Total pages in book: 109
Estimated words: 104842 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 524(@200wpm)___ 419(@250wpm)___ 349(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 104842 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 524(@200wpm)___ 419(@250wpm)___ 349(@300wpm)
That evening, walking through the great hall, milling with others at yet another party hosted by the king—this one a masked ball to welcome a delegation from Geneva—I realized I was tired down to my bones. But still, even as weary as I was, I noticed people moving near the king that seemed out of place. I went on immediate alert over the perceived threat but second-guessed myself just as quickly because I’d been told a million times over the past few months that I was being absurd.
I’d noticed strangers, but when I pointed them out to others, they were gone. Doors were left unlocked that I myself had made certain were secure. Curtains were drawn at odd times of the day, in what I saw as patterns. Two were pulled to the right, one in the middle, one to the left. I saw signals, communication to those outside the palace, looking in possibly through scopes or binoculars. I was certain there was a secret dialogue going on.
“You need more rest,” Dae-Jung, my confidant and personal chef, would tell me.
“I’m not crazy,” I always insisted.
“I didn’t say you were,” he’d reply indulgently.
I was being placated.
“The palace cannot be breached,” Zev, my hendr, my champion, assured me. “Even if the best sniper in the world was perched on a rooftop, what would they shoot at so deep into the rooms?”
He was a vampyr, like everyone around me, so really, what did they have to fear? Being at the top of the food chain, the alpha predator, made them complacent about their safety, unworried, and without any understanding of my concern.
“Listen,” I’d say to Zev. “The threat, whatever it is, it’s not imminent. They’re doing recon work. They’re trying to find openings, charting times and noting who’s there and who isn’t.”
He’d widen his eyes and nod like I was out of my mind.
“You see,” I’d point out again to Dae-Jung. “The curtains are never in the exact same way, and different rugs are aired out and hung over the sides of the balconies.”
“Yes, I see,” he’d agree cheerfully, as if fearing for my sanity.
“I’m not crazy,” I reiterated often.
“I know you miss Varic,” Brenna, one of my private guards, would tell me. “He’ll be back soon, I’m certain.”
I did miss him, yes. But that had nothing to do with what was happening.
I tried to watch which servants were there when curious things happened, but I was constantly called away, and with Varic gone, Hadrian and Tiago at his side as they hunted Varic’s half brother Alrek, who was wanted for treason, I was left to stand at the king’s side and greet all the visitors to court.
The king, more interested in adding to his stable of courtesans than in warnings from me, didn’t want to hear how the many men and women going in and out of his private rooms in the palace were not the same. I could count, but apparently no one else could.
One would think, after uncovering a plot that killed Nerilla and nearly killed me, that I would have a bit more clout. But apparently, imagining anyone attempting to kill the king was laughable. It made no sense to me, the certainty that it couldn’t happen. But this was again that complacency because it was no easy thing to kill a vampyr, especially one as powerful as the head of the house of Maedoc.
They all thought I was nuts and looked at me like it was so sad that missing Varic was beginning to affect my mind. I was only human, after all, and five months had to seem like a lifetime to me.
When I called Varic on the phone, he was distant and distracted. He wanted to come home to me, and was frustrated that he couldn’t until he found his half brother, who hadn’t so much taken part in the coup as run away in terror. Since I was the only one Varic could vent to, I became a source of both desire and annoyance. As days rolled into months, the phone conversations had become shorter, until they were perfunctory nightly check-ins. I’d stopped calling the week before and had not heard from him. If Tiago were at court, he could have filled in for me, and I would have been free to leave at any time to return to New Orleans to visit Ode and my store, or visit the queen on her island, which I was dying to see. But as I had to be there for the king, I was good and stuck, or at least had been until the king gave me leave. Five council members had arranged to come and fill in for me in all my different capacities. It was very kind of them, and I’d thanked each one lavishly in a handwritten note accompanied by gifts I knew they would like. I did my research, and each had been pleasantly surprised. The longest serving member of the king’s council, Countess Sabira Minsi, had arrived that very evening from Oslo, Norway, and I had been so glad to meet her.