Karen Chance: Death's Mistress

Even if I didn’t understand it.

I pushed the extra pillow behind me and sat up. “Maybe you can clear something up for me that I’ve always wondered about,” I said, meeting those famous turquoise eyes.

“Yes?”

“Why do you insist on dressing like freaking D’Artagnan when you were born two hundred years before that?”

Radu frowned. “Formal wear in my day was robes, Dory.”

“And?”

“Nasty, long, hot, smothering robes. Good in winter, of course, but the rest of the time…”

“Vampires don’t sweat.”

“Yes, but knee pants are so much more flattering. You can see my legs.”

“You want people to see your legs?”

“I have very nice legs!” We both paused to admire them for a moment.

“Are you here to shake me down for the car?” I asked, getting it over with. “Because I don’t have three hundred thousand dollars.”

’Du’s eyes flicked over the well-worn furnishings and faded quilts. “I never would have guessed.”

“I’m not likely to have it in the future, either.”

His frown grew. “I’m not here about the car, Dory! I bought it for Gunther, in any case. I don’t drive.”

“Gunther? Your bodyguard?”

“He’s a very good bodyguard.”

I looked at him severely. “ ’Du, you’re not falling for a human, are you? You know how tacky that is.”

“Certainly not.” He shook out a sleeve. “Anyway, I bought him another one.”

I grinned.

“Stop that.”

“If you’re not here over the car, why are you here?” I asked curiously. Radu was certainly strong enough to withstand daylight, but that didn’t mean it was comfortable.

He poured me a glass of water from a bedside carafe and settled back with a disgruntled look. “Oh, I don’t know, I’m sure. Perhaps I thought you might want to know how the trial went.”

I sat up a little more. “They still had it?”

“Well, of course they still had it. Elyas is still dead, isn’t he?”

“As far as I know. What happened?”

“Louis-Cesare was acquitted of murdering that sniveling creature.” I felt my spine relax slightly into the pillow. “And convicted of mass endangerment by knowingly concealing a revenant.”

I sat back up again. “What?”

“Well, what did you expect? She almost butchered Anthony.”

“What’s the sentence?” I asked, feeling my stomach drop.

“Death.”

“Death?”

“But since Christine was under Elyas’s care—and supposed supervision—while committing the murders, Mircea managed to successfully argue that the sentence should be carried out on him.”

“On Elyas?”

“Mmm-hmm.”

“But he’s already dead.”

“Yes. Quite the time-saver, that.”

“So… they’re just going to let Louis- Cesare walk?” That didn’t sound like the Senate.

“Not entirely. He did sire her, after all, and failed to deal with the problem. He’s lucky they didn’t do worse.”

“Radu! What did they do?”

“Threw him off the Senate—both of them. And he is banned from taking Senatorial office again for at least a century.” He crossed his legs to get them out of a creeping patch of sunlight. “Of course, that’s a lot of tosh. It was really the only compromise anyone could think of to the problem of which Senate should get him. Neither was willing to back down, and we can’t very well afford a conflict when we’re already in one….”

“So Louis-Cesare had to fall on his sword?”

“In a manner of speaking. For my part, I think he should be pleased. It’s going to be hell in the senate until all the new members settle in.”

“So the challenges went off without a hitch?”

“Thus far. Of course, tonight was merely round one, and no one truly expected a problem yet.”

“I assume Ming-de’s candidates are cleaning up?”

“No. In fact, she had a rather poor showing. The only candidates to move on to the finals from the Chinese delegation were Zheng-ze and Lord Cheung, although it’s early days.”

“Zheng-ze?”

“Very odd sort. Believe it or not, he fought the whole night with a severed head tied to his belt!”

So Scarface was on his way to a Senate seat, after all. I grinned. “I believe it.”

There was a knock on the door and a hairy little head poked in. Big gray eyes regarded me silently for a moment before Stinky scrambled up the bedpost and plopped down beside me. He had something wet and dripping in his hand, and before I could stop him, he slapped it to my forehead.

“Thank you,” I told him as icy water dribbled down my neck.

“I’m sorry,” Claire said, coming in with Aiden on her hip and a blond at her back. Her hair was extra bouncy today. I guess because of the curlers. “But he insisted. He seems to believe it’s some sort of magic cure-all.”

I surreptitiously passed the dripping offering to Radu, who put it on the nightstand. “I seem to be doing okay without it, although I’m not sure why.”

“I am,” the gorgeous blond man behind her said. He had a chair in each hand, both of which he put down in order to give me a kiss. “Hello, Dory.”

“Caedmon. When did you get here?”

“Last night, as soon as our time streams caught up with one another,” the fey king said.

“Heidar’s here, too,” Claire told me, “along with about fifty guards. It’s a madhouse downstairs.”

“It could be worse. Heidar wanted to bring half the army,” Caedmon said drily.

“We could have used them,” I told him. “How the hell didsubrand get loose? Claire said he was secure.”

“It was clever,” Caedmon admitted. “My sister wrote to me, begging to be allowed to see her son. Foolishly, as it turns out, I agreed.”

“Why foolishly?”

“Efridís is adept at glamourie—good enough to fool even our own people. She paidsubrand a visit, they spoke for a time, and she left. At least that was what my guards believed.”

“You’re saying she took his place?” He nodded. “But how? If you knewsubrand had her ability—”

“On the contrary. Glamourie has always been difficult for him; he takes after his father in that regard. But my sister was veiled when she arrived, and through the gauze, the roughness in his assumed features was not obvious. And due to her rank, the guards did not check her too closely. Meanwhile, their prisoner’s appearance was flawless.”

“Then you have your sister in jail?”

“At present, yes. She resumed her old form once her son was safely away. It is an untenable situation, however. I cannot detain the Svarestri queen indefinitely, a fact she well knows.”

“So she’s sitting around your hunting lodge, playing cards or whatever, while that son of a bitch tries to kill Aiden?”

“But from what Claire tells me,subrand was not trying to kill Aiden during the attacks. In fact, he never so much as looked for him. Both times he went directly after you. He even waited to attack the second time until he knew you had returned home.”

“He wanted me to tell him where Aiden was.”

“Did he say so directly?”

I tried to think back. It wasn’t easy. My brain felt fuzzy and my tongue was as dry as sandpaper. I sipped some of the water Radu had poured. “Not in so many words, no. But that was the idea.”

“But do you not think it is significant that he did not focus his attention on Claire? She was a double threat. Her null abilities allowed her to destroy the wards that made the constructs possible, and her Dark Fey heritage made her a formidable opponent, particularly when protecting her child.”

“Maybe he knew she’d never give up her son’s location and believed I’d be an easier target.”

“Perhaps. But he had fought you before and had not managed to break you. In his situation, I would have concentrated on killing Claire, then you, and then searched at my leisure for the child.”