Ice stepped forward. “Bram—”

“Shut up,” he snapped. “Does she know the truth?”

Foreboding slithered up Sabelle’s spine.

Ice hesitated, resignation stealing across his face. “What purpose would telling her serve?”

“Telling me what? Stop talking about me as if I’m not standing before you both!”

Neither wizard spoke for a long moment. They merely glared at each other with equal measures of resentment and resolution. Finally, Ice sighed.

“Mathias killed my sister, Gailene, when she was but seventeen. He kept her for days, under the haze of Terriforz, before he tired of her and gave her to the Anarki. They delivered her shaved and branded body back to my doorstep.”

Sabelle gasped, horror freezing her face. How had she not known this? How was it possible that no one had told her? Her heart went out to him, and his grief was visible.

“I was a new Councilman at the time,” Bram provided. “Ice and I had been friends prior to Gailene’s death.”

Friends? Willingly spending time in each other’s company?

“Impossible! Where did you meet?”

“I had been studying the Council,” Ice said quietly. “I was still in school. Bram was my assigned mentor.”

“And you were friends?” How, then, had they become such bitter enemies?

“Yes.” Ice regarded her, his green eyes solemn. “After Gailene’s murder, I came to Bram for help, hoping he could find me justice.”

“No,” Bram corrected. “You wanted me to use my influence on the Council to nominate you for the seat MacKinnett eventually occupied, so you could avenge your sister.”

The idea was both idealistic and absurd. A Deprived on the Council? That hadn’t happened in nearly half a millennium. Today, Bram might have the influence to make that happen. But when he had been a new Councilmember? No.

And Sabelle could guess what had happened next.

She turned to Ice. “Bram refused you.”

“Yes.”

“You felt betrayed?”

He gritted his teeth, then nodded, so taut she wondered if his jaw would shatter. “Yes.”

“After trying to use my influence for his personal advantage and being refused, he grew bitter.” Bram sent Ice a damning glare. “He said he hoped that someday he could show me the wretched feeling of losing a sister.”

So he’d Called to her and tried to convince to Bind to him before she could talk to Bram, tried to separate her from her brother? oh God. Sabelle felt her limbs collapse, her stomach curdle. As she eased onto the edge of the bed to steady her shaky knees, her mind turned over and over. Please don’t let it be true.

“Is it true?” Her voice shook, and she knew her expression pleaded with Ice to refute the claim.

“Yes.”

Sabelle’s stomach plummeted to her knees. Ice admitted his vendetta, without hesitation, without blinking, while inside, her heart was crumbling.

“But that was two hundred years ago, princess. This is now, and I love you.”

He’d said so before. But did he … truly?

“I can’t hear this tripe,” Bram moaned. “Do you expect her to believe you? When she knows how much you hate me and why?”

Sabelle still wanted to believe Ice. His stare locked on hers was steady, devoted, almost pleading. She bit her lip, turned her back on them both, her mind racing.

“Little sister, don’t give him another moment of your time. Pretty words hardly make up for ugly deeds.”

True. Ice hoping that Bram someday understood what it was like to lose his sister stuck with her. But maybe … he didn’t have all the facts.

“Ice saved me from the Anarki,” she explained. “The day after we found MacKinnett’s body, the Anarki attacked us. He hid me—you, too, while you were unconscious—and he faced a small army alone. He marched to almost certain death after refusing my help. Had he wanted you to lose a sister, he could have turned me over to Mathias’s minions then and there.”

“Indeed?” Bram hardly sounded impressed. “Then what happened?”

“He killed most of the Anarki. I left my hiding place to help. Ice was captured trying to protect me. He nearly died for me.”

Her brother shot Ice a contemptuous stare. “A pity he didn’t.”

“Bram!” she shrieked, appalled.

Never had she seen him so cruel. Was this the kind brother she’d grown up with, seen as her savior like a white knight of old? Suddenly, the blinders were off, and what she saw … He was like a stranger.

“Don’t applaud him for giving himself to the Anarki. Did you think he did so just to save you?” Bram raised a brow.

“He did save me,” she argued.

“Yes, and he also made himself look the hero while he got exactly what he wanted: the Anarki would take him to their master so he might have the opportunity to kill Mathias himself. Don’t delude yourself, Sabelle. He didn’t do it for you. This man who professes his love so sweetly would do anything for the opportunity to take Mathias apart, limb by limb, in the most painful way possible, even sacrifice you, me—and anyone else. He’d say anything to have his revenge against me.” Bram stared over her shoulder at the other wizard. “Ice isn’t the sort to condone the death of innocent women, but there’s more than one way for him to take my sister from me.”

Ice said nothing, his stare just drilling back at her brother. Sabelle’s mind raced as she tried to unravel his words. “What are you saying?”

“Dig deeper for his motives, Sabelle.”

“If she does, she’ll find nothing more than devotion and love,” Ice insisted.

“Right.” Bram shook this head, then faced her. “Decide whether you want to stake your entire future on his words, little sister. Because if you refuse to mate with Lucan and choose Ice, you will no longer be my kin. You’ll leave me no choice but to disclaim you. Because I won’t stand by and watch you put yourself forever in the grip of a madman with a vendetta, determined to hunt a homicidal tyrant whatever the cost. You will end up impoverished and mateless. Think on that before you decide.”

After her brother’s startling words, Sabelle fled him and Ice, running down the hall, the stairs, flinging Sterling’s back door open to the frozen December garden. She wore no shoes against the cold stone, no coat to protect her from the chill. She barely felt it.

Her own brother would disclaim her if she mated with Ice.

Disclaiming was nearly unheard of these days … except among the most Privileged. She’d long known her brother expected her mating to bring some advantage to the family. With times as difficult as they were, she knew he could use the advantage of a good match, but she had truly believed that he had enough affection for her to allow her to mate happily. To discover that she was as much a pawn to him as she had been to her mother was a bitter pill to swallow.

Yet neither could she wholly trust Ice, knowing his vow of revenge against her brother.

Again, she wished she possessed the wizards’ mating instinct. If she only knew for certain that Ice was the one for her … Her heart said so, but she had no experience in such matters. What if all his care had been but a ruse? What if his sacrifice to the Anarki had merely been a convenient way to dupe her while getting closer to the man he meant to kill at all costs? What if all the ways Ice made her body sing meant no more to him than a chest-beating comparison to all her other Privileged lovers? or a slap in Bram’s face?

Any of that could be possible. The truth was, she’d known Ice but a handful of days.

Sabelle swiped her hands across her face. A cold drizzle dampened her hair, and she began to shiver as she looked across the expanse of the wintery garden. Snow had fallen last night, and the remnants dusted the banks of the half-frozen pond. A stone lantern sat on the far banks. Bushes around it groaned with the precipitation’s weight. The landscape seemed desolate, ravaged by the elements—much like her heart.

She didn’t know what to believe. Yes, Bram had a reason to discredit Ice—a million of them, really. There was but one way Ice could be telling the truth: if he genuinely loved her.

How was she to know that for certain?

“You’re freezing.”

Lucan. His concerned voice slipped into her ear, even as his body warmth blanketed her back. He didn’t touch her, merely draped a jacket around her shaking shoulders.

“I—I’m fine.”

“You’re going to catch your death, Sabelle. Come inside. I’ll make you some hot cocoa. We’ll discuss this.”

For once, she didn’t want to talk. She wanted to wail that she loved a man she could not mate with, who might not love her back. And the most terrible, awful pain was rending her insides to shreds, tearing her still-beating heart from her chest and leaving it to bleed at her feet.

But she could hardly say that to Lucan, her other suitor, without hurting him.

“I’ll be in soon,” she demurred.

“Sabelle . . .” He cupped her shoulders and sighed. “Sweetheart, we must discuss this. Time is running short. If we’re going to cut Mathias off at the knees and prevent the rest of the Council from bumbling our defense, we’ve mere hours to do it. Tomorrow at the latest.”

Hours. I must decide the rest of my life in a few ticks of the clock. The path had seemed so simple a few hours ago, wrapped deep in Ice’s embrace. Now . . .

She squeezed her eyes shut and nodded. “I know.”

“I would give you more time, but Mathias … And we don’t know what the other Councilmen might do.”

A spike of anger had her whirling on him, but she tamped it down. It has hardly Lucan’s fault that he was right. She desperately wanted more time to sort through the tangle of these accusations and her own emotions. But if they waited, it would be too late to intercede. Mathias would be on the Council and disaster would already be unleashed.

“Do you truly want to be mated to me, Lucan?” She stared deep into his blue eyes, needing to see his expression for herself.

Lucan stood tall, familiar, and striking, the wind shipping his shaggy dark hair around his ears. He’d dug his hands deep into the pockets of his jeans, shoulders hunched in a T-shirt to ward off the cold. Stylish and pleasant where Ice was hard-edged and compelling. They represented two different worlds. Night and day. Neither was good nor bad … just different.

“We can help magickind, Sabelle. We can ward off the biggest threat to peace and security in two hundred years.”

“What of your heart?” She looked at him with pleading eyes, begging to understand, for honesty.

He took one of his hands from his pockets and smoothed away a wet curl that blew across her face, held the skeins in his fingers, rubbing them together for a pregnant moment. An awareness she’d never seen from him passed through his gaze that had her sucking in a breath.

“When I told you last night at Bram’s house that I remembered a bit about being with you, I wasn’t completely honest. I remember much more.”

That fact shone in his eyes, stunning her.

She drew in a trembling breath. “I remember, too. I know how many times you cried out for Anka. You don’t love me.”

“How many times did I call out for Anka the very last time?”

Sabelle thought back, and the answer stunned her.

“Not once,” he supplied. “I think I knew it was you, deep down.”

That had been the one time she had orgasmed with him.

He took her trembling hands in his. “We’ve always been friends, got on well together. I won’t lie and tell you I don’t desire you. Since I emerged from my mate mourning, you’ve … been on my mind.”

Oh my . . . She covered her mouth with freezing fingers to stifle a gasp. Her brother’s best friend, in lust with her?

“But you still love Anka.”

Bitterness crossed his face in a pained frown, the hard clench of a jaw. “She isn’t coming back. She’s moved on, and I must do the same. To mate with someone I consider most dear for such a necessary cause, to have such a sparkling, intelligent female with whom I share a great many interests would be no hardship.”

He was serious. Although this grand plan had been Bram’s, Lucan was perfectly willing to play along. And it wasn’t because he coveted a Council seat; Sabelle knew that. While Ice, if she mated with him … didn’t he win in every way? She would both destroy her relationship with her brother, thus losing him a sister, and Ice would improve his own connections potentially for a Council position.

A union between her and Lucan sounded perfectly logical and reasonable. She would mate someone she had long considered a friend, and Ice would not benefit from being less than honest with her. If he had been.

Nothing felt right. Her brain scrambled, her insides trembled with helpless fury. And her heart continued to want the untamed, unsuitable wizard who had stolen it. She yearned to throw politics aside. But how many people would die because she wanted to follow her heart?