"I wouldn't, " Remy says. She means the card. The invitation. The woman standing in the rain like danger has never once surprised her. Remy Vaccaro has spent three hundred years perfecting the smallest possible life. She works bar shifts, keeps her head down, fixes things that are broken, and stays out of the violent politics of the immortal elite. It is not cowardice. It is survival. The last time she let herself matter to someone, it cost her more than she has ever been willing to name.
Then a shortcut through the wrong alley puts her between three coven-affiliated vampires and Isolde Craciun, a powerful fixer whose enemies are circling closer by the day. Isolde is precise, controlled, impossible to read-and far too interested in the woman who should have walked away. What begins as a temporary arrangement becomes something neither of them can keep contained. Remy is hired as a visible deterrent, but Calder Motte's quiet war against Isolde's network is larger than a single threat, and the deeper Remy steps into Isolde's world, the more she realizes she may have been part of the enemy's design from the beginning.
Isolde is used to acquiring useful people. Remy is used to never being useful enough to stay. But when old wounds, supernatural power, and dangerous desire collide, both women must decide what frightens them more: being turned into a weapon, or becoming necessary to someone who could destroy the life they built to survive. Can a woman who has spent centuries refusing to belong choose to stay before the city burns around them?
"I wouldn't, " Remy says. She means the card. The invitation. The woman standing in the rain like danger has never once surprised her. Remy Vaccaro has spent three hundred years perfecting the smallest possible life. She works bar shifts, keeps her head down, fixes things that are broken, and stays out of the violent politics of the immortal elite. It is not cowardice. It is survival. The last time she let herself matter to someone, it cost her more than she has ever been willing to name.
Then a shortcut through the wrong alley puts her between three coven-affiliated vampires and Isolde Craciun, a powerful fixer whose enemies are circling closer by the day. Isolde is precise, controlled, impossible to read-and far too interested in the woman who should have walked away. What begins as a temporary arrangement becomes something neither of them can keep contained. Remy is hired as a visible deterrent, but Calder Motte's quiet war against Isolde's network is larger than a single threat, and the deeper Remy steps into Isolde's world, the more she realizes she may have been part of the enemy's design from the beginning.
Isolde is used to acquiring useful people. Remy is used to never being useful enough to stay. But when old wounds, supernatural power, and dangerous desire collide, both women must decide what frightens them more: being turned into a weapon, or becoming necessary to someone who could destroy the life they built to survive. Can a woman who has spent centuries refusing to belong choose to stay before the city burns around them?