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saw him. Across the way. It was him.
    My head spun, keeping him in my sights. I stopped in my tracks, the crowd clearing enough for me to see without a doubt those eyes that had been burned into my memory. The eyes that I had last seen looking back at me as he fell down, reclaimed by the fiery depths below, and breaking my heart. They pierced right through me now, rooting me to my spot, looking at nothing but me for those long seconds as the bodies flowed in the vast space between us.
    Chiming bells shook me out of it, and I dropped my glass. It shattered at my feet and I averted my eyes from his. Everyone near me scattered. Dante and Lance were already at the hurricane station. “Omigod, I’m so sorry,” I said to everyone around me, as glass crunched under my shoes. A black-and-white-attired waiter was already at my side with a broom.
    I looked up, standing on my tiptoes to find him again. His eyes lassoed my attention once more and he beelined straight back toward the solarium. A chipper, disembodied voice then rang out, amplified from another room: “If everyone could please gather in the ballroom!” The masses surged in the opposite direction. I pushed upstream through the crowd, desperate to follow him, not thinking at all. Something else beyond even reflex or instinct took over, this animal need to not let him get away.
    I made it back through to the glass-enclosed solarium, where the doors to the patio had been left open. The dark-suited figure cut across the lawn and disappeared into the maze of high hedges in the garden. I scurried down the steps, hoping to not lose my footing, and broke into a jog as I entered the labyrinth. My heels sank into the ground with each step, making me run harder. I could hear the soft crush of his quick footsteps as he slipped farther into the maze’s twists. I did my best to follow, the crisp night air chilling my sweat-slicked skin as I turned the dark corners, the prickly shoots of the hedges reaching out to me, until a light glimmered in the distance.
    I ran toward it, those scars above my heart beginning to flare. But I had to keep going forward; I just couldn’t stop myself. A last burst of energy and I turned the final corner, onto a stone patio with a lit fountain trickling softly at its center.
    And there was Lucian, bathed in a halo of warm light, the glow reflecting off his skin, outlining the sharpness of his jaw and giving an extra sparkle to his eyes. I had no words.
    “Haven . . .” he said softly, and only then did I realize how much I had missed that voice all these months even though I shouldn’t have. I took one step forward but as I did, my world crumbled. It was as though I had set foot into a trap and had triggered a force yanking away this façade. Before my eyes, he morphed into something else. His form grew taller and filled out, his hair darkening, and the bones of his face restructuring until it wasn’t Lucian at all.
    It was the Prince standing before me now, a smile on his lips telling me that I had been deceived, and so easily. I spun around to run away, but he grabbed my arm, clenching it in his hand so firmly I felt welded to him.
    He tugged me so close I could feel the heat radiating from him. What little I had ever seen of him at the Lexington had always been at a distance. I had never had to feel his wrath—he had only sent his underlings to deal with me. But this level of fear I couldn’t even process. My stomach dropped, my heart throbbed, every inch of my skin crawled. In the distance I could hear the murmur of a toast going on back in the house, and then everyone joining in, counting down to the new year. If only I were in there now. If only I had paid attention to the message my scars were sending me.
    This dashing, deadly monster leaned in to my ear. I could hear his breathing, so deafening. “Lucian sends his love,” he whispered in a sweet voice. “You’ll be one of us soon, Haven. No use trying to fight it.”
    With that, he