Total pages in book: 109
Estimated words: 104842 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 524(@200wpm)___ 419(@250wpm)___ 349(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 104842 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 524(@200wpm)___ 419(@250wpm)___ 349(@300wpm)
She was an ancient vampyr, like Messina, and her family, she told me, had hunted mammoths. Icy with me initially, even having appreciated the gift I sent her of a complete saber-tooth tiger fossil, when I sat and listened to her with genuine, rapt attention, she warmed quickly and promised to stay even when I returned after a month. When she took my hand in hers, I’d held tight. She was lifting the burden of being in the king’s service off my shoulders, and I couldn’t have been more grateful.
“These simpering courtesans will receive no sympathy from me,” she’d said as we walked into the hall together hours earlier. “To place yourself willingly at another’s mercy is utter madness.”
I couldn’t agree more.
“Some people would think you do the same by agreeing to wed Varic, but I know better.”
Listening was always best, so I remained silent for her thoughts.
“Someday, when Varic succeeds his father, all the courtesans will be gone from the palace, as for Varic there will be only one. Only you. Isabella told me how dearly Varic holds you. The rabble should prepare now for an exodus.”
Clearly, she had no love for the courtesans, but that was to be expected. She and Isabella Maedoc, the Queen Consort, Varic’s mother, were sisters.
“I will try to make Messina see the logic of taking no more while I fill in for you,” she told me. “I doubt he will listen.”
I doubted that as well, and as Zev reminded me often, being in service to the king didn’t necessarily mean he was going to heed your counsel. He knew that from experience. Because yes, I had brought the coup to light over a year ago, but Zev himself had warned the king for centuries, actual centuries, that Gideon, his deceased rajan, was up to no good. His warnings had fallen on deaf ears, just as mine had in the days preceding this ball.
I had shared my fears with the king a week before to no avail, receiving only his usual smiling and nodding, and if I’d gone to him earlier tonight, he would have laughed at me, or worse, given me that patronizing pat on the cheek he was so fond of. There were guards at the only entrance to the hall, everyone there had to show their braided gold silk bracelet adorning their left wrist before they were allowed admittance, and though they weren’t announced—it was a masked ball, after all; you weren’t supposed to know who you were talking to—the invitations, in form of those bracelets, had been meticulously distributed by the aides of the rajan of the prince. Tiago was above reproach, as was his staff, so to think someone was there who shouldn’t have been was ludicrous.
And yet…
As I stood beside a column and watched the throng, I saw the king drinking and laughing, downing goblet after goblet of thick, rich, heavily spiked blood, and I noted several people moving along the perimeter toward him. If they were there to socialize, to flirt and engage with others, they would have remained in the packed crowd. These individuals were making their way around the edges of the sprawl to our sovereign.
Once they were close, I could see them puncture the bubble near Messina Maedoc, slithering closer, not stopping to chat—which was the point of the ball, to talk to people and unmask them. If you guessed right, off came their disguise and their bracelet was added to yours, both adorning your wrist. If you guessed wrong, the opposite occurred. The winner was the last one with their identity still veiled at the end of the decadent evening. I wasn’t a big lover of masks, had never been crazy about Halloween even when I was a kid, and presently I liked them even less.
But again, I was probably being paranoid. Maybe those jostling their way to the king were excited to see him; maybe it was their first time at court and they wanted to touch him. Several members of the nobility had brought their newly of age children with them, so perhaps I was misreading sheer excitement and seeing only subterfuge and threat. The issue was, with everyone masked, I was stumbling around in the dark.
Then suddenly, in an opening between bodies, people moving close and apart, there was body language I knew on instinct. It was the hold on a knife of someone prepared, gripping it so the blade pointed downward. Slashing didn’t always work, but stabbing did. The lights from the enormous crystal chandeliers confirmed it, bouncing off everything in the gilded, mirrored room, tracing the curve of steel as it was lifted.
If I yelled, however many assassins there actually were would converge on the king. If Varic had been here, he would have been beside me, and I could have pointed out the threat. With his speed and strength, he could have reached his father. If Hadrian, the rekkr, the champion of Varic’s house, were in the room, he too could have made it to the king—though, as this was an event exclusively for the nobility, Hadrian wouldn’t have been there anyway. More importantly, as there was no need to be protected in the hall, no champion and no personal guards were in attendance. Saving the king fell to me alone.