Chapter Sixteen #2
I spread my hands. “Because no one alive knows anything about this. So I went to someone dead. The only person I could think of who might have encountered a captain—”
“And unfortunately, you found him!” Cyrus got up, too agitated to stay still, and I watched him pace with a frown. He wasn’t a pacer. This was bad. “And they’re all connected mentally,” he added. “What one vampire knows, they all do! At least within a family.”
“I don’t think it works quite like that,” I said, remembering what Carales had said. Which matched what we’d been taught in the Corps. “More like, they can talk to each other in their heads—”
“And what if they’ve talked about this?”
“Then they have. But I don’t think so. He seemed…” I thought about it, about the multicolored toenails, the fond way he’d treated that little girl, how comfortable she’d been with him. Part of being a war mage was being able to size people up quickly, and Carales…
“Seemed what?” Cyrus demanded.
“Strangely trustworthy.”
“Trustworthy? He’s a vampire!”
“Now who is angry?” I asked because his emotions were all over the place. Like mine had been today. Apparently, my subconscious was smarter than I was and had figured a lot of this out earlier, but hadn’t bothered to tell me.
“I’m not angry, I’m frightened, and you should be, too!
Sebastian—” Cyrus broke off, and his face contorted slightly, as if he smelled something bad.
But he came out with it. “He’s a good man, and I love him, but that doesn’t mean I’m blind.
He’s always been ambitious; it’s one of his defining traits.
And that isn’t always a bad thing. He risked a lot to get where he is.
A less determined man couldn’t have done it, wouldn’t have even wanted to, as Arnou has enough wealth and prestige for almost anyone. ”
“Almost,” I repeated wryly, and Cyrus nodded, a jerky up and down.
“Yes. But Sebastian thought he should lead. Not just Arnou but all Weres. And so far, he’s been proven right.
If anyone else were in the top seat, we’d be sidelined in the war, of no help to anyone, and none of the problems we’re having internally would be addressed.
Sebastian is having to drag the Were world, kicking and screaming, into the modern age, and somehow he’s doing it.
But it hasn’t been easy, any more than getting the respect of the rest of the supernatural world, who are used to overlooking or ignoring us—when they’re not busy spraying air freshener to mask our scent! ”
So, he’d noticed that, too.
“But ambition has a downside,” he added. “And if it came to it—”
“You’re not sure what he’d choose.”
“Oh, I’m pretty damned sure! Not that he’d hurt you—he would never deliberately hurt you.
But he might talk himself into helping the war a little here, a little there, using his new force as leverage to get things he wants, to oil the tracks.
Until it snowballs. Until we’re committed far more than we should be, and you—”
He broke off abruptly. “No! To hell with dinner! You’re staying here!”
“What?” I asked because I’d all but forgotten about that.
“I don’t want you anywhere near Sebastian!
” Cyrus said viciously. “He’s too intuitive—sometimes I swear it’s like the man can actually read minds!
But right now, we have a lid on this; all he knows for certain is that you can force a Change onto Weres within your vocal range, which he saw you do at Wolf’s Head.
And that you can send out a call for help that those within earshot can choose to answer or not.
“That’s not that much. More than the rest of us can do, but not a game-changer. And we need to keep it that way!”
“And you think he’s not going to check?” I said skeptically. “After what he said today?”
“Check how? There’s nothing in the records—”
“Cyrus. All I had to do was take an elevator upstairs.”
“But you don’t have a war to run and another to help with. He does. His attention is being pulled in different directions all the time, and he’s not a trained investigator—”
“But he has investigators,” I pointed out. “Good ones.”
“If he commands them to look into this.”
“Which he will—”
“Which he might. But they’re already busy trying to track down Bleddyn. And figure out which clans are loyal and which are wavering. And a thousand other things!
“If we drop this, and he doesn’t have any reminders, any reason to dig further, he may go with the old stories. Which talk about úlfhéenar in reverential terms, but don’t explain a damned thing. We just need to keep you away from him—”
“How? I’m basically his sister-in-law, and he’s staying right down the hall. And we can’t go home with Rand stalking us and the war heating up—”
“We’ll manage,” Cyrus said stubbornly. “For one thing, you stay here tonight. I’ll make your excuses—”
“Stay here and do what?” I asked, a little angrily, because why were we talking about the goddamned dinner?
“Put your feet up, read a book, I don’t care. Just—”
“That only postpones the inevitable—”
“Then let’s postpone it!” Cyrus raged, something so unfamiliar that I could only stare.
His hair, which a minute ago had been mostly slicked back with just the occasional errant curl, suddenly looked like brown flames around his head.
His eyes weren’t wolf eyes, not yet, but they were a lot lighter and brighter than they should have been, more tawny gold than brown.
And his tux, which had fit him like a glove a minute ago, was suddenly straining at the seams.
He looked like an adolescent Were whose mother had just been insulted, I thought blankly, when he was never this uncontrolled.
In fact, he was hardly ever uncontrolled at all.
It was the hallmark of a clan leader: to be calm when no one else was, to be able to think when everyone around you was panicking, to be the rock in the middle of a violent stream.
Only right now, he looked more like the raging current.
To his credit, he realized it after a moment and wiped a hand over his face. And when he spoke again, it was calmer. “You’re right. Of course, you’re right. You’ll have to see Sebastian eventually. But it doesn’t have to be tonight. It can wait until you’ve had a little more time to recover—”
“I have recovered.”
“—and in more ways than just the physical.” He knelt beside the sofa, and suddenly, he was my Cyrus again, albeit with messier hair. But his eyes were dark brown once more, and his tux fit again, although not as nicely as before.
Wool wasn’t designed to contain a furious Were.
“It’s been a hell of a day, Lia,” he said softly. “Two of them, in fact. After everything, do you really want to sit through another interminable dinner while clan leaders make snide comments that you have to pretend not to hear, or deliberately misinterpret? Do you think you can tonight?”
“Not without going for their jugular,” I admitted. “But I don’t see why either of us should go. We have more important things to do—”
“None more important than looking normal. Sebastian doesn’t have as many investigators as he needs, and would be loath to pull one to check on family. He’ll expect us to come to him if we discover anything,” he added, looking guilty but resolute. “But if we start acting strange—”
“More so than today, you mean?” I said dryly.
“—he may decide that we’re hiding something—”
“There are three hundred clues in the basement who are going to tip him off,” I said, because this was never going to work! “His people can ask them about what happened when they heard my call, how they felt, and then branch out to people like Carales after.”
It’s what I’d do.
“They won’t be in the basement long,” Cyrus said stubbornly. “I’ll get things moving with Sienna tomorrow. We’ll put them at Wolf’s Head while we figure everything out—”
“Cyrus—”
“—and in the meantime, we act as normally as possible. Your skipping tonight will be expected after the day you’ve had.
You won’t look weak,” he added, as if that was still my main concern!
“You’ll look like what you are, a woman with responsibilities who can’t spend all her time socializing, much though she’d like to. ”
“Yeah. I’m really gonna miss it,” I said, frowning, because he was dead set on this.
That was fine with me; I hadn’t wanted to go anyway.
But he shouldn’t, either. His usual iron control was shot to hell, and if anyone was going to make Sebastian suspicious, it would be his own brother, whom he knew better than anybody.
But good luck convincing Cyrus of that. He typically believed that he was strong enough, capable enough, and smart enough to handle whatever life threw at him. And, usually, he was right.
It was that boundless confidence that had allowed him to propose the crazy idea to Sebastian about a fake challenge that led to his brother taking the throne.
It was the reason he had envisioned a solution to the vargulf bleeding sore that no one else had even considered.
It was why he’d made a clan out of outcast boys before ever getting permission.
It was one of the things I loved about him, but it had a downside.
Like after he’d been cast out of Arnou, an inevitability following a failed challenge.
He’d known what was coming, but had initially thought of it as a lark, an adventure to tell his grandchildren about someday, after the election had been won, Sebastian was on the throne, and he’d been restored.
But that couldn’t happen immediately, as it would have invalidated the results if the council realized they’d been duped.
So Cyrus had been branded a traitor to his brother and his clan, and thrown out, with no access to clan money, prestige, or anything.
The prince had become the pauper overnight, and the scion of one of the most illustrious clans on Earth had become a vargulf that the lowliest beggar would spit on.
He hadn’t handled it well. Not the money part, which he’d solved by gambling, despite that being illegal for Weres as we could smell people’s emotions well enough to cheat like hell. But the loneliness.
Humans are pack animals, and Weres even more so. Cyrus, strong, capable, self-assured Cyrus, had almost gone crazy as a vargulf. To the point that he’d confided in me that it had nearly driven him to suicide.
Yet it hadn’t taught him anything. He would fiercely protect others, yet not see when he was exhausted and needed a break. He’d been up for two days straight and had just learned that his mate might be in danger from his own brother.
He was in no way ready to be tested tonight, any more than I was.
“I’ll give them your regrets,” Cyrus said again, standing up and leaning over to kiss me, as if something had been decided, which it had not. And then heading to the door, only to find me suddenly in the way.
He needed to stay with me, I decided, and climbed him like a tree.