It was a pure definition of love. Like magic, the letters amassing on my forearms disappeared as Matthew stripped my soul bare and guided my body to a place where words were indeed unnecessary. I trembled through my release, and though Matthew’s touch became light as a feather, his fingers never stopped moving.
“Again,” he said, when my pulse quickened once more.
“It’s not possible,” I said. Then he did something that made me gasp.
“Impossible n’est pas français,” Matthew replied, giving me a nip on the ear. “And next time your brother comes to call, tell him not to worry. I’m perfectly able to take care of my wife.”
Sol in Aries
The sign of the ram signifies dominion and wisdom.
While the sun resides in Aries, you will see growth in all your works.
It is a time for new beginnings.
—Anonymous English Commonplace Book, c. 1590, Gonçalves MS 4890, f. 10r
42
“Answer your fucking e-mail!”
Apparently Baldwin was having a bad day. Like Matthew, I was beginning to appreciate the ways that modern technology allowed us to keep the other vampires in the family at arm’s length.
“I’ve put them off as long as I can.” Baldwin glowered at me from the computer screen, the city of Berlin visible through the huge windows behind him. “You are going to Venice, Diana.”
“No I’m not.” We had been having some version of this conversation for weeks.
“Yes you are.” Matthew leaned over my shoulder. He was walking now, slowly but just as silently as ever. “Diana will meet with the Congregation, Baldwin. But speak to her like that again and I’ll cut your tongue out.”
“Two weeks,” Baldwin said, completely unfazed by his brother’s threat. “They’ve agreed to give her two more weeks.”
“It’s too soon.” The physical effects of Benjamin’s torture were fading, but it had left Matthew’s control over his blood rage as thin as a knife’s edge and his temper just as sharp.
“She’ll be there.” He closed the lid on the laptop, effectively shutting out his brother and his final demands.
“It’s too soon,” I repeated.
“Yes, it is—far too soon for me to travel to Venice and face Gerbert and Satu.” Matthew’s hands were heavy on my shoulders. “If we want the covenant formally set aside—and we do—one of us must make the case to the Congregation.”
“What about the children?” I was grasping at straws.
“The three of us will miss you, but we will manage. If I look sufficiently inept in front of Ysabeau and Sarah, I won’t have to change a single diaper while you’re gone.” Matthew’s fingers increased in pressure, as did the sense of responsibility resting on my shoulders. “You must do this. For me. For us.
For every member of our family who has been harmed because of the covenant: Emily, Rebecca, Stephen, even Philippe. And for our children, so that they can grow up in love instead of fear.” There was no way I could refuse to go to Venice after that.
The Bishop-Clairmont family swung into action, eager to help ready our case for the Congregation.
It was a collaborative, multispecies effort that began with honing our argument down to its essential core. Hard as it was to strip away the insults and injuries, large and small, that we had suffered, success depended on being able to make our request not seem like a personal vendetta.
In the end it was breathtakingly simple—at least it was after Hamish took charge. All we needed to do, he said, was establish beyond a doubt that the covenant had been drawn up because of a fear of miscegenation and the desire to keep bloodlines artificially pure to preserve the power balance among creatures.
Like most simple arguments, ours was reached after hours of mind-numbing work. We all contributed our talents to the project. Phoebe, who was a gifted researcher, searched the archives at Sept-Tours for documents that touched on the covenant’s inception and the Congregation’s first meetings and debates. She called Rima, who was thrilled to be asked to do something other than filing, and had her search for supporting documents in the Congregation library on Isola della Stella.
These documents helped us piece together a coherent picture of what the founders of the Congregation had truly feared: that relationships between creatures, and an increasing interaction with humans, would weaken—and finally destroy—the ancient, supposedly inviolate daemon, vampire, and witch bloodlines. Such a concern was warranted given a twelfth-century understanding of biology and the value that was placed on inheritance and lineage at that time. And Philippe de Clermont