Book 2. Chapter 1

Ten Years Ago

Livia swayed to the hard beat of the music playing on repeat in her earbuds, falling into the familiar, seductive trance that always came when she found the perfect song to match whatever weapon on which she was working.

This one was about playing with fire, about dancing with your demons and feeling at home in your nightmares, even as they haunted you. It made her think of sex with a dangerous, ocean blue-eyed stranger and sweat-slicked bodies moving together in the darkness.

Livia let those fantasies fuel her as she drew by the faint light of the moon shining through the single, high window, her pencil a blur across the page, bringing to life the image of a twisted dagger.

Her eyes felt gritty and her body longed for sleep, but this wasn’t the first time a dream for a new weapon design had awoken her in the middle of the night, and it wouldn’t be the last. She knew from experience she wouldn’t be able to get any rest until she