Chapter 11: Who Wants What

"Where did you get this?" I asked.

My fingers were still on the scar.

Lucian went still under my hand, and the arm around my back tightened.

"Seven years ago," he said. "A bullet. A hospital."

"Which hospital?"

"Ask me in the morning."

"That's not an answer."

"It's the only one I have tonight." His voice was low and rough.

"I haven't lied to you, Mara. I'm asking for the morning."

I looked at him for a long moment.

I should have pushed, and I didn't, because he hadn't lied.

I put my head back down on his chest and listened to his heart until it slowed, and then I slept.

When I woke the other side of the bed was cold.

The sun was already high through the curtains.

A note on the pillow said, in a slanting hand: Back by noon. Don't leave the house.

I read it three times.

It didn't say where he'd gone, or what the night had been.

I thought: of course. A man like that, a woman like me, one bad week behind the iron gates.

I was his doctor and the only person he could touch without being afraid of the cup.

That was all it was, and I told myself so while I dressed.

I was halfway down the east corridor when a man stepped out in front of me.

He was one of Aldo's, thick-necked, with a scar through one eyebrow.

"Signora," he said. "Aldo wants a word."

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