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blinked at the silhouettes of furniture, encircled by the shadowy bookcases around the perimeter of the room.
    Dorian’s study, I thought sluggishly, though it was now shrouded in darkness, the only light coming from a fire burning in the grate. And I was lying on the sofa, still dressed in the green ball gown with a heavy blanket laid over me.
    “I was beginning to wonder if you were asleep for the night.” Dorian lounged in a club chair near the fire, his feet up on an ottoman and a brandy in his hand. His tailcoat and vest were tossed over the arm of the chair, his white tie dangling loose from either side of his open collar.
    I had the vague memory of a firm chest against my body, strong arms lifting me up, and the words in my ear: “Hush, now.”
    “Is the party over?” I asked. The dread I had felt was still there, deep in my gut, but it was dampened now by the drug of Dorian’s presence. The firelight played over the planes of his face, gilding the prominence of his cheekbone and the line of his nose and jaw.
    “More or less. Some of the guests will be here until they are politely ejected at dawn,” Dorian said, regarding me steadily over the rim of his glass.
    “You left them? Even though I was asleep?”
    His shrug was negligent. “Our duties are over now. My allies can make sure that the guests who remain do not get into too much trouble. I thought you’d like to leave, awake or not. And I also thought you might have a few questions for me.”
    “A few,” I echoed. That didn’t even begin to cover it.
    A shadow of a smile passed across his face. “Where would you like to start?”
    “Etienne and Isabella,” I said immediately, straightening up and pushing the blanket off. “How could you be friends with a man who would do something like that to his—his cognate?” I stumbled a little over the word.
    Dorian sighed, looking suddenly ancient and remote. “Not all agnates agree with my research. Etienne sees the value in it. His endorsement carries a great influence among many. He is a cornerstone of the Adelphoi.”
    “Adelphoi. What is that?” I asked.
    “The Adelphoi are my allies,” he said. “Versus the Kyrioi, who believe that agnates are properly the lords of humans. The history of our people goes back long before our memories hold out. But we believe that we are the creation of the union of men and angels—fallen angels, who wished to create a beautiful, corrupt race to have dominion over the race of men.”
    “We believe,” I repeated. “Do you believe it, too?”
    His mouth twisted slightly, an emotion passing over it so quickly that I couldn’t identify it before it was gone. “It isn’t something that you human-born can understand. Your kind are born and die in the space of only a few years, and everything is changed or forgotten in a few repetitions.”
    He turned the brandy glass so that the firelight glinted off the cut facets of the crystal. “Our traditions are stronger. Eighty of your generations would have been born in the time it takes one agnate’s memory to unravel, and our retellings change less, as the overlapping of our lives into the distant past leads to a greater consistency. Some of the youngest agnates think our origin story just a peculiar myth, but it is something that I and all those of my age have held as a certainty as far back as my mind disappears into the fog of time.”
    “So you actually believe that you are...demonspawn?” I said. “I mean, that’s what fallen angels are supposed to be, right? Demons? That’s...that’s terrible.”
    “Why else must we kill to live? We were made for evil,” he said heavily. The darkness seemed to knit itself more tightly around him, the pulsing agnatic influence almost tangible.
    “Some of us embrace it, believing that we must be true to that nature, as the natural lords of men.” His gaze transfixed me. “No human can refuse us, Cora. They all go willingly to their deaths. Humans are masters of the