Demon Marked

long ago? A housekeeper wouldn’t have left it like that. Breathing in through her nose, Ash detected a recent scent that she’d begun to associate with male —and a connection suddenly lurked at the back of her mind, that half-seen lightning, that forgotten word.
    Like Cinderella, a memory—another story. Who’s been sleeping in my bed?
    Ash knew the answer to this one: Goldilocks, who’d broken into the bears’ house. Although Ash had broken into this home, that wasn’t the connection that teased her. She didn’t sleep in anyone’s bed, not even her own.
    Every night, she’d lain motionless beneath her blankets when the nurses had ordered her to, but she hadn’t actually slept in almost three years.
    So what was her mind trying to tease out of this memory? Ash moved closer to the bed, attempting to follow the tenuous association formed between now and Before. She didn’t care about the man who’d been sleeping here. He wasn’t in this room now, but a connection to her past was . . . somewhere.
    What was the rest of that story? Who’s been eating my porridge? That wasn’t her, either. Though she’d eaten whenever they placed a meal in front of her, Ash hadn’t been hungry. Since her escape from Nightingale House, four weeks had gone by without food passing her lips.
    Perhaps her mind wasn’t trying to remember an association with the story itself; perhaps the connection lay in the circumstances in which she’d heard it. But she couldn’t remember that. She couldn’t remember who’d told the story to her—or even whether she’d read it, instead. She couldn’t remember where she’d been, or when . She tried to, but came head up on the memory she didn’t want, a memory of a memory, her first memory and it was of regret and terror—
    Burning cold, her body gone, she’d heard screaming and she’d been screaming but she didn’t have to return to the cold, that endless frozen agony, because she’d made a bargain and the dark figure said her name, Ash—and the rest of her ripped apart, was gone, gone
    Her stomach heaved. Doubling over, Ash braced her hands against the edge of the bed. She sucked in air that her lungs didn’t need, but the motion of her chest felt familiar. It felt right.
    But why didn’t she need air?
    Someone had to know. Someone had to know who she was. What she was.
    “Rachel?”
    The man’s voice came from behind her, full of shock and disbelief. Ash whipped around. Nicholas St. Croix stood at the doorway, holding a crossbow aimed at her heart.
    Instinctively, Ash raised her hands to show him that she was unarmed. She didn’t know if Nicholas had killed Rachel, but she wouldn’t give him a reason to fire now. She doubted he would, anyway. Instead of aggression, she sensed faint hope in him, combined with ragged uncertainty.
    He couldn’t see her clearly in the dark, Ash realized, whereas she could see him perfectly. Shirtless, he wore only a pair of black trousers that hung low on his hips—zipped, but not buttoned. He must have yanked them on when she’d broken in. Had she woken him, or had he simply been lying in the bed?
    Lying in wait.
    As soon as Ash thought it, she couldn’t shake that impression. Nicholas St. Croix’s photos suggested he was a dangerous man, hard and emotionless—but the most recent picture had been taken more than three years ago. Instead of cold elegance, he appeared pared down and roughened. His dark hair had been cut brutally short. A few days’ worth of scruff shadowed his jaw, and his body . . .
    Ash’s gaze fell to his chest. In the photos, he’d obviously been well acquainted with a gym. But the taut, wiry muscles on display hadn’t come from a single hour’s workout followed by a rich man’s meal. His body reflected an obsession of some kind, one that ate away at him no matter how much he fed it—and Ash didn’t think that obsession had anything to do with his looks.
    Perhaps that obsession explained why he’d lain in wait at his mother’s house with a crossbow .
    Ash didn’t lower her hands. “I’m not her. But if you look at me, can you tell me who I am?”
    His aim didn’t waver as he flipped a switch on the wall. Light flooded the room. Ash blinked rapidly, adjusting to the glare. His eyes narrowed. Their icy blue focus shifted to the symbols tattooed over the left side of her face.
    The warm hope she’d sensed in him burst into a hot, swelling pressure. But even as she recognized the change, he began