Keshav made a move to drag her back, but Christian stopped him with a curt, “Wait.”
She didn’t take her gaze from his. He’d never, ever seen eyes so black.
“No,” he said. “My brother, Leander. The Alpha.”
Something flickered in her black eyes at that, there and then quickly gone. It didn’t seem like fear…perhaps it was anger? Contempt?
“Too bad,” she said. “You have a kind face. I’m guessing your brother the Alpha will really make a meal of it.” Her voice grew bitter. “They’re always the worst.”
He wondered at her composure. In her shoes, he wasn’t sure he’d be quite so self-contained. “You’re not scared,” he said, and she blinked at him, surprised.
Her composure slipped. She swallowed, a flush crept over her cheeks, and her eyes grew fierce with unshed tears. “Yes, I am,” she whispered. “But only of being weak. I can’t stand the thought of…breaking.”
It moved him, this irrational admission of hers. This honesty. He fought the sudden urge to comfort her with some kind of platitude, but he knew it was useless.
She would break. They all did, sooner or later.
And—he sternly reminded himself, trying to push his doubts aside—she was a savage. They’d all seen the evidence of what she and her brother had done. They’d all seen the carnage, along with the rest of the world.
He motioned with his chin for Keshav to take her inside the manor, and she was jerked away and led up the marble steps toward the iron-studded doors twice the size of a man. They swung open, and Christian turned and followed them inside.
The air this high in the atmosphere was thin and cold, filled with ice crystals that bit at him and the occasional crosswind that blew him off course and threatened to tear him apart completely, but raw, ragged fear kept D going.
Fear that he’d be too late.
He’d found a fast-flowing, narrow air current that swept him over the English Channel in good time, but then it turned sharply east, when he needed to go west. He dropped out of it, lower, surging over steaming fields and rolling moors and small townships and villages, all of it a painted blur of green and purple and brown far, far below. He didn’t know his exact velocity, but he knew he’d never be as fast as a plane, and he hoped against hope that when he found her she wouldn’t be—
No. He wouldn’t allow himself to consider the possibility. He was going to find her alive, that was all there was to it.
Or God help them. He’d slaughter them all.
The manor was vast and luxurious, a labyrinth of drawing rooms and music rooms and sitting rooms, everything
lavished in silks and velvets and gilt. Eliana was led down corridor after corridor, past a dual staircase that wound up to the second floor, her bare feet touching cool, polished wood between the soft pile of the Turkish rugs placed everywhere, until finally she arrived at the entrance to a grand, gilded room. It was cavernous, outfitted with even more attention to finery than the rest of the place.
And something else quite unique from the other rooms she’d passed: thrones.
A matched set of them, two glossy, elaborately carved mahogany thrones with cushioned seats, set on a dais at the far side of the room.
Her lips twisted ruefully. Back in the catacombs beneath Rome, her father had sat on one almost identical.
The thrones were empty, but the long tables that flanked them were not. A group of men sat facing her in substantial wooden chairs of their own, arms crossed over cashmere sweaters or silk jackets, or hands spread on the fine linen cloth of the table or clenched into fists at their sides, each one with a face that didn’t bode well for the state of her health. Their expressions were uniformly hard, hostile, and grim.
One at the end—a younger one, boyish and bookish with a lock of dark hair flopped over one eye, glasses he kept pushing up the bridge of his nose—looked a little green around the gills.
Must be his first execution.
They didn’t stand as she was brought forward, only watched her approach with eerie, vivid yellow-green eyes, lucent and piercing in the wan sunlight that slanted through the far windows of the chamber. They were the same eyes as
the one she’d met outside, the brother of the Alpha, and they chilled her in exactly the same way.
Her people’s eyes were the color of a tropical midnight, or the richest, loamy earth—dark but warm and full of life.
These
people’s eyes were clear and glacial, and they sliced through her like gusts of killing cold wind.
They were wealthy and elegant and refined, but beneath all of that, they were killers, to a one.
She lifted her chin.
I am Eliana, daughter of the House of Cardinalis. The women of my lineage are lionhearted; I won’t be intimidated. I won’t let them see me beg
.
In a bone-jarring move that snapped her teeth together and elicited an instinctive snarl from her lips, Keshav shoved her to her knees in front of the men.
“Silence!” one of the men at the table commanded. Older, gray-haired, and pompous in formal, outdated clothing that included a brocade vest and cravat, he stood, and Eliana let her snarl subside to a low, warning grumble in her chest.
The one who’d stood glanced at Keshav behind her and nodded. Without warning, pain speared through her and her breath was knocked from her lungs as he kicked her, hard, in the kidney.
She fell forward, gasping, tears of anger and humiliation burning her eyes. She rested her forehead on the cool wood floor for a moment to regain her balance. The air was frigid on the backs of her bare legs.
I won’t beg. I will
not.
The pompous one spoke, and his British accent somehow managed to make him seem even more arrogant than his posture and expression attested.
“I am Viscount Weymouth, Keeper of the Bloodlines. I will be in charge of these proceedings, and if at any time your answers do not satisfy me, I will order Mr. Keshav to administer another motivational little prompt, and another, until they do.”
There was a pause. “Do you understand?”
Eliana said to the glossy parquet floor, “No. I thought I was supposed to be silent. How can I answer your questions if I’m supposed to be—”
There came another kick, this one more vicious, to the ribs.
She moaned with the pain and would have curled into a little ball around it, but she was roughly dragged back to her knees by a hand fisted in her hair. She couldn’t right herself, though, because pain had absconded with her motor skills—and her ability to breathe. She gulped hoarse, hacking breaths, waves of agony radiating through her like fire. The only thing that held her upright was the fist in her hair.
She tried to go to the place of peace and relaxation in her mind where she went when she did her daily katas, but it was no use. Adrenaline and fear lashed her with the crack of a bullwhip, and it was no use.
“Attempts at humor,” intoned Viscount Weymouth, “will not be tolerated.”
Eliana heard Mel’s snarky reply in her head:
Evidently
.
“What the bloody hell is
this
?”
Eliana looked toward the shocked voice. From the door beside the end of the table, the Alpha’s brother had appeared, and he now stood staring at the viscount in livid, unblinking outrage.
Unapologetic, the viscount looked at him down the end of a long, aquiline nose. “It was agreed that I would oversee—”
“You weren’t granted permission to begin without us—and you weren’t granted permission to
touch
her!”
They started going back and forth, the brother outraged and Weymouth sputtering indignantly, the other men at the table throwing one another restless looks, deciding, it seemed, whose side to take.
Gods, how she loathed politics. She’d seen it since she was a little girl, the posturing, the pandering, the currying of favor done at court. There was always an intrigue and a scandal, a secret to be kept, a deal to be made. There was always a bully, always someone who felt loftier than their station, and always—like Weymouth—a climber in the bunch.
Finally, apparently sick of the discussion, the brother turned his attention to Keshav and spat, “Unhand her!
Now!
”
Perversely, that made her want to smile. She’d forgotten there was always a courtly knight, too. Then she felt another pang of regret that he wasn’t the Alpha. She’d bet anything his brother wasn’t half as knightly as he.
Keshav released her as if she burned. She fell forward again, but this time the brother was there to catch her. He steadied her, let her rock back onto her heels, and when she was ready, gently pulled her to her feet. He kept his hand, warm and steady, under her arm.
“A chair,” he directed to Keshav, between gritted teeth.
A chair was produced posthaste, and she sank into it with a whispered word of thanks.
Then the air in the room seemed to shift, a swift, snapping-to of attention that swept toward the door the brother had appeared through. Fighting a wave of nausea from the acute pain in her back and side, Eliana glanced up and froze.
The Alpha. It had to be him.
Dressed in the palest pearl gray button-down shirt and black slacks that showcased the lines of his lean, muscled physique, he might have been anyone, except for this:
He was ferociously beautiful.
Shining black hair that brushed wide shoulders, classical features, a mouth that seemed a little too sensual for a man. Piercing yellow-green eyes like the others, dusky skin like them, too, and there was something else that set him apart, something about his posture that screamed
power
. Even just standing still in the doorway he exuded a rapacious energy, violent and wild, that pulsed outward from him like a bubble, encompassing everything around him.
This was no commoner. This wasn’t even a lord, though undoubtedly he was titled, landed aristocracy of the Empire.
This was a king, through and through.
Effortlessly, he commanded all their attention and held it as he silently surveyed the scene. Eliana felt the fleeting, electric brush of his gaze as it rested on her, then profound relief when it passed.
Her father—her mad, evil, genius father—had the same kind of presence. The same kind of easy, elemental power. Eliana briefly wondered if this king was insane, too, but that thought was obliterated by who appeared next.
The Alpha took a slow step away from the door and held out a hand. A long, white arm appeared from the shadows of the door as if in a stage drama, its wrist and hand bent in a motion of fluid, feminine grace. The pale hand rested in the Alpha’s, and then the woman attached to that gracefully curving arm stepped over the threshold and into the light.
And all Eliana’s pain and fear simply vanished.
It was instant and total, the feeling of kinship. Of
kindred
. It was also colossally stupid, because she knew nothing
of this woman or this king or this land, but just looking at her face imbued Eliana with a feeling so warm and relieved and profound it could only be called homecoming.
Or maybe insanity.
The woman paused a moment, studying her. Garbed in the plainest gray wool dress, without cosmetics or jewelry or a single ounce of apparent effort, she was easily the most stunning woman Eliana had ever seen. Her face and figure, her skin, the loose, golden hair that cascaded over her shoulders to her waist—everything was perfect and utterly unblemished, like some kind of master artist’s representation of an angel, of ideal, feminine beauty.
Picasso would have killed to paint your portrait,
she thought.
Michelangelo would have sold his soul.
It brought a faint smile to her lips. Seeing it, the Queen looked momentarily bemused. Then, impossibly, her own lips curved, a slight, upward tilt that her formidable husband didn’t miss.
He looked back and forth between the two of them. Sharply, he directed, “Viscount. Carry on.”
The warm feeling of homecoming was snuffed out, replaced by a very non-warm feeling of dread.
The viscount shot the Alpha’s brother a smug, victorious look, but it turned sour when the Queen spoke.
“Why is she half naked?”
Everyone froze. Her husband drew in a breath, his lips flattened.
“And handcuffed?” She turned to the viscount. “Weymouth?”
Her voice—the unembellished American accent startling in the midst of all this English regalia—was exquisitely neutral.
The viscount shifted his weight from one foot to another. “She was brought in with handcuffs, Your Majesty, and it would be prudent to keep her in them—”
“Surely all you men could manage to control one
collared
woman?”
There was faint mockery in her voice, and Eliana sensed a lifetime of anger behind it.
Weymouth’s face turned a mottled shade of red. “She is a traitor—”
“That remains to be seen.”
“Of the worst kind—”
“I didn’t realize there were degrees.”
Weymouth’s voice rose. “Who is the
daughter
of a traitor—”
At that, the Queen’s voice lost all its light neutrality and hardened to a knife-blade coldness that had everyone in the room sitting a little straighter in their seats.
“As am
I
. Or had you forgotten?”
The Queen’s gaze, flinty now, rested on the viscount. He fidgeted under it, lips twitching in outrage, but she kept her frozen gaze on him, a dare or a warning, and apparently he thought better of arguing. He looked at Keshav and gave a quick jerk of his head.
The handcuffs were unlocked, removed. Eliana’s arms slid forward, and she had to bite back the moan of pain when feeling came flooding back into her numb arms.
“Thank you, Viscount,” said the Queen, neutral once more. “You’re always so accommodating.”
If her words or her tone held no offense, the slight curl of her lips belied her opinion of the pompous viscount.
Weymouth’s nostrils flared, his face went from red to purple, and he looked to be physically biting his tongue.
The other men at the table didn’t even dare to look at him, or the Queen. Everyone kept their eyes down or on her, the lone traitor in a chair set across from them.