I closed my eyes, picking my answer carefully, tiptoeing among all the lies to pick a truth that I could tell him. “Not in the way you think. I wasn’t infected then. But you’re right, it does involve Halcyon.” It certainly involved his blood, which Mona Louisa had taken from him against his will, breaking one of their greatest taboos—drinking a demon’s blood. She’d blood-raped Halcyon. And I, in turn, had light-raped her. Now both of their essences dwelled within me. And all of this had to remain a secret. Unknown.

Blaec, the High Lord of Hell, Halcyon’s father, had killed a score of Monère warriors and their Queen—Mona Louisa, the demon blood violator—to keep this secret: that drinking their blood can multiply a Monère’s power, endowing them with demon dead strength. I did not want the next blood bath to be that of my men.

“It involves Mona Louisa, too,” I said, and told Dontaine nothing he did not already know. He’d seen my brown eyes turn blue, turn into Mona Louisa’s eyes. “How, I cannot say. Only that it was the reason why the High Lord of Hell killed her.”

“But he spared you. Does he know that you have some of their essence in you?”

A good question. The High Lord had seen me drain Mona Louisa of her light, her energy. He had spared me, believing that keeping my Monère secret—my extremely rare, extremely dangerous gift of Mortal Draining, that light-drinking thing I had done—would ensure the keeping of his demon secret. But the real reason he had spared me was because his son, Halcyon, had named me as his mate. Because after six hundred years alone, he had found love.

Still…that was before Blaec knew that his demon secret dwelled as a living presence within me. That it had infected me.