House Rules - Chloe Neill Page 0,59
showing it to the GP, but unwilling to hand over the documents. Not that I blamed him. They might have gone directly into the fire.
“We were not invited to the ceremony,” Darius mused.
“It wasn’t a ceremony for you,” Ethan said. “It was for this House.”
Darius looked singularly unimpressed. “So you stand Master now?”
“I do.”
Darius smiled falsely. “I don’t see any particular need to draw this out. Ethan Sullivan, as you are apparently Master of Cadogan House, you and yours have voted to remove yourselves from the Greenwich Presidium. Do you agree?”
“I agree.”
“From this night forward, you and your vampires shall be unaffiliated, and your House, the House of Peter Cadogan, shall be Decertified. You shall not be entitled to the rights or privileges afforded to members of the Greenwich Presidium. Do you agree?”
“I agree.”
“You reject the authority of the Greenwich Presidium over you and your vampires, and you submit to the authority of humans and hereby do join the world in which they live?”
It was becoming apparent the GP hadn’t updated their script in a while. But that didn’t stop Ethan.
“I agree,” he said.
“Before you take an irrevocable step, we offer you one last chance,” Darius said. “Agree to follow the appropriate dictates and we will allow you to remain within the GP on a . . . trial . . . basis.”
Ethan smiled thinly and crossed his arms. “I can easily guess what those dictates are. In the course of preparing for our departure, you realized the economic significance this House provided to the GP. And you’ve decided that our leaving the GP doesn’t have quite the favorable ring that it once had. Here’s the thing—we don’t need you or your organization. We can and will survive on our own.”
“What you don’t appreciate,” Darius said, “are the benefits you received from your membership. That you weren’t fully aware of them doesn’t mean they didn’t exist. Do you honestly think Peter Cadogan would be happy to learn what’s happened to his House? That the members of his House have elected to leave the GP—the institution that protected them for so long?”
Silence descended, but magic rose.
Ethan dropped his chin, gazing back at Darius beneath a hooded brow. “Peter Cadogan believed in his vampires. They were his first priority, and they were and remain mine. I’m not sure you’ve ever understood that, Darius.”
“I understand plenty, Mr. Sullivan. The medals, if you please.”
Kelley stepped forward and handed him the box of Cadogan gold.
Darius took the box and dropped it unceremoniously into the fire. “By the power vested in me as the head of the Greenwich Presidium, I hereby break the bond between us. Your House is Decertified. Your vampires are unaffiliated, UnHoused, and lacking the rights and privileges that would otherwise be afforded to them. The papers,” he added, then held out his hand. One of the other GP members, a tall and lithe woman who looked to be of Indian descent, handed him a folder. Darius held it over the flames, just low enough for bright orange tongues of fire to graze the paper.
Darius lifted his steely gaze to Ethan. “There is no going back.”
“We move forward,” Ethan said. “Always forward. To affirm our affiliation with you would not be a step forward.”
“That’s not the most positive statement on which to end your lengthy relationship with the GP.”
“I come to bury Caesar,” Ethan gritted out. “Not to praise him.”
“Then let it be heard—this was their choice.” Darius opened his fingers, and the portfolio fell into the fire and burst into flames. Along with hundreds of years of history.
For a moment, the vampires were silent. I’d expected to feel changed somehow. Lighter, or even more afraid when the deed was done. But I didn’t feel any different, which was precisely the point Ethan had been trying to make. Being a member of the GP didn’t make us vampires; it just made us members. We were who we were with or without our GP association.
Darius, not surprisingly, was the first to break the silence.
“It is done,” he said. The change in attitude was clear in his tone. We’d left his secret society, and we were nothing now. We were outcasts, and he intended to treat us as such. No Grateful Condescension for the vampires of Cadogan House, no allowances for the age and respect of our House. Those things were irrelevant now, just as we were irrelevant to him.
“It isn’t done,” Ethan said. “There’s something we wish to say.”
“You have nothing to say to