Chapter Fifteen
You look beautiful,” Cyrus told me some hours later.
I was fixing my updo in a mirror on the wall of our suite, and he had come up behind me.
He was wearing a close-fitting black tux, which complemented his broad shoulders, dark hair, and sun-bronzed skin, and even went well with the stubble he’d already regrown, despite shaving a few hours ago. He looked edible.
I didn’t look so bad myself, having ditched the wacked-out souvenirs posing as clothing for one of the evening dresses the girls had bought me.
It was slinky, silver, and cut down to there and up to here, which could be construed as an insult to the council since it was minimal enough to make a Change easy. Like I cared.
They had so many rules, half of which contradicted the other half, that there was no way to keep them happy. And I was tired of trying, and dealing with them at all—thinking about them, talking to them, and especially socializing with them. At this point, I just wanted to tell them where to go.
Of course, they were supposed to have already gone—back to their clans, where they could torment their own people and give the rest of us a break for another year.
But they couldn’t disband with the sword of Damocles hanging over all our heads, and needed to be in regular consultation with Sebastian. So they were extending their stay.
That included more interminable meetings, which were sometimes useful, and parties, dinners, and events, which were not.
Including yet another banquet tonight, with bad food and worse conversation.
We were at war, yet they were spending their time drinking watered-down cocktails and eating what passed for steaks around this joint, which I strongly suspected had never seen a cow.
And to make matters worse, Cyrus and I were expected to show up, looking strong and unaffected by the metric ton of crap that had gone down recently, even though half of the room would have liked to see us dead.
And I wasn’t talking about Rand.
According to Laura, who’d been at the afternoon meeting and had overheard a few conversations afterward, some on the council seemed to think that Cyrus and I were the real problem.
It had been Cyrus’s idea to push for vargulf rehabilitation, Cyrus who had killed Whirlwind and thereby provoked Bleddyn, and me who had just added a ridiculous number of outcasts to our abomination of a clan.
If we were out of the way, maybe the problems would disappear, too.
Of course, that ignored the fact that the vargulf situation had been approaching critical mass for a while, and Cyrus was just the first to come up with a workable solution.
Or that Whirlwind had challenged Sebastian’s right to lead, and Cyrus had merely stood for his injured brother in the fight.
Or that the people I had absorbed into our clan would be in training for use in the war against us if I hadn’t.
In other words, the council was being stupid, which was why I was in no mood to see them tonight, as I might tell them that. Not my wolf, me. I’d had enough.
But when you’re as good as married to the brother of the current bardric, you don’t get to decide that kind of thing.
And although I could have pleaded injury to get out of it, I was damned if I’d let them think me hurt, think me weak, think me unable to defend my own!
They made a move against my clan, so much as a single side-eye, and I swore to God—
“Lia?” Cyrus was looking a little concerned when our eyes met in the glass.
Sophie had given me exaggerated silver eye makeup tonight, as she was still in her teen girl experimental phase, and had had to be restrained from adding a bunch of face gems. But I still currently rivaled Liz Taylor in Cleopatra, although I didn’t think that was what was wigging out my partner.
“I’m fine,” I told him shortly.
“You sure? You don’t have to go tonight. Nobody will think the worse of you.”
“They’ll think me weak, and I’m not weak!”
“After the last few days, I don’t think anybody is going to think that,” he said dryly. “And most people won’t even expect you to be there, not after just having been in battle.”
“I’m fine,” I repeated. “The healer cleared me.”
“I know that.”
“But?” I said, because his tone made it clear there was one.
Sober brown eyes met mine in the mirror. “It doesn’t bother you that you’re healing so quickly, even for one of us? Perhaps it’s part of this inherited ability, a úlfhe?dinn trait, but it never showed up before—”
“I was only dosed by that bastard Jenkins a month ago,” I reminded him. “The trait was dormant before that, assuming that’s even what this is. I’m a Were; we heal fast—”
“Not this fast,” Cyrus said flatly. “And while I’m grateful for it—”
“You’re worried,” I finished for him, trying to get a stray curl to behave. “You’re a worrier.”
“And you’re spoiling for a fight. You’re even dressed for it—”
“The girls bought me this—”
“—and you’ve been gearing up for it all afternoon. I can feel it.” His hand hovered over the skin of my shoulder, not quite touching, but close enough that our energies met and merged. “I just don’t know why.”
“You don’t know why?” I began putting on a pair of dangly silver earrings—another no-no—that Sophie had bought along with the dress because the girl knew how to accessorize. “You heard what Laura said.”
“Yes.”
“Yes? Is that all you have to say? The council wants us dead.”
She’d come by after the meeting and spilled the beans, which hadn’t seemed to hit Cyrus as much as me. Sure, the council hadn’t actually exploded over the issue in the basement—surprisingly—but things had gotten heated. And that was just what they had said out loud.
Who knew what they were thinking?
Or plotting.
“Some of them,” Cyrus agreed. “But most are smarter than that. They know the war isn’t going to go away just because we do.”
“You’re giving them a lot of credit!”
“More than you are, it seems.”
At that, I turned around to look at him, even though I only had one earring in. “I don’t trust any of them!”
“They’re our allies—”
“With allies like those, we don’t need enemies!”
“But we have them,” he said, hands on my shoulders, and just that small touch instantly made me feel better.
“We have a lot of them. And yes, some of our supposed friends probably fit into that category, too, but we don’t know who.
So we can’t afford to alienate any of them until we do, or else this is going to get ugly. ”
“It isn’t already?”
“Not like it could be. We need to smile, socialize, shmooze—”
“I’m not in the shmoozing mood!”
“I know.” It was serious, and while the hands he slid up my arms were gentle, his face was firm. “Perhaps you should skip tonight.”
“Seriously? You’re trying to ground me?” Cyrus rolled his eyes and somehow made it sexy. I wouldn’t mind staying in tonight if he were staying with me, but otherwise—
“I’m trying to protect you,” he told me.
“From what? It’s dinner—”
“Yes, with a group of people who are likely to provoke you—some deliberately. And from whatever the hell is going on with you.” I tried to interrupt, but he talked over me.
“As far as the healer can tell, you’re healthy as a horse—or as a Were who hasn’t had to fight for her life for two days running.
But that doesn’t change the fact that something is happening, and we don’t know what.
And don’t tell me you’re fine again,” he added. “You don’t know that.”
“I do—”
“Really?” The dark eyes searched mine. “Is that why you’re stalking around the suite, muttering to yourself, and bristling with anger?
Yes, some stupid people on the council, who wish this would all go away, had some unwise outbursts.
But none of them are the type to do anything about it.
They shoot off their mouths all the time—”
“Bad timing!” I snarled, and his frown tipped into a scowl.
“Yes, very. But is that really what this is—all this is? I can feel your emotions. They’re so near the surface, they’re almost leaping out at me. You’re worried, scared, and defiant, all of which I understand. But there’s more—”
“Like what?” I said, turning away to hook up the other damned earring, but that still left our eyes meeting in the mirror, and Cyrus’s were as clever as his brother’s.
He had the reputation of being a laid-back pretty boy, a gambler, the hard partier of the Arnou royal house, too busy with his amusements to care about much else.
That image had been cultivated by the two brothers for years, so that Cyrus could hear things that would have never been said in front of him otherwise.
And so that anyone moving against Sebastian might try to recruit his wastrel brother first.
I suspected that it was one reason people weren’t giving our new little venture too much credence.
Most probably saw it as a lark, Cyrus taking up a cause for a moment because it amused him, and likely dropping it just as easily later on.
That might explain why the council hadn’t gone completely ballistic over the situation in the basement: some thought there was a good chance this would all go away on its own.
But it wouldn’t, because they didn’t know the real man at all. Cyrus hadn’t even flinched today in the meeting with Sebastian, no, not even at his crazy spouse bringing three hundred more vargulfs into the picture. And out of freaking nowhere.
He’d had no more warning about any of this than I had, but he hadn’t hesitated to back me up.
Cyrus was the definition of ride or die, which was lucky, as I’d probably drive anybody else crazy in no time. But here he was, solid, on my side, and as loyal as the day was long—and yet concerned. It hurt me to see it in his eyes, to feel it through the bond that Were couples shared.