manners and the fact that people who ruled whole countries were on a waiting list to see this woman. And just turned around and ran. New travels fast and I’d wanted to get to Louis-Cesare before he heard it from someone else.
I’d made it, if only just. And then we’d gone to see for ourselves, because neither of us could believe it, otherwise. And damn it, maybe I should have stayed and questioned her some more, but I still didn’t think she’d lied!
Yet it seemed equally unlikely that she could have been fooled. She was the damned Pythia. I just didn’t know anymore.
“You’re saying that the mages deceived us somehow,” I said.
Louis-Cesare shook his head. “I’m saying that it was Jonathan. How he came to be there I do not know.”
I frowned. My head hurt; my heart hurt. I wasn’t up for this.
And Louis-Cesare didn’t look any happier. “If I’d stopped, even for a moment,” he said, his eyes distant. “But there he was, leering at me from underneath one of those black masks, having evaded death yet again. He took off and I went after him—immediately, not pausing to think that of course it was a trap. But not for me.”
“Or for me.” I put my head on his chest. “They wanted Dorina. They left me lying in the street, while eight or ten of them shoved her through that portal.”
“I know. I saw. I tried to reach her, but I wasn’t fast enough.”
Neither was I, I thought, and shivered. His arms tightened. “I’m sorry,” he said roughly. “We shouldn’t be talking about this now.”
“Except that I want to talk about this now. I need—”
I stopped because I wasn’t sure what I needed. I hadn’t felt like this since I lost my mother, all those centuries ago. I’d found the village where she’d lived blackened and corpse-like, under a blanket of new fallen snow. Plague, they’d said. It had had to be burned.
They’d lied.
She’d been murdered, and I hadn’t been there to save her. She’d been lost to me, because I was too slow in tracking her down. I’d been nine at the time, a skinny, pale, dark eyed waif, but a dhampir nonetheless. The Roma, who had taken me in as a baby after she was forced to give me up, had known what I’d become: a predator, one who could fight off their enemies.
But I hadn’t been able to save them in the end, any more than I had her. I didn’t seem to be able to save anyone. And, suddenly, the torrent of emotions I’d felt then burned through my veins again: fear, anger, hatred, loss. I suddenly knew what I wanted, as I had all those years ago, and it wasn’t sitting here grieving uselessly.
I wanted a target.
And now I had one.
Chapter Four
Dory, Cairo
“No,” Louis-Cesare said, his voice hard as I struggled against his hold. “No!” he said, as I fought to get out of bed, to find the bastard who had done this to my family. “No!” he said, as I swore to make Jonathan bleed.
“Why are you doing this?” I yelled in my lover’s face, because try as I might, I couldn’t break that iron grip.
“I failed you!” he said, his color high. “I failed you tonight, and as a direct result, you lost two whom you love. You lost a part of yourself. I won’t fail you again!”
“Then get off me!”
“Dory.” I found my face captured between two huge hands. Sometimes I forgot just how big Louis-Cesare was. Before I met him, I’d usually gone for shorter men. At five foot two, nearly everyone was tall to me, and it made the height difference less ridiculous. Yet who had I married?
A six-foot-four-inch giant with matching hands and body, the latter of which was pressing me down into the mattress, forcing me to listen. I didn’t want to listen. And while I’m not as strong, I’m wily.
A second later, Louis-Cesare was sprawled on the bed, face up because I’d just flipped us. “I’m going after him!” I snarled.
I found myself flipped back again, and this time, he had a foot hooked under the bed, giving him leverage. Damned long legs! “I understand,” he said tightly, “You’re angry, and rightfully so. But you’re not thinking—”
“I don’t want to think! I want to kill something!”
“I know. I’ve been there. And I’ve seen others who experienced the loss of a Child. But I’ve also seen more than one master dead because they didn’t stop to heal—”