Chapter 26 #2
“She is not for me.” I knew how to win this war.
I would have power this time, a true seat at the table and a crown on my head.
My bond would only be secured by the next queen once she was finished with the trials.
She who would rise above the rest with bloodied hands, the sole survivor.
I would serve that vampiress not as her right hand, but as a devotee in her bed.
“A pity, for one so blessed to remain alone for so long,” she mocked.
“Better alone than for her to put a dagger in my back,” I remarked.
Despite how little I trusted Ilyana, she reminded me of the better aspects of Queen Nemea too.
Her sharp wit and her willingness to challenge me.
She wasn’t afraid of me like many others were now that I was Lord Regent.
I couldn’t help but look at her and imagine what the future could’ve held had I not been selected to find the next queen and she hadn’t entered the trials.
It was too bad she would die one way or another.
I regretted that the Flask spared her after her stunt in the first trial, but in the endless, twisting game of vampire politics, perhaps I showed my hand too soon.
She unnerved me. I saw death in her eyes—my death.
I’d also seen desire bright enough to burn.
But she was merely one of eleven candidates for the throne, and I doubted she had what it took to pass the final trial.
Still, she harbored secrets. I’d sensed them since she arrived, when the Flask derided my demand for her execution.
“Not yet,” the Flask had purred. “This one amuses me.”
So I conceded. I permitted her to draw breath. I watched her amass power, allies, and two devotees who offered their lives. She held up a mirror to my ambition, which I loathed to see exposed.
The distinction lay in my choice. The House demanded priority. The trials required a queen to rise from the bloodbath. If Ilyana destabilized my architecture, if she threatened the sacrifices I’d carved into the foundation of this city, I would extinguish her myself. No matter the cost.
That constituted the burden of the Lord Regent: making the choices that nauseated others. I excelled at being hated. I welcomed it.
An out-of-breath servant rushed into the room. “Lord…Lord Regent!” he gasped out.
The staff knew not to interrupt my audiences with the Flask of Dominion unless it was urgent. I inspected him, brow furrowed, with a sinking suspicion in my chest. “Don’t tell me someone else died.”
He paled significantly before blurting out his news.
The Flask’s sweet and aching laugh filtered through my mind. “And then there were ten.”
A squad of Sanguine soldiers relocated this next body to a secure location a short carriage ride from the mansion. Most of them now surrounded the perimeter of the building, armed and ready should any more trouble arise. My head ached from how hard I’d been clenching my jaw.
“The body was just found at our border with the House of Whispers, Lord Regent.” The squad captain concluded his summary of events as I circled the corpse pieced together on a table, taking in every brutal detail.
She’d once been Stefania Vikander, and now she was the second dead contender for the throne in one night.
I tsked under my breath as I took in the state of her detached head. Just yesterday, she had bragged that she would take the House of Whispers’s new queen for the Trial of the Nemesis. Clearly, she’d given it an attempt, as this was no less than a warning.
The vicious rumors that circulated about our rivals suited the newly crowned Queen Sabine.
She’d had Stefania returned without her tongue.
Once the first torture our enemies inflicted on any Sanguine vampire they captured, it’d gone out of style.
Until now, apparently. Stefania would whisper no longer.
The soldier shifted on his feet and cleared his throat. “Did you care for her, Lord Regent?” He only asked this with an air of awkwardness, as if he thought he was intruding on a private moment.
I turned my attention toward him with a raised brow. “Return her remains to her family,” I instructed him. He saluted crisply, privately relieved at the clipped response.
As we walked out of the building, my attention caught on a zing of nerves. My gaze fell on a liveried servant, the insignia of Lord Valerius on his breast. He held his horse’s reins and bowed beside the animal, whose flanks heaved from what had to be a hard ride here.
“Lord Regent,” the servant yelped, extending out an envelope for me to take.
I sensed his urgency and broke the wax seal, scanning the letter’s contents. My brows rose even as my guts churned.
I groaned inwardly. Not a third death. Not now.
Lord Valerius’s personal home bordered Lady Lorelei’s. He’d written to me first after investigating a commotion next door. My sight swam as I unwittingly took in the servant’s panic as my own.
I closed my eyes for a moment, grounding myself in my own headspace, where no one else’s panic could drown me. I was still in control. Even though these deaths would result in another council meeting where they’d spend hours debating solutions I’d already implemented.
Useless bastards, all of them. But I’d smile and nod and let them feel important while I did the actual work.
Turning back to the servant, I addressed him evenly. “Thanks be to Lord Valerius for giving me these tidings first. Send for the rest of the council. We must have an emergency meeting.”
“Right away, Lord Regent.”
While he spread the word, I had my coachman return us to the House of the Sanguine.
I exited the carriage after we passed a long line of vampires halted at the gates.
While the guards let my coachman through, a few people raised their voices, leaning out of carriages of their own or past wagons filled with goods.
“What’s the holdup now?”
“Let us through!”
I pushed out the frustration and anger lingering in the air and spoke with the guards, instructing them to let in any council members. They’d be arriving in a hurry once they received the news about Lady Lorelei and the summons for an emergency meeting.
“Excuse me,” a woman called. She approached on foot, her skirts hiked up in her fists. She wore the echo of a face I was growing to know quite well, though age had further refined her features with vampiric flawlessness.
A pair of guards moved to intercept her as she went straight toward me. I waved them off. I could handle this quickly. “Good evening, Lady…?”
“Tahlia,” she answered primly. “Tahlia Krudelbach. I must see my sister right away.”
“No.” I glanced skyward, reading the deep colors of darkness and the position of the moon in the sky.
“The gates stay shut, Lady Tahlia. Your sister is currently property of the Trials of Succession, not a sibling. Find a bed in the city or sleep in your carriage. I have a murder to solve, and your indignation isn’t on my itinerary. ”
Her face pinkened, brows drawing with wrath. “Well now, that is unacceptable.”
I bit the inside of my cheek to keep from chuckling. She and her sister were alike in their reactions to the word no. “And yet, your acceptance isn’t required.”
“But—I have to know that Ilyana is all right,” she protested.
“She’s fine.” Unless we had a fourth murder tonight while I had my back turned. Could I be so unlucky and yet so fortunate?
I inclined my head to her and turned to enter the mansion’s grounds through the gatehouse. Tahlia sputtered behind me, but I ignored her as I returned to cleaning up the mess everyone else had left for me.
My headache only deepened to a painful, insistent throbbing.
The emergency meeting lasted several long hours as the nobility and useful personages from Queen Nemea’s regime debated who could be behind the murder.
Lady Lorelei’s. The death of two contestants were completely overshadowed by the reported team of vampires who’d slain the councilwoman and her devotees in her own home.
Zane swaggered in late. I stopped midsentence and let the silence stretch until every eye turned to him.
“Hello, Zane.” I smiled. “Congratulations on your mating. You’re dismissed from your council duties.”
“Surely not?” He put a hand to his chest, feigning innocence.
“Go back to waiting with your Beloved, former king-in-waiting,” I said with great relish. “Your presence here was ornamental at best.”
The council tittered as Zane left, a few of the vampires amused by my feud with that pretender. Then talk turned back to the murderers, and the weight of everyone else’s fear for their own hides crushed my enjoyment.
Weariness weighed on my bones as we finally called an end to the meeting. Dawn was approaching, and I still hadn’t visited the great hall, where I’d ordered the candidates and their devotees confined.
I swept in to speak to the gathering of vampires. Their impatience and worry chafed against my skin, adding to the pain in my head as I gritted my teeth again. The Flask of Dominion filtered back into my head, her magic passing straight through the closed double doors to the throne room.
Six of the remaining ten candidates were here, along with their mates. I presumed the other four had been locked out of the mansion, either out attempting to complete the Trial of the Nemesis or planning what they’d do.
My gaze alighted on Ilyana, drawn to the vibrancy of her emotions as always. She lifted her chin as she noticed my attention, her feelings spiking with a delicious and confused medley I savored. I so enjoyed that spark of defiance in her expression.
She hated me. But she was attracted to me.
And goddess damn me, it was mutual. She was a flame, beautiful and deadly, and if I didn’t keep my wits about me, I would circle her until she burned me.
There was something beguiling about her, an elusive essence of power and control.
And I had only ever yearned to sip from the veins of the powerful.