Onda jumped down her throat and made her be quiet. According to her, too many people worked too hard for Seveline to ruin it.”
Arland’s eyes narrowed. “I don’t like it.”
Maud leaned back in her seat. “Neither do I. Later Seveline made it a point to flag me down and offer me some pleasantries. She believes we will become fast friends.”
Arland gave her a calculating look. “Perhaps you should.”
If only. She grimaced. “I can’t. For me to become her ‘friend,’ I would have to pretend to be weak and ignorant. Your mother didn’t come to greet you at the spaceport. She is displeased.”
“My mother is likely too busy with the hassle of arranging the wedding.”
She snorted. “Or perhaps, my lord, she is mortally insulted by your instruction to make her household presentable for some disgraced human who turned down your proposal.”
“My mother is never insulted. She is far too dignified and refined for that. She has the patience of a saint.”
“Lady Ilemina,” Maud quoted from memory, “Slaughterer of Ruhamin, Supreme Predator of the Holy Anocracy, Bleeder of Ert, Fierce Subjugator of…”
“Like I said, too dignified to take offense. If someone dares to insult her, she simply kills them, and she isn’t going to kill me. I’m her only son. At most, she’s annoyed, perhaps slightly irritated.”
Maud sighed. “But I’m not her son.”
“She won’t harm you.” He said it like he was swearing an oath. Like he would put himself between her and all danger.
He had no idea how intoxicating it was to hear that. Words are cheap, she reminded herself. Reading too much into them was a dangerous habit and one she couldn’t afford. “Your mother will test me. She’ll encourage others in your House to test me. I can’t pretend to be weak and pass your mother’s gauntlet at the same time.”
“A fair point,” he admitted.
“Perhaps, you should pay attention to Seveline. Just enough to encourage her. Her type gets off on feeling superior. She’d get special pleasure pretending to be my friend while knowing she has your attention.”
Arland turned to her, his blue eyes clear and hard. “I proposed to you, my lady. If I treat you with anything but the devotion I feel, my House will dismiss you.”
He was right.
Silence fell. The craft zipped over another mesa filled with old growth. In the distance, still a few miles off, a castle rose out of the huge trees, massive and pale gray, so solid and majestic, it looked like it had grown out of the bones of the mountain.
“I am devoted to you,” Arland said quietly.
“Please don’t.” The words came out of her before she had a chance to think them over. She felt raw, as if he’d grabbed a bandage on a wound and ripped it off, reopening it.
What the hell is wrong with me?
“I’ll wait,” he said.
“I may never be ready.”
“I’ll wait until you tell me to stop. I have no expectations, my lady. If you leave, all you have to do is call on me in the time of need, and I’ll be there.”
Something in his voice told her he would wait forever.
They reached the castle. The ancestral home of House Krahr defied all expectations. A forest of square towers wrapped in a maze of walkways, parapets, thick walls, and courtyards, greeted her. If she had to run from it, she would never find a way out.
Arland’s hands flew over the controls. The shuttle turned smoothly and sank onto a small landing pad on top of a squat tower. People emerged from the taller tower to the left, hurrying across the crosswalk. She had the worst sense of déjà vu. When Melizard came home, the retainers used to hurry to the shuttle just like that.
For a moment she felt like she was drowning.
“Welcome to House Krahr, my lady,” Arland said.
She wouldn’t lose her future to her memories. It wasn’t going to happen. She turned to him and smiled her vampire smile, bright and sharp. “Thank you, my lord.”
4
As soon as they exited the shuttle, a young vampire knight with dark auburn hair whose name was Knight Ruin, attached himself to Arland and began rattling things off from his tablet. Arland’s face took on the stony expression of a man who was either about to charge the enemy line for the fifth time in a single day, or do his taxes. He marched along the parapet toward the heavy door, with Ruin at his side. Maud took Helen’s hand and followed him, and the four other retainers