Company of Angels 02 - The Demoness of Waking Dreams

things I was never able to admit to before. There are things you don’t know about Luciana. Things that are important.”
    “I’m listening.”
    Julian held his head in his hands for a moment. When he raised it, he looked squarely at Brandon. “This isn’t easy to say. But I have made some terribly bad decisions when it came to Luciana.”
    The story Julian spun out before him was a tale of a young English lord, a future duke, who had traveled to Venice on his Grand Tour. Who had stayed because he was mesmerized by the beauty of the city and its people. Fundamentally, it was the same story Luciana had told Brandon only a few nights ago on the Lido.
    Except when Julian told it, he did not blame himself entirely for what had gone wrong.
    “We were two young people who had fallen madly in love. But then I, arrogant young man that I was, began to doubt and then test that love. I found Luciana’s attentions lacking, and thought she did not truly care for me. I ultimately made the decision to leave her to fate, and left to go home to England.
    “I had not seen Luciana for ten years when I spotted her in a crowd in London. Luciana came to me with a story of a difficult marriage, of beatings, of desperation. And we resumed our affair. Soon after, she asked me to kill her husband. I challenged Harcourt to a duel. Neither she nor I expected her drunkard husband to show up sober, nor that Harcourt would be such a good shot. Yet with a miraculously steady hand, he hit his mark. And I hit mine.
    “Both of us bled out on the winter snow of an empty field.
    “In hindsight, I have finally come to a place in my life where I can take some responsibility for what happened. I no longer blame her for the choices I made.”
    “Maybe you should tell her that,” Brandon said.
    “If you think it will help, I will go talk to her. But I doubt she’ll listen to me.”
    “Even if she doesn’t listen, it’s something she needs to hear.”
    * * *
     
    Luciana huddled inside her cell of a room, miserable and still filthy from her capture and her attempted escape.
    For celestial beings, these angels have no sense of decency, she thought.
    She glared up at the video camera in the corner of the room.
    Going into the small bathroom, she finally stripped off the ruined silk gown and threw it in the garbage bin. Stood in the shower and felt the comfort of hot water pouring down over her tired body. There was a folded outfit on the bed, a modest white dress that reminded her of a hospital gown. She put it on. Then she sat down on the bed, wondering where Brandon had gone. Wondering what these angels planned to do with her.
    What do they expect me to do? Curl up in the fetal position and give up? she thought bitterly. I have survived for over two hundred years. I am not giving up now.
    She knelt and began to examine the chair, contemplating whether she had the strength to unbolt it and throw it through the window.
    The series of electronic beeps sounded. The metal bolt slid open.
    The man standing at the door made her wish she had unbolted the chair.
    So she could smash it over his head.
    Julian Ascher.
    When they had said he was a changed man, they had not been kidding. The difference in him was palpable on his face, on his body. As long as she had known him—and it had been a long time—he had always been smug, arrogant and self-absorbed.
    Now, he seemed lighter, somehow. Brighter, somehow. It made her sick.
    “I don’t believe it,” she said flatly.
    Julian sat on the edge of the bed.
    She recoiled, moving away from him.
    His hands shot up in a gesture of pacifism. “I didn’t come to hurt you, Luciana. I came to ask you to consider what the Company is asking of you.”
    “Why should I?”
    “A lot has passed between you and I. There’s something I need to say to you.” He paused. “I need to ask your forgiveness.”
    She blinked, the shock of that word hitting her, slamming into her like a slap in the face.
    Forgiveness.
    A word more profane than any curse she had ever heard.
    That word was like a sucker punch to the gut.
    Drawing in a deep breath, the words that poured out of her seemed so inadequate, so profoundly failing to express the utter fury that burned inside her. But she let them stream out of her anyway.
    “How dare you,” she ground out, advancing toward him in the small space. “After what you did to me? To my family?”
    “I am deeply regretful for the harm I caused you. Looking back, there are many things