"This is none of your business!" Lissianna barked. "He's no threat now. I'm allowed to turn one, I have, and neither you nor the council can now hurt him." She paused breathing heavily, then said more calmly, "He's mine. I turned him, and I say knock him out."
There was complete silence for a moment. Even Greg's struggies slowed to almost nothing, as if he sensed the sudden tension in the air as Lucian stared coldly at Lissianna. No one spoke to Lucian Argeneau like that. At least, she'd never heard of it happening.
"My, my," her uncle finally said softly. "Marguerite, our little kitten has finally found her claws."
"Lucian," her mother said uncertainly.
"Do as she says," he interrupted calmly. "He is hers."
Lissianna glanced at her mother, then down to Greg's arm where she had been trying to insert the IV. It was when she saw the blood staining his arm, as well as the bed around it that Lissianna realized the older woman hadn't been trying to insert the IV, she'd been trying to reinsert it.
"Oh hell," she muttered as the room began to spin.
"Oh hell," she heard her uncle Lucian echo as he took one hand from Greg and reached out to catch her as she fainted.
Lissianna opened her eyes to find herself lying in her old bed again. At first, she thought she was alone, but then her uncle stepped into view and peered down at her, meeting her gaze.
Lissianna eyed him warily. He stared back, expression grim, then asked, "How do you feel?"
"Fine," she said slowly, then opened her mouth to ask how Greg was, but he forestalled her.
"Your Greg is fine. Marguerite has him all drugged up and oblivious to any suffering."
"I suppose that disappoints you?" Lissianna asked bitterly, and he shrugged.
"Actually, no. His shrieks were giving me a headache, and holding him down was becoming tiresome," he admitted with a slow smile. "I soon regretted taunting him into proving his mettle."
"It serves you right," Lissianna said wearily, and sat up in the bed. She pulled her feet up to sit in the lotus position and leaned back against the wall.
"Yes, I am sure it does," Lucian acknowledged wryly, then added, "though I am also glad I did it. Your young man surprised me. Many would have been shrieking for drugs the minute the nanos reached their testicles. He started screaming soprano, but did not once ask for drugs. He is worthy of my niece."
Lissianna was trying to figure out what to make of that when he tilted his head, and said, "Despite what you think, I did not have you staked. I have always done my best to protect my family, and that includes my brother, his wife, and each of his children. I did not order you staked as punishment for defying me."
"I didn't think you had. Greg was the only one who thought that," she admitted, then tilted her head and asked, "Why do you do that?"
"Do what?" he queried.
"You just said, 'I have always done my best to protect my family, and that includes my brother, his wife, and each of his children.' When you could have said 'my brother, Marguerite, and each of you children.'"
"Does it matter?" he asked stiffly.
"I think so. It's as if you don't acknowledge that we have any connection to you except through him. It's as if you keep an emotional distance by talking about us objectively. As if you are separate."
He looked disturbed at her words, but Lissianna wasn't done. Annoyance tipping her lips, she asked, "Why have you never remarried? Aunt Luna and the children died in the fall of Atlantis. Surely you've met someone since then that you could love? Or are you just too cowardly to allow yourself to iove again?"
"You think I am afraid to love?" he asked with surprise.
She nodded.
"Well... perhaps," he allowed, then added, "and perhaps it's true that it takes one to know one."
Lissianna frowned. "What does that mean?"
Lucian shook his head as if to say it wasn't important, then peered down at her curiously, and asked, "You are not afraid of me at all, are you?"
Sighing, she dropped her gaze, then shrugged unhappily. "I used to be."
'Then what has changed?"