11. Chapter 11 #2
There were many ways to answer. I could have offered history.
The ancient Blood Trial that only he survived.
The divine appointment by the Goddess. The first oaths sworn in the old countries.
The wars that ended when my father took the field.
I could have spoken of ancient magic, the terrifying legitimacy that settled around Kazimir Kozlov like winter accepting no argument from spring.
Grace did not need poetry. Not yet.
“It is not ceremonial,” I said.
Her fingers returned to the keyboard. She typed only one line.
Kazimir can override vampire kings. Treat as actual sovereign authority.
Then she looked up at me again.
“Does Lucian sit on your father’s Elder Council?”
“Yes.”
“Which means this entire thing has teeth on both sides.”
“Many.”
Grace’s mouth tightened. “Good.”
Remy lowered her book. “Good?”
Grace did not look away from me. “If a system has teeth, it can bite the wrong person. But it can also bite him.”
A slow, fierce warmth moved through my chest.
“Yes,” I said. “That is precisely what we intend.”
Grace Marlow had begun to learn the shape of our world.
“What you are telling me,” she said, fingers hovering above the keyboard, “is that the Council is simultaneously a legislative body, diplomatic assembly, a court of last resort, battlefield deterrent, and social club for people too old to admit they enjoy procedure.”
Remy did not look up from her book. “That is the clean version, cher.”
Grace typed: Horrifying.
“Accurate,” Taras said, after returning to the room.
I leaned back in my chair, studying the line of Grace’s profile.
“Enough Council law for now,” I announced.
Grace’s fingers stopped. Suspicion entered her face immediately. “Why did that sound like the part where things get worse?”
“Because you are learning quickly.”
“That was not a denial.”
“No.”
She closed her eyes for half a second. “All right. Hit me.”
The phrase made something in my body go still.
Her eyes opened, and she saw it. Of course she did. Grace missed very little when she had decided to look.
“I meant figuratively,” she said, quieter.
“I know.”
The room breathed again, though only by a fraction.
I turned the laptop slightly, closing the Council document and opening the file Taras had prepared on household members traveling between Nevada and Philadelphia.
“In Philadelphia,” I said, “you will be at the Kozlov estate. My father’s principal residence in this country. It is heavily warded. Club Obsidian, more so, though more... public in its function.”
“Public,” Grace repeated. “As a supernatural pleasure club and casino.”
“Yes.”
“I am adjusting my vocabulary one crisis at a time.”
“You will meet my father,” I continued.
Grace’s fingers moved again.
“You will meet my youngest brother Bohdan, who runs Obsidian. He is the least serious of us all. But do not be fooled. He is no less a Kozlov in all ways. Meaning he may seem lighthearted, but he is lethal.”
“I will take that under advisement.”
“You will also meet my sister, Lucia.”
At that, Taras’s attention shifted. Not obviously. Not to anyone who did not know how to read a Kozlov when blood was mentioned. But I felt it, the small inward turn all of us made around Lucia. Our father’s daughter. Our blade. Our wound.
“Lucia is thirty,” I said. “She has served at my father’s right hand most of her adult life. She is formidable. Direct. Protective to the point of brutality when necessary.”
Grace looked up. “That sounded affectionate.”
“It was.”
“Good to know your family compliments people like indictments.”
“She would consider that one.”
That almost earned me a smile.
“Lucia’s mate is Ryder Lowrey,” I said. “He is a wolf shifter from Iron Valor. A physician. Most call him Doc.”
Grace’s fingers paused again. “An Iron Valor wolf. Again. And a physician named Doc. Of course.”
“He is also the first wolf-vampire hybrid in over a century.”
This time, she stopped typing entirely.
There were many reactions a person might have had to such a sentence. Fear. Disbelief. Laughter. Denial. Grace went still in the way she had when evidence changed the shape of a case.
“Hybrid,” she said.
“Yes.”
“Wolf and vampire.”
“Yes.”
“That is biologically rude.”
Remy laughed once, low and delighted.
I inclined my head. “It was unexpected.”
“Was he born that way?”
“No.” I let the answer settle before continuing. “But that is Lucia’s story to tell. I’m sure she will be eager to share it with you.”
“Eager.”
“Lucia is many things, as you will soon learn. She is a formidable ally to have—loyal to a fault. Her love is a blade that she wields freely against all who would harm those she holds dear. She is an enemy I would not wish on anyone.”
Grace didn’t flinch.
“Sounds like someone I need on my side.”
Taras shook his head. “You have no idea.”
“My father’s mate is Devon.”
Grace started typing again, then seemed to decide against it. She stopped.
“She is a fallen angel,” I said.
Grace’s brows lifted. “An actual angel.”
“Yes.”
“Fallen.”
“Unjustly cast out of heaven.”
The words were plain. They were also insufficient. Devon’s story was not mine to give in full, and certainly not as an item in a household briefing. But Grace needed to know that the estate in Philadelphia had become a crossing point for powers even old vampires approached with caution.