Chapter Thirty-Seven
I don’t know why you’re helping Allhan.”
As L.W. laid the oh-so-generous opinion out, Shuli glanced in the fighter’s direction.
In the dim light, the heir to the throne was sitting at the far end of the dining room table, eating strawberry Pop-Tarts directly out of the box.
Empty silver wrappers were scattered at his elbow, dead soldiers on the battlefield of his totally nutritious breakfast of champions.
Not that Rhamp was much better. He was drinking ranch dressing. Right out of the bottle.
“You want some lettuce with that,” Shuli muttered.
“Huh?” Rhamp glanced up from his phone. Then he sent a text and a little bing! sounded out. “What?”
“Never mind.”
“And of course Allhan couldn’t get that address.” L.W. opened a new sleeve. “You believed him? He should never be a go-to about anything more complicated than retrieving your lost password—”
“I’m absolutely going to help him.” Rhamp frowned. “Why wouldn’t I? Besides, what he asked for is not a heavy lift. And with what the bastard went through the other night? Have a little compassion.”
L.W. shrugged as he bit into one of the frosted corners. “Sorry, I’m missing that gene.”
“Yeah, they couldn’t fit it in with all the asshole on your double helix.”
“I feel so seen.” L.W. put a theatrical hand on his chest. “And so heard. Let’s hug it out, why don’t we, bitch.”
As Rhamp muttered and took another haul of Hidden Valley, Shuli got up from the table and walked over to a window, if only to give his goiter a break from all the creamy goodness.
The shutters had risen for the night and the light that came in from back in the kitchen was low enough that he could see out of the security drapes onto the lawn.
No footsteps disturbing the snow. No strange vehicles parked on the lane.
No attempts to infiltrate the house during the day.
He walked into the foyer and over to the parlor. Checked another window. Didn’t see anything he hadn’t already noted.
They’d crashed down in the tunnel during the day, the need to survive and be smart about things overriding even L.W.’s usual arrogance and aggression. Except no slayers. Not last night. Not noontime, or three p.m. Not now after six.
None.
There were all kinds of arguments to be made that the slayers who had killed Shuli’s boys were marshaling resources, planning an attack—maybe using drones to scope out this property or any other owned by the aristocracy.
But with every hour that went by, it was looking like the enemy wasn’t coming here or to anybody’s else’s house.
He glanced around at all the weapons they’d set up, especially Rhamp’s fave, the anti-tank gun he called Big Dick.
There had been such a rush to get ready, while at the same time hiding what they were doing.
But like the Brotherhood hadn’t been on the property anyway?
He should have known when there wasn’t pushback about him and Rhamp staying put that the Brothers would set up their own safety net for them.
Hell, under that scenario, maybe the three of them were just bait.
Except no fish were even circling
The sound of footfalls coming across the marble floor behind him made him want to fire up Rhamp’s dick.
“Excuse me?” the guy said.
Shuli pivoted around. “Your gun. Not your actual dick.”
“Oh, good. I thought you’d really lost it instead of just sort of lost it.”
Through the archway into the dining room, L.W.
was still at the head of the table with his stupid kiddie food First Meal—but the fighter had narrowed his pale green eyes on Shuli.
With a curse, he got to his feet and came across, arriving at the threshold as he put the last corner of the fucking tart in his mouth.
His eyesight had returned sometime during the day, but Shuli had a feeling it wasn’t what it used to be. L.W. blinked more often and rubbed his face a lot, like he was trying to clear his vision.
There had been no more discussion about going to the Brotherhood’s clinic.
Shocker.
“They didn’t give this address up.” Shuli cleared a lump out of his throat. “The boys didn’t say where we lived.”
And after having memorized the photographs of the bodies, he knew what they’d been put through.
“They didn’t break,” he tacked on needlessly. Hoarsely.
There was a creak of leather as L.W. crossed his arms over his heavy chest. As the fighter opened his mouth, Shuli shook his head.
“Now would not be a great time to toss out one of your bon mots. Have a little respect for once in your life, okay? It would have been so easy for them to talk, not that it would have saved their lives, but maybe they would have been killed a little more humanely… I don’t know. Fuck.”
L.W. shut his mouth. Then nodded. “You’re right.”
Well, what do you know, hell could freeze over.
“They were so brave,” Rhamp murmured. “All of them.”
Moving around the room, Shuli looked at the abstract expressionist paintings he’d hung up, that Mondrian he’d saved from certain destruction last night, the de Kooning, his two Rothkos, and the other spotty, blotchy, color-blocked masterpieces that had been so fucking important when he’d bought them.
God, the acts of rebellion right after he’d gotten his inheritance had been so privilege-coated: I’ll show you, Mommy and Daddy!
I’ll take your money and not spend it on more Old Masters like you collected.
I’m a rebel! Gottlieb for the win, huzzah!
“I can’t stay here anymore,” he announced.
He’d never been particularly connected to the house or the things in it, but now he just saw in every room the faces of the males who had died with such courage.
Shuli checked his phone for the millionth time. Still no reports of any attacks, anywhere. So they hadn’t just protected their immediate friends and families. They had protected… everyone.
“They bring honor upon their bloodlines,” L.W. said in the Old Language.
“They do.” Shuli nodded, and then did what he could to snap out of the grief and sorrow. “I have a safe house. Let’s pack all this up and move there.”
He braced for a fight with L.W. because… reasons. The fucker could argue with Lassiter Himself over the color of the night sky—
“Yeah,” the heir to the throne announced. “If slayers were going to show up here, they would have by now. I got some duffle bags in my room.”
As L.W. strode down the hallway to his suite, Shuli glanced at Rhamp, who just shrugged.
“Maybe he had a personality transplant sometime during the day.”
“We would have noticed that,” Shuli muttered dryly.
At least Willhis, his butler, was going to be excited to coordinate the move-in once they got to the safe house. The doggen was no doubt re-alphabetizing the spice racks as he cooled his jets out there. But there had been absolutely no question whatsoever that the loyal servant had had to relocate.
There had been too many people lost already.
God, he really wished these humans and their bright ideas would just get lost.
As iAm sat in a palace conference room that was built out to look like…
well, a conference room, he had a stack of papers in front of him, a laptop at his elbow, and a tension headache that felt like a tumor.
He’d been reading legal filings and documentation for the last four hours straight, and nothing he had learned gave him any peace of mind.
Then again, short of somehow blacking out from hypoxia, he didn’t think he was going to be finding anything calm, anytime soon.
“It’s not about a housing development,” he muttered to himself. “They want our land for more data farming.”
Sitting back in the office chair, he rubbed his temples and looked through the smoky glass of one of the windows.
He could still smell the cologne and perfume of the men and women who had come here once again during the day, and had sat with him and t’On and a courtier who had half a brain and could keep her mouth shut.
Catra had wanted to attend in person, too, but everybody had vetoed that. The Queen was more important than all of them—so if there was a bomb planted in any of those briefcases?
At least she had watched on closed-circuit TV.
He idly glanced at the notes he’d made in the margins of the latest court order calling for eminent domain. Those rats without tails had thought they were making an offer that could not be refused.
Because they were prepared to take the land they were offering to buy.
“What a fucking mess.”
Excited voices drew his eyes away from his scribbles.
Out in the hall, three courtiers floated by dressed in purple, and their excitement was pronounced, their hands flying around as they talked, their usual decorum shed like a second skin to reveal vital emotion.
The buzz about an impending mating between the heir to the throne and the Queen’s Tretary had spread throughout the s’Hisbe, and holy hell, he wished they’d fucking tone it down.
Nothing like seeing happiness in the faces of others to shine a bright light on your inner torment. He was also tired of faking enthusiasm when he was approached with all kinds of congratulations.
And there was no walking-it-off, getting-some-air, either.
Throughout the Territory, lanterns with purple shades had been hung outside every door to every abode.
As well, purple streamers were being strung between the barren branches along the walkways even though no one was strolling on the grounds in this weather.
If it had been spring, they’d probably be spray-painting the grass purple.
The news had spread so fast, but he shouldn’t have been surprised.
No doubt a couple of the courtiers had seen that t’On had switched his robing to purple with sterling silver embroidery.
That had been enough—especially when no other female was tied to him, no other family celebrating, no gossip about the where and when of some other family’s young.
So it could only be Her Sublime Highness the Princess Dennesha.