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as she absently studied her fingertips.
    “You must have just missed them,” Jasmine said, trying to hold on to her patience.
    “Do you think so?” Syreena asked eagerly. “I will look again.” She leaned forward and kissed Jasmine on her cheek. “I am so glad we are friends now.”
    Syreena drifted off toward the courtyard, the train of her dress trailing behind her, the silken fabric falling crookedly off one of her bony shoulders and showing just how thin she had grown over the past two years. The truth was she often forgot to eat or bathe. Not unless Damien reminded her and held her hand through the entire meal or stepped into the bath with her to keep her focused.
    No. Syreena spent most of her time looking for the children.
    Children that did not exist.
    They had never existed. Would never exist. And therein lay the trouble. When Ruth and Nico had attacked Syreena two years ago, Ruth had plunged into Syreena’s psyche and perverted her very worst fears and weaknesses into ...
    . . . into this .
    Jasmine let her hand fall away from the door handle and looked around the room. She could feel him, knew he was close. He was always close by when Syreena was near.
    Damien broke away from the shadows down at the opposite end of the great room. He moved with his usual dark grace as he crossed the room, but all of the strength and power he had once had was now faded. He neglected himself too often, choosing instead to attend to Syreena’s needs over his own. He would often go days without hunting, and he didn’t dare feed from Jasmine or anyone else to sustain himself, because then Syreena’s gentle madness would turn into something else, something vicious and violent.
    Jasmine sighed as he spared her only the briefest of looks.
    Unsatisfied, she followed him as he tracked his bride’s tragic wanderings through his fortress.
    “Damien,” she called to him as gently as she could. She tried to imbue the address with everything she was feeling, with all the support she could muster. She tried to remind him that she was there for him. She would always be there for him.
    Usually he would ignore her or merely nod and continue on his way, but this was one of the rare instances when he stopped and turned back to her.
    He looked so sad and tired. His handsome face should have shown nothing of his age, Vampires being utterly ageless, but these past years had altered his looks. He looked older. Weary. Lost. And Jasmine knew she wasn’t the only one noticing it. When a Prince grew weak, he could not defend his holdings or his monarchy. There were vipers, young, powerful, strong vipers, waiting in the darkness for the chance to sever Damien’s head from his body and thereby lay claim to the Vampire monarchy.
    Jasmine was the only one standing in their way. Her strength and her loyalty were protecting Damien’s life and his rule.
    “Damien ...” she said again as she reached to put her arms around him. He resisted her hug, casting a worried glance after Syreena, but in the end he was starving for the strength and support of his best friend and adviser. In the end he let her hold him, let her hug him tight and close. He took a deep, cleansing breath, drawing in Jasmine’s personal aura, her vigor. Jasmine bit her tongue so she didn’t give in to the urge to spew words he would refuse to hear in any event. “Have you hunted recently?” she asked instead.
    “Not very recently,” he admitted to her. “But I cannot leave her alone. If she wandered into the wrong place unprotected ...”
    Mad or not, Syreena was still an exotic genetic anomaly. She was a one-of-a-kind Lycanthrope, a changeling who could take on two animal forms instead of just one because a childhood illness had split her abilities in two directions. But what had made her special had also left her barren. At first her barrenness had been attributed to the fact that Vampires and Lycans were not compatible, but as other Vampires began to take Lycanthrope mates