“Ashaya Aleine should be suitable, I think,” Dr. Kahananui said, her expression deadly in its immobility. “I’ll get in touch with her.” She held Bowen’s gaze. “You should go. I need to scrutinize the test results in more detail.”

It was a clear dismissal, but Bo wasn’t used to meekly following orders. “Come with me,” he said to Kaia. “We have to talk.”

“We have nothing to talk about.” She turned her back to him, spine stiff and shoulders rigid.

Bo went to speak again when Dr. Kahananui winced and shifted restlessly in her chair. No way could he add any further stress to her system. Nodding curtly, he left—but this conversation wasn’t over. Not by a long shot.

Chapter 40

I have to do this, find out what happened. I can’t live with regrets.

—Heenali Roy to Domenica Bianchi

BO COULDN’T THINK. His head rang, his senses wrapped up in a black fog.

How could she not have told him?

How could she have kept such an integral part of herself from him?

Shoving both hands through his hair as the questions repeated over and over in an endless loop, he walked back to his room and grabbed his board shorts. When he got to the pool, he found it mercifully empty, the salt water motionless but for the silent movement of the small creatures that called it home.

He changed quickly before diving in. Haunted by memories of how Kaia had laughed when he’d thrown her, how she’d said he was “fun to play with” when he’d never known how to play aside from in his role as brother to Lily, he swam as hard and as fast as his body would permit.

Lap after lap after lap.

His muscles were feeling it by the time he pulled himself out of the pool, but the crushing blackness in his head hadn’t let up and his thoughts ran on a tortured circuit. He could’ve blamed it on the experiment, but he knew this was very much him.

His sense of betrayal.

His anger.

His . . . hurt.

Bo’s hand crushed the soft fabric of the towel he was using to rub his hair dry after a quick shower. He hadn’t wanted to admit that, even to himself, but he was so fucking hurt that she hadn’t told him. Had she not trusted him to react in the right way?

His mind flashed back to the image of her mischievous smile, and how it had wilted in the wake of his response.

He’d done that.

Gut churning, he got dressed and made his way back to his room. Then, despite the tumult in his mind, he folded up his shirtsleeves and got to work. His fucked-up emotional state didn’t mean he was no longer the security chief of the Alliance; as long as his brain worked, he’d do everything he could for his people.

And when it came to any subject but Kaia, he could think clearly.

First, he finished reading the files Lily had forwarded to him. So far, she’d found no indication that one of the knights might be involved in the high-stakes poker world. Another dead fucking end. But it was her final update—sent while he’d been in the lab with Dr. Kahananui—that had him swearing a blue streak.

Calling Cassius rather than Lily because this wasn’t a data matter, he said, “What the fuck is this about Heenali going AWOL?” He’d started the investigation on her because that was his duty and he couldn’t turn his face from it, but he’d never truly expected to find evidence of conscious betrayal. However, for her to go missing now? It poured fuel onto the embers of suspicion.

Cassius made a face. “It’s not what you think—or what we thought when Lily sent that report.” Folding his arms, he braced his feet, his body swaying in a way that made it clear he was on a waterborne vessel. The wood paneling behind him told Bowen nothing further about his location.

“Turns out she told Domenica where she was going,” Cassius continued. “After the ex-boyfriend. She wants to convince him to give the relationship another go.”

“Oh, for Christ’s sake!” And yet how the fuck could Bo say anything against Heenali’s behavior when his head was a screwed-up mess and his heart bruised? “At least tell me she’s keeping in touch with Domenica.”

“Yeah. I also stuck a tracking dot on that knife she takes everywhere.” Cassius didn’t look happy about his decision. “I’m still feeling like an asshole, but at least my assholishness might help her out if she gets into a jam.”

“Range on the dots isn’t huge.” Useful because they were all but undetectable, the devices had the concordant limited amount of tech and transmitting power. “Does Domenica have her general location?”

Cassius nodded. “She made Heenali promise to check in twice a day, said she was worried about how down Heenali was.”

“I never understood what Heenali saw in that guy.”

“All shine and smile and no grit,” Cassius said bluntly. “But I figured he was her version of a pretty girl who didn’t ask too many questions.”

Bowen had made much the same assessment—that Heenali needed a lover who didn’t challenge her; she’d spent her life fighting challenges. Maybe, he’d thought, she just wanted to hang out with a handsome man who found her attractive and treated her as if she were an ordinary girlfriend, not one who was never far from her favorite knife.

Trey Gunther had given her roses for Valentine’s Day, sent chocolates during the long periods when he was away working his salesman route. It was witnessing Heenali’s response to the romantic gifts that had made Bowen soften toward the other man—whatever Gunther’s faults, he’d made Heenali smile and that was as rare a sight as with Cassius.

Wishing his knight well in her quest to heal her broken relationship, Bo said, “Have you got a staffing issue?”

Cassius shook his head. “Heenali briefed her deputy and got ahead on her work before she took off.” Unfolding his arms, he put his roughly scarred hands on his hips. “But, with her gone, no one will blink if I step in to oversee the odd thing. I’m heading out to talk to the captain of one of the ships that breached BlackSea’s territorial borders.”

Bowen realized Cassius must be on a small vessel heading out to where the big ships anchored in far deeper water. “Brief me as soon as you’re done,” he told his best friend. “Malachai Rhys is letting me run this, but I don’t know how long his patience will last.”

His eyes on the blackness outside the window, he shared details of the brutal image Malachai had shown him. “I had an erratic signal at the time, couldn’t complete the upload, but looks like I have a stronger signal today.” Pausing for a second, he sent the image. “Fifty percent, seventy-five . . . you should have it.”

Face as hard as stone after taking in the photo of the bloodied changelings on the deck of the Quiet Wind, Cassius said, “I don’t care what the fuck evidence this Hugo has compiled, Heenali would never help butcher innocent people. Especially not water changelings. She’s always asking to be allowed in on the BlackSea meetings—she’s fascinated by them.”

Bo didn’t say it out loud, but Heenali’s fascination could well be a cover for far darker aims. He ran up against a solid wall of disbelief seconds after the thought.

No, not Heenali.

But they had to collect evidence to prove that beyond any doubt—right now, everything pointed to her.

His mood even darker after he ended the conversation with Cassius, he decided to do what he should’ve done from the start: find out about Hugo. The question was, how did he do that without getting stonewalled? The other man was a clanmate, while Bo was a relative stranger.

But he was security chief for a reason: he knew there was more than one way to ask a question. Heading back out, he glanced at the closed door to the lab and knew Kaia couldn’t still be inside. It’d be easy enough to swing by the kitchen if he wanted to track her down, but he remained too messed up to see her again, his feelings of betrayal raking bloody furrows inside his skin.

When he spotted Carlotta sitting at a seaward table with a big-boned man whose sailor-brown skin glowed with health, he walked over. “Mind if I join you?”

Carlotta waved a hand graciously at the empty chair at the table. It was across from her, her companion seated so he faced the seaward wall—and was by her side.

“Bowen,” she said, “this is my mate, Filipe.”

Bowen shook the other man’s extended hand before sitting down. “I think we’ve already met in your other form.” He nodded at the transparent wall that looked out into the ocean. “You were the reason I realized this was definitely not Venice.”

Chuckling, Filipe ate the last bite of his cookie. “Carlotta’s been telling me you think you have a chance with Kaia.”

It was the perfect way in. “That’s kind of why I came over.” He shook his head when Carlotta offered him a cookie from the plate in the center of the table. “Everyone talks about Hugo, but I can’t get a handle on who he is as a man.”

He knew the other man liked poker a little too much, and that he was a comms expert, but Hugo was an empty silhouette beyond that vague sprinkling of facts. “My rival is a shadow, not a flesh-and-blood man.”

Carlotta’s pale green eyes held his over the rim of her coffee cup. “He is one of our vanished,” she said softly. “He’s no obstacle in your path.”

Chapter 41

Hugo, you’re late! We’re going to miss the start of the show!

—Message from Kaia Luna (16) to Hugo Sorensen (16)

“LOVE ISN’T THAT simple,” Bo replied, and using that word, it came easy. It felt right. And yet his mind continued to churn, his heart fucking aching with the hurt. “A man who isn’t here has no faults, can’t make Kaia angry.”

Carlotta nodded after a long pause, a slight curve to her lips. “Absence does definitely make the heart grow fonder.” She looked at Filipe and something unspoken passed between them, the communication so effortless that Bo thought of a distant future in which he and Kaia sat next to each other and spoke with their eyes.