Chapter 3 Francois #2
“No.” Her voice was hard, her smile thin. “You don’t understand. I’m the caretaker. They’re my responsibility. I keep them all alive. And now…now one is dead.” She shrugged. “But he had an heir.”
I watched her as my mind raced to catch up to the words she’d just said. “Say it all again, but make it make sense.”
She stood and dragged a rickety old chair from beside a table, the wooden legs scraping across the flagstone floor. “I’m just going to say it. I don’t have time to work out where the gaps in your memory are, so I’ll pretend it’s all one big gap.”
I nodded, pressing my mouth into a line so I wouldn’t interrupt her.
“Emile was an Ancient.”
I breathed in hard through my nose. A reflex to hearing those words.
She pressed her hand to mine again. “He was an Ancient, and he ran away from their planned stasis. They have to sleep or they go mad. But we prepare for it. We keep them safe. We keep them nourished.”
I almost laughed at the idea that those vampires upstairs were somehow nourished. They all looked like a stiff breeze would break them apart and scatter their remains.
“His bouts of stasis were involuntary, Francois. No one was controlling them for him. He was succumbing to madness because he was away from the others. They are stronger when they’re together. They need to be together.”
I still didn’t say anything.
“But there’s you.” She looked me in the eye.
“Me?” I laughed. “What about me?”
“You’re the heir. An Ancient, now, if you’re suitable. It’s you. Ancients are the oldest vampires. We’re special. Our bloodlines are clear and clean, and we have right to rule, but we need our full number to be strongest.”
“What?” But she wasn’t lying. I’d known her long enough to know that. “But stasis? For me too? Fuck it all to hell. I was going to go mad after all? There was a family curse and it was still going to claim me? Turned out we could all run but we couldn’t hide.”
“No stasis right now.” Her eyes almost glowed, the sudden light eager. “We have too much to accomplish to waste time sleeping. And we have to bring you to your full strength.”
I almost gave in to more laughter, let her see the madman lurking beneath my facade. “And what am I expected to accomplish from these luxurious quarters?” I spread my arms wide.
“Well, acceptance of your position, initially. Then we need to dethrone the false king.”
Ahhh…Nicolas.
Once, I would have set Nicolas on fire myself and danced on his ashes. But that desire had changed these past weeks and months. He was no longer my enemy. He was my savior.
Worse, he was the brother I’d always wanted. The brother I’d lost.
Hell, Lo?c should have been the heir. He would have been a better one than me. He’d always done everything better than me.
All I had to do, though, was buy enough time to wait for Nicolas. Because he’d come. I’d watched him ride to the rescue too many times before to doubt he’d do the same this time.
He’d come for any of his people.
Even for me.
And I’d be ready to escape when any opportunity arose. I didn’t plan to be a fucking Ancient, regardless of anything Clémence might expect of me.
Clémence patted my thigh. “I can see this is a lot to take in,” she murmured. Then she clapped her hands and stood, her demeanor changing in an instant. “Bon! Good. Good, well, there’s a formal dinner planned for this evening.”
“Oh?” I narrowed my eyes. “For what purpose?”
She laughed, her good humor from earlier returned.
“We need to ensure the local community knows their real royals. Only the Ancients should be here unchallenged. There will be plenty of local influential people in attendance. I’m told some of them could be quite…
” She paused as if searching for the right word. “Tasty.”
I shook my head again. I’d learned my lesson about shitting where I ate. Or eating where I took a shit or whatever. Anyway, I no longer mixed the two, and seeing as this whole thing was one big shitstorm, there would be no eating here today. Not by me, anyway.
“You are royalty, Francois. No longer the prince. You’re the king. Doesn’t that feel good? It should feel great.”
“And the Duponts?” I asked the question as casually as I could. If Clémence was here and willing to share information with me, I needed to collect as much information as I could.
“Meh. Nicolas Dupont is a false king, and his family has no place here. They don’t run things. But I think they’ll get my message very soon.”
“Your message?” But I already knew what it was. Ciara. She was the message.
She waved a hand like the actual message didn’t matter, and I wasn’t sure she was going to say anything else. But as she walked toward the doorway, she turned and smiled, the twist of her lips cruel. “We took the mate of Nicolas’s servant. He was getting above his station, anyway.”
I hid my wince. If Clémence had really known the Duponts, she’d have been aware that Jason was much, much more than Nicolas’s servant. He was his sireling. He was family.
Vampires didn’t often have blood family, so our families expanded to who we chose. Born vampires like Nicolas and myself were rare.
“Was that wise?” I nudged a little. If she was sufficiently enthusiastic about her cause, maybe she’d get careless and share more information with me.
“It’s time the people in this swamp know who’s really in charge. We control the supernaturals, and the humans are ours to do with as we wish.”
I lowered my head so she couldn’t see my eyes. “Merci, Clémence. Thank you.”
It was better she thought I was in full agreement with her, or at least grateful for her attention. I needed to absorb any information she presented me with. But she couldn’t know I wasn’t onboard with the Ancients’ plans.
I smirked after she left the room. It almost seemed like a I had something to live for after all.