J. Geissinger - Shadow’s Edge

“Thank you, Christian,” said Leander, “for your very helpful input. Now shut up.”

“I’m merely saying,” he continued, speaking directly to the viscount and Morgan, “that not only does Jenna have absolutely no reason to want to make her home here, but she’s been given good reason to loathe us all. In her place,” he glared at Leander, his hands white-knuckled around the arms of the chair, “I would have done the same thing.”

“Are you implying,” Leander said, deadly soft, “I was wrong to tell her the truth?”

The viscount cleared his throat and set his cup down carefully atop the gleaming mahogany table. He leaned forward and adjusted his spectacles. “Perhaps it might have been a bit much...so soon...”

When Leander switched his gaze from Christian to focus directly on him, the viscount cleared his throat again. “Her ways are not our own. It must have come as a great shock,” he added, a faint sting of chagrin in his voice.

Silence took the room. The warning call of a mockingbird rose outside the windows, harsh and razored, slicing through the sunlit room like a knife.

“Although I’m sure you had your reasons,” the viscount finished lamely. The surface of his coffee suddenly became of great interest to him.

“We’re not like the rest of them,” Leander said, his voice hard. His eyes burned as they fell on each of them in turn. “We’re not like the Expurgari or the humans or any of the other animals that walk this earth. We’re stronger than all of them, we face the truth. We speak it. We’ve survived eons of persecution and envy by being stronger than they are, and Jenna is a survivor as well. I won’t sink to their level and lie to her. We are Ikati . We are above them all, above their petty skirmishes and greed and lies.”

“Indeed,” Morgan said, examining her French manicure with acute interest. “I daresay we are.” She raised her gaze to Leander’s face and a pulse of anger sharpened her tone. “But we’re not above making someone with good intentions and an innocent heart our unwilling prisoner, even if she doesn’t quite realize it yet. Nor are we above forcing her to be subject to our Laws. Laws that are foreign to her, Laws that took the life of her own father.”

She leaned back in her chair and crossed one long leg over the other, her manicure forgotten. “Laws that will make her no more than chattel if it’s discovered she can breed. No,” she said softly, her eyes narrowed to slits. “We are definitely not above any of that.”

“We’ve been through this with you before, Morgan,” interrupted the viscount before anyone else could speak. “Dozens of times, hundreds , I would wager.” He leaned forward in his chair, visibly grateful for the opportunity to move the focus away from himself. He began to tap his index finger on the table, a staccato beat to underscore his words.

“The Law is in place to keep us from total disaster. It was created as the anchor that holds us fast against the raging river of temptation that would lead us into extinction. If it weren’t for the rules we live by, we’d be hunted far more easily than we are now. We never would have lasted even the first millennium— ”

“The Law is nothing more than control and oppression, especially for a woman, and if Jenna has any sense she’ll keep as far away from this shining prison as she possibly—”

“Whether she likes it or not, this is her home, this is where she belongs—”

The huge wood door at the far end of the room swung open and hit the wall with a muffled boom. Two of Leander’s guards stepped forward with a scullery girl in tow.

“Forgive me, my lord.” One of them gave a quick bow before righting himself and motioning to the girl next to him, her arm held aloft in the firm grip of the other guard. “We thought you should hear this straight away.”

“What is it?” Leander leapt from his chair and strode toward them, his back ramrod straight. “You’ve found something? You saw something? Speak up, girl!”

The guard gave the scullery girl a little nudge with his elbow and jerked his head toward Leander.

The girl curtsied and chewed her lower lip.

“I was in the kitchen, my lord,” she began, meek as a mouse. Strands of her lank brown hair fell over one downcast eye. Her small hands fluttered over a striped apron until they settled, trembling, around her waist. She cleared her throat.

“Polishing the silver as I always do on Tuesdays.” She twisted the apron in her fist, over and over, working the rough cotton into a knotted bunch. “It’s a lovely silver set, my lord, all dotted about with tiny roses and vines and wee little birds. I love to work on the silver, it’s really very—”

“Yes,” Leander said. The word fell between them like a block of cement.

The scullery maid stopped speaking, looked up at him, and paled.

“It is a lovely silver service. I’m pleased to hear you enjoy working with it.” He gazed down at her, his right hand flexing open and closed.

The scullery maid opened her mouth, then snapped it shut.

“But perhaps you could tell us—quickly— exactly what it is you saw.”

“Just...just the blood, sir,” she stuttered.

Christian rose from his chair in one swift unbending of limbs that produced not a single sound. Morgan cut her gaze to him. He stood stock-still, eyes trained like gunsights on the girl.

“The blood ?” Leander repeated, aghast. “What on earth are you talking about? What blood?”

“Little splatters on the stone floor, sir. I only noticed because I’d bent down to reach a fresh polishing cloth we keep in a little bin below the cupboards next to the laundry. It’s kept just so, sir, very neat and clean, the housemistress herself makes sure the kitchen and laundry are always in such good repair, so organized and run nearly like the military itself, sir, never a thing out of place. You can always find just what it is you might be looking for, whether it’s polishing cloths or hand towels or just the right spice for the dish the cook is making for dinner—”

“The BLOOD !” Christian boomed, his face red. “What about the BLOOD ?”

The guard held onto the scullery maid’s arm as she leaned back in a half-swoon, her face round and white as the moon.

“Christian,” Leander spat. “ Enough !”

Christian kicked the chair away with the heel of his boot, pushed roughly by the girl and the guards, and strode out the open door, cursing.

“What the devil’s got into him?” the viscount muttered to Morgan. His fingers were wrapped so hard around the fragile coffee cup the handle looked ready to snap in two.

“The exact same thing that’s gotten into Leander,” Morgan murmured back. She dropped her gaze when Leander’s head turned sharply. He stared at her over his shoulder, eyes black with rage.

For one long moment, Morgan felt the burn of his stare on her face. If he hadn’t been so unstrung, she’d have met his gaze head on, but now...now he was ready to snap. And that made him very dangerous.

He turned his eyes back to the girl. “Tell me all of it. Tell me now ,” he growled.

“There was blood on the floor, sir, in the laundry,” she whispered in terror. “Blood that led through the kitchen, up the backstairs to the lady’s chambers—”

Leander pushed past her before she even finished speaking.

“Leander! Wait!” Morgan shouted.

She leapt from her chair and crossed the room. She moved quickly to match his long stride, which had already taken him past the door and into the hallway. He shouldered past her, walking stiff-legged and stone-faced down the long corridor toward the curving staircases that led to the second floor. She had to almost break into a run to keep up.