it again in the telling, he thought as he turned back to the bacon and left them to it. A startled sound from Lucian a few moments later had him glancing over his shoulder in time to see the pained look on the man’s face before it cleared.
Guessing he’d got to the biting part, and knowing that there was still more for him to read, G.G. turned back to his cooking.
“I see,” Lucian said quietly several moments later. “I was not aware of any of this.”
“I’m surprised you didn’t read it from my mind when the men first brought me here from Montana,” Ildaria commented.
G.G. looked around to see Lucian shrug. “I was looking only for information on the mortals you attacked on the ship, and the reason for it. I was not interested in a recounting of your entire two centuries of life.”
Ildaria nodded and walked around the island to drop into the chair farthest from Lucian’s before asking, “And now that you know?”
Lucian was silent for several minutes and then sighed and agreed with what she’d said earlier. “I suspect they would have been ordered to take you if you had refused. Villaverde has been hunting you too long to just accept a no thank you.”
Ildaria relaxed a little at that, and turned her attention to her own tea.
“How do you want your eggs, Lucian?” G.G. asked when silence followed. “Scrambled, over easy, or sunny side up?”
“Sunny side up,” Lucian answered, and then recalled the, “Please,” on his own, if a second later.
G.G. grabbed the eggs. He already knew Ildaria preferred hers over easy. This wasn’t the first time he’d made her breakfast this week, although she’d made it for him more.
A heavy sigh caught his ear, and then Lucian said, “I do not understand this. The man I saw in your memories is not the Juan Villaverde I know.”
G.G. glanced around to see Ildaria staring at Lucian with incomprehension. “What do you mean? You know him?”
“Of course. He is the head of the South American Council,” Lucian said as if that should make it obvious that he would of course know him, and then he added, “Aside from that, I have known him for at least a thousand years. We used to be great friends, and the man I knew was always honorable.”
“Does an honorable man raise the price of blood to force his people to give up land he wants?” Ildaria asked sharply.
Lucian scowled at the question. “Vasco mentioned that to me, and I could hardly credit it.”
“Well, credit it. It is true,” Ildaria assured him. “I lived and worked at the shore for decades and saw it happen.”
“You had property on the shore?” G.G. asked with interest and wondered if she still owned it. A beach house in Punta Cana might be nice, he thought and then recalled that Ildaria wouldn’t be safe there.
“No.” Ildaria shook her head. “I never had enough money to buy property of my own. But I knew an immortal who had an old hut on the edge of their property that they let me use when I was between jobs,” she said and then explained, “For a long time I took positions with mortal plantation owners, either as a house servant or laborer. Most of those jobs came with a bed in the barracks with the other single women working there. But I could only work so long in one place before one of the Enforcers would come sniffing around and I would have to leave. Even if that did not happen, my not aging made me leave eventually. Then I would return to the hut by the sea, and live off of what money I’d managed to save until I found another position where I thought I would be safe for a while. More recently though, I switched to jobs on the fishing boats.”
“Hmmm.” Lucian looked dissatisfied. “Vasco said Juan’s raising of the price of blood for immortals only started about ten years ago?”
Ildaria shrugged. “That is when Vasco noticed and started the feeding tours. I am not sure how long it has gone on. I could not use the blood banks. There were always a couple of Juan’s Enforcers at the blood banks keeping an eye out for me.”
Lucian’s expression was grim. “Then how did you feed? Biting mortals is against the law in the areas governed by South American Council as well.”
“It has only been banned there for the last thirty years,” Ildaria said, appearing amused. “And