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This was Stockholm syndrome, right? How fast did Stockholm syndrome set in, exactly?

I wrapped my arms around my knees. “Responsible adult,” I whispered. “Nailed it.” I had let him touch me. I had wanted him to. I still wanted him to.

My eyes lifted across the room and caught on the floor-to-ceiling windows. The view really was beautiful. Annoyingly beautiful, actually.

New Abaddon spread beneath me, streets threading between high-rises like veins. Above it all, his floor hovered like a private kingdom. I hated how easy it was to understand why someone like him chose the top of the world. Down there, people lied and ran and died. Up here, everything had distance. Everything except me.

I pushed myself up from the door slowly.

That was when I saw them.

Roses.

Lots of roses.

They lined the balcony beyond the glass, climbing in dark planters along the rail, spilling over in heavy blooms that looked black at first until the city lights caught the petals and turned them a deep red.

My breath stopped.

The same roses. The exact same roses he had been leaving for me. I walked toward the glass, slower this time. The sliding door opened when I touched it. Cold air rushed in, and I froze. It was unlocked.

Of course it was. Where the hell was I going to go from here? Scale the tower in bare feet and a shirt? Flag down a passing gargoyle? Become a tragic headline?

Woman Escapes Demon Lord’s Penthouse, Immediately Regrets Gravity.

I stepped outside. The air bit at my bare legs. The city noise from far below reached me as a low hum. The balcony stretched wider than my entire apartment, lined with planters and black iron rails.

The roses climbed everywhere. Along the railing. Around the columns. Over an archway that led to a sitting area with dark cushions and a low table.

I reached for one. The petals were soft, cool from the night air, fragrant in a way that made the memory of my apartment flash behind my eyes. A rose on the counter left by a man who slipped through my life like a shadow and called it courtship.

“You really do grow these yourself?” I whispered.

The idea was strange—too intimate, too ridiculous. The masked assassin tending roses on a balcony high above New Abaddon, pruning thorns with those same hands that carried knives and touched me like I was something he both wanted and feared.

I moved closer to the railing and made the mistake of looking over. My stomach dropped so hard I grabbed the nearest planter. Bad. Terrible. Immediate regret. Too high . . . way too fucking high.

The city fell away beneath me in a glittering vertical nightmare. Cars crawled like insects far below. Wind tugged at my shirt. My knees decided they had fulfilled their contractual obligation to hold me up and were now accepting counteroffers.

“Nope.”

I backed up too fast. My hip hit the corner of a table, and I slapped a hand over my mouth to keep from making a sound loud enough to summon Vale, a guard, or the emotionally unstable assassin himself through whatever surveillance system he absolutely had pointed at me.

Heights were not my thing. Beautiful, yes. Romantic, possibly, if viewed from a safe distance by someone with better blood pressure. I should admire all this from inside, through glass, like a woman with sense.

New goal: Become a woman with sense.

I turned back toward the sliding door, but my eyes caught on something tucked near the rose arch. A pair of pruning shears lay on the table. Beside them sat gloves. Black leather. Worn at the fingers. Too large to be anyone else’s.

My throat tightened again.

He did grow them. Or tended them, at least. The roses weren’t ordered from some expensive florist. They weren’t delivered by staff or summoned from a dramatic murder garden in another dimension.

They were his. And he had been cutting them for me. I crossed my arms over my stomach and stared at the roses until the wind made my eyes water. That was all it was. Wind. Not emotion. Not the horrifying realization that a man who locked me in and jammed my phone also remembered my coffee and stocked cartoon mugs and grew roses on a balcony because, apparently, evil came with layers. Like an onion.

My gaze slid to the closed door behind me. The one that led back into warmth. Into his home. His tower. His bed. His lie.

Instead, I hit the floor.