Chapter 36 Jules #2
Lucian’s hand slides to my lower back—subtle and possessive—before I can open my mouth to complain.
“She is Jules Carter,” he says smoothly. “And she is under my protection.”
The skull’s grin never changes, but I feel his attention sharpen—like cold fingers brushing my skin. Don Malthus steps closer and extends one skeletal hand. Oh God—do I have to touch him? Do I have to let that bone-white, long-fingered hand enclose my own?
Lucian nods once to me and I have no choice. By coming to this banquet with him, I have agreed to at least act the part he assigned me—that of his queen. And a queen can’t be rude to guests.
I place my hand in the Necro Don’s grip and try not to wince as those long fingers curl around mine.
His touch is cold. Not just cool—actually cold like a headstone in a winter graveyard. Cold like the moment you step into a dark basement and realize you’re not alone.
He lifts my hand and presses the bone teeth of his skull-mask to my knuckles. They’re hard and unyielding. The kiss that feels more like a question than a greeting. He wants to know more about me…I can feel his curiosity like icy fingers skating down my spine.
A shiver runs through me so intense that my shoulders tense but I somehow manage to keep my face calm.
The Don’s voice drops into an intimate tone.
“How very warm you are, my dear,” he murmurs. “And how lucky Don Lucian is to have found his very own Abundant Queen.”
My throat tightens and I have to force words out past the stricture.
“Thank…thank you,” I get out at last.
Lucian makes a small, displeased sound in his throat. Clearly he doesn’t like other men touching me. For once, I agree with him—I wish Don Malthus would let me go.
As if sensing that he has gone a shade too far, the Necro Don releases my hand and turns toward the table.
“Shall we? I was promised a feast, as I recall.”
“And you shall have one,” Lucian says. “Come—let us be seated.”
Only then do we sit. Lucian pulls out my chair like a gentleman and settles me before he goes to take his own place at the head of the table.
I sit at his right and Don Malthus sits at his left, across from me.
Luckily the table is big enough that he’s not within reach.
I’m glad—I don’t want him to find any other reason to touch me with those long, icy fingers.
The seating arrangement feels deliberate, though.
Lucian is clearly in charge and he makes that known, but he also wants to show me off.
He’s proud of having his own “Curvy Queen.” It almost makes me laugh to think that.
I’m definitely not the kind of woman a human man would want to show off to his friends and rivals.
Because I have the feeling that Don Malthus is both—he and Lucian aren’t exactly on the same side, they just get along.
I guess you could say they’re “frenemies.”
Servants appear silently, as if summoned by an inaudible voice. They move with eerie precision, setting down covered dishes and pouring drinks.
My stomach knots as the first course arrives. What will we be eating tonight in this cavernous dining hall? What is the version of vampire haute cuisine?
A silver dome is lifted at Lucian’s place and under it is something like… art.
A small plate holding thin slices of dark, ruby-red meat—carpaccio, maybe—arranged in a rosette shape.
The meat glistens under the candlelight, drizzled with something thicker and darker that looks like a reduction but smells faintly metallic.
Tiny black pearls—caviar maybe?—are scattered like jewels, and there are delicate curls of what might be crystallized blood-orange peel as garnish.
Lucian inhales deeply and I see his mouth twitch into a half-smile of approval. Maybe this is his favorite dish? I wonder if I’ll get the same.
But when my food arrives, the dish is completely different.
My first course is a bowl of soup—golden and fragrant—with steam curling upward to tickle my nose.
I inhale deeply, letting the aroma fill my senses.
It’s butternut squash, I think—I love butternut squash.
There’s a swirl of cream in the center and it’s sprinkled with toasted pumpkin seeds and a few leafy, emerald micro-greens that look too pretty to eat.
But I can feel my stomach rumbling—I’ll definitely be eating them.
Then the servant lifts the dome at Don Malthus’s place…and I nearly choke.
There’s nothing there. Or rather—there is something, but it’s wrong—all wrong.
I see a plate of food that looks semi-transparent—like it’s made of smoke and moonlight.
There’s the shape of a tamale, maybe, wrapped in a ghostly husk and thin slices of something that resembles an orange, but pale and faint, like an afterimage.
Also, there’s a cup of pale liquid that doesn’t reflect the light properly.
Don Malthus lifts his utensils and even though I know it’s rude to stare, I can’t help watching from the corner of my eye. How is he going to eat the ghost food? Is it even edible?
I watch as he cuts into the tamale—but the fork passes right through the food. What? How can he eat it if he can’t even touch it?
But the Necro Don doesn’t seem bothered. He makes a slow, deliberate motion as if cutting, as then as if lifting a bite, even though the fork tines go through the substance like mist.
Then he brings the empty fork to the skull-mask and for a moment, the air ripples.
And a chunk of the ghostly tamale the exact size of the one he was “cutting” vanishes from the plate, as if it’s being consumed by something I can’t see.
I sit very still, fighting the urge to stare as he lifts a ghostly orange section to the teeth of his mask and it disappears as well. Apparently, he is consuming the food—though it’s not clear if he’s chewing and swallowing or just simply inhaling the semi-transparent food.
I do my very best to concentrate on my own plate, spooning the delicious soup to my mouth with a silver spoon shaped like an elegant clam shell.
Nope, nothing creepy here, I tell myself. Everything is totally fine. Just having dinner with a death lord who eats the concept of food.
Lucian begins speaking as if everything is normal—and maybe it is—for the Shadow Realm.
“We should discuss Kael,” he says to his guest, calmly, slicing into his blood-carpaccio with a silver knife. “His reach is growing. It would be most distressing for all of us if he overstepped his bounds.”
Don Malthus’s skull tilts, candlelight skating down the long, bone-white surface.
“The Demon Don always grows greedy. It is not in the nature of lust to be satisfied.”
“And Corvin Nox, the Don of the Savage Den,” Lucian continues. “He’s been raiding border passages…testing gates. Sending his Shifters where they don’t belong.”
Don Malthus’s skeletal fingers tap once on the table, making a single, sharp sound.
“Violence,” he murmurs. “It is his language—the only language he knows, I fear.”
Lucian’s gaze hardens.
“Then we speak it back to him—strategically, of course.”
“Of course,” Don Malthus says, inclining his skull mask in agreement.
I glance between them, my heart thudding in my chest. I see what I’ve been drawn into here—Vampire and Necromancer Mafia alliances.
Not to mention Demon Dons and Shifter raids and who the hell knows what else?
The whole Shadow Realm is like a chessboard with the players constantly attacking and opposing each other.
And I’m… sitting here in a fancy dress I didn’t buy, eating squash soup like I’m really some kind of Queen, I think randomly. How in the hell did this happen to me? Oh, right—Lucian.
Don Malthus turns his skull-mask toward me, freezing my thoughts in my head.
“Tell me, human,” he says politely. “In your realm… do your kings make alliances in similar fashion as we of the Shadow Realm?”
I set my spoon down carefully.
“Well, most countries don’t really have kings anymore,” I say. “But… yes. People with power band together against people they don’t like.”
“Or sometimes the people you don’t like come to…other ends,” the Necro Don remarks darkly. “I assume you were pleased with the fate of your over-zealous coworker?”
“I…um…” My throat is suddenly so dry it’s hard to speak.
Lucian lets out a low sound that might be a chuckle.
“The human who dared to touch my lovely queen got what was coming to him. And yes, we were most pleased,” he says, speaking for me.
I hope I won’t have to say anything because if I open my mouth, I’m not sure what might come out. But just then, the second course arrives, saving me. And once again, all three of us have something different.
For Lucian—a shallow bowl holding something like blood consommé—clear and dark, and shimmering like garnet.
Floating in it are tiny dumplings, black as night, and thin slices of some pale root vegetable—maybe something like turnip or radish.
The scent is complex—rich, savory, metallic and spiced—like expensive steak and cinnamon had a dangerous baby.
In front of me, a servant places a plate of roasted chicken with crisp skin, laid over wild rice with herbs. There’s a side of glazed carrots and roasted figs to accompany it. The figs smell sweet and smoky, and they’ve taken on a jammy consistency I really like.
For Don Malthus the servants bring another semi-transparent dish—this one looks like a Day of the Dead offering.
I see pale sugar skulls made of mist with ghostly marigold petals scattered over them.
There’s also a translucent cup of something that resembles pale hot cocoa—the steam rises from it in slow, lazy spirals that give just the faintest whiff of chocolate.