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his gaze receding with each day.
    And she would know. She’d done little else but study him since his bizarre return, seldom retiring to her own room—her secret studio, hidden downstairs. Even now as Conrad lay in the bed once more, sleeping, she floated above the end of his mattress, continuing her vigil.
    When he’d returned that first morning, he’d been raging, banging his head against the wall as if to blunt whatever was inside his mind. Plaster had snowed down on him and stuck to his bloody cheeks. Once the brothers had rechained him—tethering him to the bed this time—Conrad had been unreachable, drugged and muttering foreign words in his low, harsh voice.
    To be fair, she would’ve been addled, too. One moment she’d been watching him running, the next she’d heard his unholy roar just upstairs.
    No longer was Néomi the only one trapped here. Apparently, witches truly had put a boundary spell on Elancourt. As long as Conrad wore those chains, he couldn’t cross the property line. The chains also rendered it impossible for him to teleport—or trace, as they called it.
    Néomi couldn’t put her finger on exactly when she’d first sensed a change in him. Whenever his brothers had spoken to him, Conrad had muttered incoherently, and yet she’d begun to get the feeling that he was... coherent. At least intermittently.
    Sometimes it seemed as if he was trying to filter a million thoughts in order to speak only one, and that was why he had difficulty talking normally. On occasion, even his accent changed... .
    He began twisting then, his head thrashing, no doubt caught in the grip of a horrific nightmare. Conrad routinely suffered them. With his fangs seeming to sharpen at intervals, he writhed, muscles straining, the chains cutting into his skin. She frowned. She didn’t like to see that.
    Even though everything about him should repel her, she found herself striving to be impassive. He’d destroyed parts of her house. He was a killer. He continued to have flashes of violent aggression. And he was filthy. His face was still coated with mud, blood, and caked-on plaster, his hair tangled in thick knots. Burn marks radiated over his skin and blackened his ratty clothes. When Sebastian had tried to wipe clean his charred face, Conrad had snapped his teeth at him so fast, Sebastian had almost lost his fingers.
    Néomi should hate Conrad. So why did she find herself so drawn to this big male, with his terrifying dreams?
    Because, like her, he knew the horror of being murdered? He might be reliving it even now.
    Was Conrad merely a lost soul to be pitied? Or a man worthy of rescue? Néomi had never been very interested in Men Who Needed Saving. There were women enough out there for them—
    At that moment, he jerked awake, his eyes darting yet blank. Arching his body around, he opened his mouth and sank his fangs into his own arm. With his brows drawn, he sucked slowly as if for comfort.
    And her heart melted. “Merde,” she whispered.
    When he gave a short, ireful growl against his arm, she eased beside him on the bed. “Hush, vampire,” she sighed, brushing his hair from his forehead with a telekinetic stroke. “Hush, now.” He stilled, gradually releasing his bite to lie back and slumber on, as if he’d been soothed by her... .
    Each night until sunrise, as the brothers attempted to reach him, Néomi floated about the ceiling, listening. Though she simply enjoyed hearing the rhythms of the men’s conversations, she had also been learning much about these people.
    They were from Estonia, a Baltic country bordering Russia, which explained their accents. Men from the Northlands. They’d been turned into vampires—three hundred years ago. Before then, they’d fought in the Great Northern War against Russia as noblemen officers, though eventually they’d wrested control of Estonia’s floundering army. Each brother had become a warlord, leading the defense of a section of their country, under the