Their eyes met and held. The world briefly stopped and shrank until only the two of them remained in it.

Rowan had the oddest sensation of staring into a mirror. The same mix of uneasy hostility, guilty curiosity, resentment, jealousy, pain, heartache, and longing reflected back at her.

Other, darker emotions shadowed Alena's gaze, but she suspected the same was true for her. The absence of either scorn or outright rejection made her hesitate and reevaluate her expectations.

Marcus might be hard to read, hiding his opinions behind his watchful expression too well, but Alena wasn't. Not to her—they had too much in common.

Life confronted Alena with the child—no, woman—no, creature her father's lust for a mortal had created.

She refused to call it love. How could a man so utterly vampire in his view of the world have loved a frail and inferior human, especially when married to a vampire female like Carla?

Carla had loved him blindly and ignored his faults. Even when he told her about the human and the coming child, she remained at his side.

It took a while before her mother realized her mistake in assuming Ilse was a fling and that the fetus would abort as nature intended.

Jealousy opened an uncloseable door in Carla. It corrupted her mind so subtly but steadily that no one noticed the first signs of madness.

Alena's heart ached for what followed, but she couldn't help being interested too. Despite everything, she had loved her father.

When she was younger, she idolized him—until he disillusioned her with his choices—but her love for him remained. Yet how could she ignore the effects of his decisions?

She lost Carla the day Victor confessed his love for Ilse. Not all at once, but little by little.

Anger and grief stabbed through her heart. Her father's selfishness had doomed both their mothers, and although he might not have physically killed Carla, he had shattered her soul.

He had actually killed Ilse, so why was there no hatred in Rowan?

If anybody had a right to that sentiment, it was Victor's other child. Being this close to her sister slashed open old wounds and exposed emotions rawer than she realized.

Rowan watched Alena's reaction with an unreadable expression as her sister's face revealed agony in a flash of unchecked emotion.

She acknowledged the stab of pain in her chest and refused to admit that knowing her sister suffered—and seeing it—was not the same thing.

Up close and personal, such things hurt. Just when she finally thought she was immune to pain, life had to remind her that only the dead and the heartless did not suffer, and she was neither.

Rowan purposefully shifted her gaze to Marcus before offering him a cursory bow of respect—which was actually a show of contempt.

She didn't want to be there any more than they wanted her there, but she had to play her part, didn't she? Under normal circumstances, their paths would never have crossed. She owed them nothing, and they owed her nothing.

She would act the role assigned to her, and when she left, she would save her friends on her own. How had she naively thought it possible for them to pretend that Victor's shade didn't stand between them like the proverbial elephant in the room?

The rumor mill revealed to Rowan that the human populace regarded Alena as aloof and distant—never cruel, but uninvolved with their affairs.

Some said she was different until she fully understood what her father was capable of and Carla slipped into her own world. The change in her had happened gradually but cemented itself the day Carla committed her ill-fated suicide.

Victor had trained his daughter to be a soldier at his side when they were away from home and a princess in his castle.

She could hunt with the best of the men and ride a horse as if she had been born on one.

His actions gave their subjects the impression that Victor had groomed Alena to succeed him. The news that he had chosen Marcus instead shocked and angered his people.

The swift movement of power-hungry enemies and former allies to usurp Victor's lands had tested Marcus's mettle but also made his new subjects realize that Victor's decision might have proven wise. She couldn't help but wonder if Alena had known Marcus was his heir and not her.

"Your letter brought me here, sir, but I fear that you mistake me for someone else," Rowan informed him politely but firmly.

Anger flashed through Marcus's veins, but he controlled the emotion.

Her voice carried no inflection, and it surprised him and Alena to hear the unmistakable tones of someone who had received a somewhat rounded education.

It wasn't something one simply picked up; it showed in how she carried herself and her stance.

Someone had bothered to teach her proper comportment and elocution. Given her past circumstances, she should have had a baseborn commoner's rough language patterns and mannerisms.

Brought into this world as the daughter of a former lady whose family had lost everything in the wars, Rowan had no access to education. As far as either of them could tell, Victor had done little more than sire and abandon her.

It was the second unforgivable thing Alena blamed Victor for—and felt guilty about. She had grown up with all the privileges of a princess, being a close relative of the vampire king, while Rowan had received no care. If their father had any sense of decency, he would never have allowed a child to grow up under such circumstances.

Alena had broached the subject once, and Victor had become so angry she never dared mention it again. He rarely lost his temper, but criticizing his decisions was a sure way to earn her father's wrath. He had forbidden her to mention Rowan's name ever again.

"Who would I mistake you for, Dhampir? You are the only one, Rowan," Marcus said, emphasizing the name. Although her anger briefly flared, she kept her expression impassive.

Rowan hated the word Dhampir. To her, it had become a derogatory term that most vampires used with more negative emphasis than they did "human" or "rat."

She knew Marcus was baiting her because she so clearly irked him.

"You mistake me for someone who cares," she clarified with more than a suggestion of disrespect.

Alena stepped forward, her teeth gritted, her mouth set in a firm line.

Why did Rowan's words anger her? Why did she want the Dhampir to care about their plight? Especially when they had so obviously not cared for hers.

Neither of them had expected such blatant antagonism from her, and it reminded her that, despite whatever ill-fated education Rowan had received at some point, her sister was little more than a stray dog.

They should not find her behavior either shocking or disappointing, and they could not deny the facts: Rowan was a mercenary, a hired killer, a pariah, and an outcast.

"I told you this couldn't work," Alena declared quietly, but when Marcus's gaze veered from Rowan to her, his eyes flashed more fiercely than her own cold, evident displeasure.

Alena almost stepped away from the unexpected ferocity in him, but it took a mere moment for her to grasp that he wasn't just angry at her, but also at the hopelessness of their situation.

Rowan was their last chance to save their people. Even without her defiant arrogance and defensive antagonism, she had nothing to offer them. What would Rowan know of a millennia-old prophecy?

Her displeasure had made her forget her place. Marcus wasn't her father, and she didn't hold the same position she had before. She was neither his daughter nor his wife—just his first in command, and Marcus was her master.

"I apologize for speaking out of turn, my lord," Alena added belatedly.

Rowan wondered if he noticed Alena's resentment at having to admit her servitude with that word.

It hadn't occurred to her that despite Alena's position in their hierarchy, she now belonged to Marcus like every other inhabitant of his lands.

Marcus noticed and paid heed to Alena's anger at her changed circumstances but pretended not to know.

She needed time to deal with the feelings of betrayal born from Victor's choices. He could grant her no quarter despite his concern for her or his understanding and faith that she would adjust.

She would have no regard for him if he didn't keep her in line. Victor had left some huge boots to fill, and Marcus suspected he would have to do more than fill them to earn her respect.