the key on the keyboard.

“Yes?”

Augustine’s perfect face was so cold it might as well have been carved of a glacier. “Congratulations, Lady in Green.”

Damn it.

“Your altruism bore rotten fruit. I told you so.”

“It’s one lousy article, Augustine.”

“I’m not talking about the article.”

I leaned back and crossed my arms on my chest. “Will you please speed this up?”

“Victoria Tremaine’s people contacted my office. She is on her way to Houston to see me. She’s asking for the identity of the Lady in Green.”

I sat up straighter. Ages ago when I first realized I was a truthseeker, I looked up truthseeker Houses. There were three in the continental United States, and House Tremaine was the smallest and the most feared. It had only one Prime: Victoria Tremaine. She was near seventy and people hid when they heard she was coming. She didn’t just pull the truth out of her victims; she could lobotomize them and frequently did. Rich and feared, she wielded unprecedented power. I remembered looking at her picture—a tall aristocratic woman with vicious eyes—and thought she looked like some evil witch. The kind that had a noble title and ordered you skinned alive if you happened to spill a drink while serving it to her.

“I have no desire to upset Tremaine,” Augustine said. “Neither do I want her anywhere near my office, but I can’t simply not see her. You have this one opportunity to tell me why she would be interested in you.”

“I have no idea.”

“Make sure you figure it out. If you need protection from Tremaine, you must sign the contract I offered you. My House will defend its own. You have . . .” He checked the computer screen. “Twenty-two hours.”

The screen went black. I looked at Bern. He raised his arms.

If Augustine met Victoria Tremaine, she would pull my identity out of his head. I was a baby Prime, and I’d managed to get Baranovsky to admit things to me. Victoria had a lifetime of practice. Why would she be interested?

A terrible suspicion ignited in my head. If Rogan was right, and I was a Prime, my talents had to come from somewhere. Spontaneous manifestations of Primes without anyone in their immediate family possessing a lot of power were extremely rare.

“Is Mom home?”

Bernard nodded. “Nevada, about the car . . .”

“Later.”

I got up and walked through the hallway into our house and to the kitchen. My mother was at the sink, rinsing a plate. Arabella lounged at the table, playing with her phone.

My mother took in my hair. “Eventful night?”

“Is there any reason Victoria Tremaine would be interested in me?”

My mother’s face turned white. The plate slipped out of her hands and shattered on the floor.

“Mom!” Arabella jumped up.

“Leave the room.” Her voice turned cold and harsh.

Arabella blinked. “Mom, what’s wron . . .”

“Now.”

My sister took off, her eyes opened wide. Mom fixed Bern with a thousand-yard stare. He retreated without a word.

My mother slowly wiped her hands with a towel. Her face turned rigid and calculating. I had only seen that expression once, when she had become a total stranger and ended her PI career. Fear squirmed through me.

“What did you do?” she asked, her voice eerily calm.

“I saved a little girl. Amy Madrid.”

“Who knows?”

“Augustine and his secretary. Mom, you’re scaring me.”

“Is Victoria on her way to the city?”

“Yes.”

“When is she arriving?”

“Tomorrow.”

My mother hung the towel on a rack with methodical precision. “Listen to me very carefully. You have to wipe Augustine’s mind.”

“What?”

“You have to wipe Augustine’s mind. Fry him if you have to.”

I recoiled. “Do you have any idea what you’re asking me to do? Even if I did know how to do it—and I don’t—it would turn him into a vegetable.”

“You can do it,” my mother said with complete confidence.

She’d turned into someone I didn’t recognize.

“I know him. He is a human being. I can’t just break his mind. I won’t.”

“Then I’ll kill him.”

“Have you lost your mind?” my voice squeaked.

“Wipe his mind, or I’ll kill him.”

“Mother! That’s not what we do. It’s not who we are. Dad wouldn’t—”

“It’s not just about you.” A hint of emotion finally broke through my mother’s expression. “You have a responsibility to your sisters! If the Tremaine bitch finds you, she’ll kill me and your grandmother. Arabella will end up in a cage, and you and Catalina will end up serving her for the rest of her life. Is that what you want? You have to protect your family.”

I opened my mouth but no words came.

Mom’s bottom lip trembled. She moved across the kitchen and gripped me into a fierce hug. “I know. I know it’s hard. That’s okay. I’m asking too much. Don’t worry, baby. I’ll take care of it. Forget it ever happened.”

I broke free. “Why is she after us?”

“She’s your paternal grandmother.”

The hair on the back of my arms stood on end. I dropped into a chair.

“She couldn’t carry a child to term, so she did . . . things and your father was born. She wanted a son who was a Prime. Your dad had no magic. None. She always neglected him, but while she was waiting for his talent to manifest, she would pull his mind apart every day, looking for the evidence of magic. When she realized that he was completely normal, the indifference turned to hate. He ran away from her as soon as he could. She needs you desperately, because without another Prime, her House will die with her.”

Oh my God.

“Don’t worry,” my mother said. “I’ll . . .”

No, she wouldn’t. Like Rogan said, this was House warfare. I was the oldest Prime in my family. I’d made this mess. This was my responsibility. I held up my hand, my own voice dull. “No. I’ll take care of it.”

“Nevada . . .”

“I’ll take care of it, Mom. I’ll take care of it by tonight. Promise me you will wait. Promise me.”

“I won’t do anything until you tell me,” my mother said.

I got up, held my head high, and went to my room to clean up.

I took a shower, dried and brushed my hair, and put on my work clothes, moving on autopilot. I should’ve been freaking out, but somehow I couldn’t muster any emotion. All I had was a cold methodical rationale. It was what I needed.

Victoria Tremaine was my grandmother. In retrospect it made sense. My father’s reluctance to speak about his family, his insistence that I was very careful with my magic, and my mother’s distrust of Primes. If Victoria Tremaine was my mother-in-law, I wouldn’t trust Primes either.

Victoria Tremaine had no heirs. Certainly no Prime heirs. That was an established fact. If she realized I existed, she would move heaven and earth to make me part of House Tremaine. She would do it by holding my sisters hostage. Of the three of us, I was the only truthseeker. It would be slavery for the three of us.

I couldn’t let her meet with Augustine. She would crack him like a walnut.

I couldn’t wipe Augustine’s mind either. This was not what we did. It . . . it went against everything I stood for. Yet I would have to do it to save my family. It was that, or my mother would kill him.

I couldn’t see a way out of it. I had to take care of my family.

I walked down the stairs. Catalina marched out of the media room to intercept me. Matilda followed her, mimicking my sister’s movements. Any other time I would’ve found it comical.

“What’s going on? Arabella said Mom went crazy . . .”

“Mom is going through a rough time right now. Don’t worry. It will all get straightened out by tomorrow.”

“What rough time? Why? You look like you’re going to kill somebody.”

Funny choice of words. “Nobody is getting killed.”

“I hate when you treat me like a child.”

I looked at her for a moment to make sure she understood. “People are trying to kill us. Mom is freaking out. Augustine is freaking out. I’m trying to fix it. It would help if you didn’t freak out at me too.”

She fell silent. I kept walking.

“Where are you going?”

“To make a plan.”

I stepped out of the warehouse and paused by the Honda. It looked perfectly generic, at least three years old. I would ask Bern about it when I came back. I left the warehouse, walked two blocks over, and stopped on the sidewalk in front of Rogan’s HQ. This wasn’t my wisest move, but I had nowhere to turn. I dialed his number.

“Yes?” he answered.

“I need your advice,” I said. “I’m in front of your HQ. May I come in?”

“Yes.”

I walked in past the soldiers, who all stopped talking as I passed them, and climbed the stairs. Rogan was waiting for me. He surveyed my work clothes with his familiar focus.

“I don’t want Bug to hear us, if that’s possible.”

“It’s possible.”

Rogan led me to a door in the far wall and held it open. I walked into a small office. A desk, a couple of chairs, and a bookshelf filled with notebooks and manuals. Rogan closed the door and sat on the corner of the desk.

I swallowed. Everything in me rebelled against sharing the information, but I had no choice. He already knew I was a Prime. He said he had no intentions of fighting me.

“Victoria Tremaine is my grandmother.”

The five words fell like bricks and lay between us.

His eyebrows crept up a fraction of an inch. “I had expected House Shaffer. Tremaine is a surprise.”

“She’s coming to see Augustine tomorrow. If she finds out I exist, she’ll destroy my family. My mother will kill Augustine unless I wipe his mind.”

“A predicament.” Rogan’s expression was nonchalant, as if he were playing a particularly convoluted game of chess. “Do you want me to rescue you?”

It was tempting. So tempting. “No. I want advice.”

Pride flashed in his eyes. “You’re turning into a dragon.”

“I have no choice. I own this. Even if my mother tried her best, I don’t believe she could get a shot at Augustine.”

“I agree. Very well.” He leaned back. “Victoria Tremaine is despised and feared and knows it. She travels with an aegis, a cloaker, and a telepathic shielder. Her body and mind are superbly protected at all times and if she is under attack, the cloaker will make her disappear in a fraction of a second. She is an extremely difficult target. You can’t eliminate her. Your mother knows this, which is why she focused on Augustine.”

I nodded. I had gathered as much.

“Augustine is the closest thing to a friend I have among members of the Houses. He has a much younger sister and a brother. His father is dead and he is their caretaker. Don’t mistake his professional interest in you for friendship or camaraderie. If he thinks for a moment that you pose any danger, no matter how slight, to his siblings, he’ll kill you. From a Prime’s point of view, you owe him nothing.”

“Rogan, I can’t just wipe his mind.”

“Can’t or won’t?”

I sighed. “I’m not sure.”

“Yes, you are.” His gaze was merciless.

“I can.” I could break Augustine. I had been on the verge of breaking a mind before, when interrogating the mercenary and when practicing on my sisters. I knew precisely where that wall lay, and I had worked my hardest to never approach it.

“Augustine has a strong will. If I attack Augustine’s mind, let him feel it, and push it too far, he’ll cripple himself trying to fight me. It will take time, minutes, possibly an hour, so it’s not a good combat power, but it will leave his psyche shredded. I could do it. But I won’t.”

“Yet you have to protect your family.”

“Yes.”

“This is what I was trying to avoid when I urged you to not go to Baranovsky’s gala,” he said. “It happened anyway, sooner than you or I would’ve liked. I thought we might have more time. The question now isn’t what you should do. You know what you should do. The question is, what can you live with?”

“Would Augustine willingly open his mind to Victoria Tremaine?”

“He’d rather die,” Rogan said without any hesitation. “Augustine is intensely private. A man who never shows the world his real face would never allow intrusion into his inner sanctum.”

“Would he be open to the idea of protection?”

“By you? You would have to convince him that he is powerless before a truthseeker. Be very careful, Nevada. If you make that demonstration too personal, he’ll turn on you. Go after something that’s confidential but without emotional baggage. He must not feel that his deepest secrets have been violated.”

That would be a very delicate dance, and even if I could get what I wanted, I wasn’t sure I’d be able to do it.

“What are you planning to do?”

“I’m planning to apply the lessons Adam Pierce taught me.” I shook my head. And if I failed to pull it off, my life would collapse and Augustine could spend the rest of his life with a feeding tube, not sure where or who he was. No pressure.

“Let’s say this problem is resolved,” he said. “What then? Victoria Tremaine doesn’t give up. She won’t simply turn around and go home empty-handed. She’ll continue her pursuit. This is only a short-term solution to a large looming problem.”

I made my mouth move. “I realize that.”

“What’s the long-term strategy?”

“I don’t have one.”

He frowned. “Does your immediate family have more than one living Prime?”

He was asking about my sisters. “Yes.”

“Is that other mage a truthseeker?”

“No.”

Surprise reflected in his eyes. “But you’re sure they can qualify as Primes?”

“Yes.”

“Then your best option is to petition for the formation of your own House. It would require you and the other Prime to admit to your magic in public. The qualification process and House formation is very fast, less than forty-eight hours, once all the proper forms have been submitted and the date of the trials has been set. Should you become House Baylor, you’re granted immunity from aggression from all other Houses for a period of three years. It is a cardinal rule not even Victoria Tremaine can break. It’s put in place to protect the emergence of new magic, which is good for everyone, and is a cornerstone of our society.”

House Baylor. I would be throwing myself and my sisters into shark-infested waters.

“This is the best course of action for you.” A muscle jerked in his face, then his expression relaxed as if he’d purposefully willed himself into neutrality. “You asked for my advice. Become a House.”

Too bad there wasn’t enough time to do it now. It would’ve solved the Augustine problem. No, I needed to think about this. Becoming a House had to be the last resort.

“One more point. Once you’re formally registered as House Baylor, this . . . whatever it is between you and me has to end.”

Whatever it is? I leaned back, putting one leg over the other. “Why?”

“As the head of a fledgling House, your first responsibility is to secure the future of your family. You have to make the connections and secure alliances so when the three-year period runs out, you’re anchored and well-defended against any attack. Your best bet is to cement such an alliance through marriage. It will assure protection and the future of your House. There are services available that will map your DNA and suggest the match which would most likely result in children with Prime truthseeker talent, someone from one of the truthseeker Houses, or someone with a complementary discipline like manipulator to compensate for your lack of combat magic. You and I are not compatible. Our magic comes from entirely different realms. It is clear that despite my father’s efforts, our bloodline doesn’t mesh well with mind-domination mages. Should you and I produce offspring, they may not be Primes.”

Ah. So that’s where he was going with this. “Mhm.”

Rogan’s voice was eerily calm. “You think you won’t care about it, but you will. Think of your children and having to explain that their talents are subpar, because you have failed to secure a proper genetic match. It will matter, Nevada.”

“If you say so. Right now I’m more concerned with Augustine.”

“Don’t worry. You will persevere. Things have a way of working out.”

He said it with utter confidence. Rogan wasn’t the kind of man to leave things to chance. Unease crept over me. I might have just done something very stupid.

“Rogan, I want to be completely clear. I came only for advice. Don’t act on my behalf.”

He smiled back at me. The civilized mask tore, and I saw the dragon in all of his savage glory, teeth bared, eyes cold. He would kill Augustine if I failed.

“Don’t,” I warned him. “He’s your friend. You don’t have that many.”

He kept smiling. I had no power. Nothing to counteract the promise of murder I saw in his eyes.

“You promised.”

“I didn’t.”

Damn it. I should’ve made him promise before I said anything. “I’ll never speak to you again.”

“That would be terrible,” he said.

“I don’t want this. I don’t want Augustine’s death. You’re doing that thing again when you think you know what’s best for me and you insist on it in spite of my wishes.”

“We Primes tend to be assholes that way.”

“I’m a Prime too.”

“Yes, but I’m Mad Rogan.”

Of all the stupid, bullheaded, idiotic things . . .

“If something were to happen to Augustine, you would bear no responsibility for it,” he said.

“But you will.”

“I know what I am,” he said.

“Connor . . .”

“Rogan,” he corrected. “Mad Rogan.”

The man who told me the story about running away when he was sixteen and the Prime here and now couldn’t be the same person. “You’re scaring me.”

“Good,” he said. “You’re catching on. This is the world you’re walking into. It’s a place that requires people like me, capable of doing evil things so people they love survive.”

He hadn’t just said that.

I was in love with Connor Rogan. And he was in love with me.

I got up and walked toward him. A step. Another step. One more, and I was in his personal space, standing too close. He towered above me. Barely an inch of space separated us. I raised my chin and looked into his eyes. I saw cold determination and nothing else. He was keeping it all hidden.

He wanted me badly enough to kill his friend to save me, but he’d told me I was a Prime. He was telling me to become a House now, fully convinced that he was severing any hope for a relationship at the root, because he believed it to be in my best interests. Being a Prime had ruled his life and he thought that becoming one would trump everything else for me.

“If you had a child, somebody like Matilda, and that child wasn’t a Prime despite all the proper genetics, would you still love that child?”

“Of course.”

“Would you protect her and take care of her? Would you teach her and try to make sure she has a happy life?”

“Yes.”

“Good to know.”

His eyes narrowed. “What does that mean?”

“It means you won’t kill Augustine, Rogan. You will let me handle it.”

His magic spun out, surging in a wild typhoon, potent enough to send you screaming. It twisted around us and met the cold wall that was my power. The line of his jaw hardened. That’s right. This is me not cracking under your pressure.

Power suffused his voice. The dragon was staring me straight in the face, his eyes full of fire and scorched earth. “And why would I do that?”

“Because killing your friend would hurt you and I wouldn’t like that.”

His magic raged, but mine persevered. I held his gaze.

“Respect my wishes, Rogan. And I’ll respect yours.”

I turned on my heel and walked out, straight through the torrent of his magic warping the reality around us.