Brave the Tempest (Cassandra Palmer #9) - Karen Chance Page 0,126

the prince demanded. “He could have been controlling people for decades! He could be controlling one of us now!”

Annnnnd that tore it. The fizzy comets of power that were being flung around the table were more like fists now, a couple of which sent me reeling, while the pressure in the room, maybe a couple extra atmospheres’ worth, was threatening to stop my breathing. It wasn’t doing anybody else any good, either.

I saw one of the mages abruptly stand up and move a step or two away from the table, to give himself room to maneuver. I saw a door blow open and additional vamps run in, guards to various senators, judging by their clothes. I saw one of the weres spontaneously change, going from a young brunette to a dark, sleekly dangerous wolf with bright yellow eyes, snarling at a table that didn’t even notice her.

Because something bigger was going on.

“Explain yourself!” the princely guy told Mircea, causing the ever-increasing tension in the room to ratchet up another few notches, although I wouldn’t have said that was possible a moment ago. It felt like it had at Tony’s when things were really getting serious, like being in a pressure cooker that was about to blow.

Until Mircea did the last thing that I—or anyone else, apparently—had expected.

He laughed.

Chapter Twenty-nine

The loud, disorderly room abruptly went quiet.

Yet the laughter continued, not a chortle or a guffaw, which might have been put down to stress and would have been over in a moment. But loud, sustained, apparently genuine laughter, that came up from the belly and spilled out of Mircea’s mouth, shockingly loud in the silence. Until people started glancing sideways at each other, their confused faces making it clear that they had no idea what to do with this.

Neither did I.

Mircea had been under a lot of stress lately—hell, we both had. That was the thing about war. It didn’t wait until you were ready, or rested, or in the right frame of mind—if there was one for dealing with the kind of crap this conflict had thrown up. It just came on and on, fast and furious and unrelenting, and you had to either meet it or die.

So we’d met it, time and again, somehow. But everyone had limits, right? I knew I did; I’d felt the strain every second of this last month or so. And I knew that Mircea had, too, despite the immense power he wore like armor, as if it could shield him from all dangers.

But that doesn’t work when everyone else is as powerful as you, does it?

Or more so.

“Are you in the habit of laughing at a consul, Senator?” the prince snapped, his voice echoing around the room.

And, suddenly, it clicked: I did know him. The handsome maybe prince was Parendra, consul of the South Asian Durbar, the Indian version of a senate. I’d seen him once before at an auction, the same one where I’d encountered Ming-de and her little pet, but it had been a while. I hadn’t immediately recognized him, since we’d never actually spoken, but I would have now even if he hadn’t said anything.

The power pouring off him was enough to lift the hair on my arms, even this far away.

“My apologies,” Mircea said, still looking amused. And unafraid, despite the fact that he was probably seconds away from a formal challenge.

What the hell?

“Not good enough!” Parendra snarled, getting to his feet so abruptly that the heavy chair he’d been using went flying.

It crashed down, making me and half a dozen other people flinch. But not Mircea. “I thought you were joking,” he said, not looking particularly concerned. “I also thought we were all equals here.”

“Equal—what? Are you mad?” Parendra looked like he thought Mircea might genuinely be losing his mind. Marlowe apparently shared that view, because he was gripping the table edge hard enough to indent the surface around his fingers.

“No. But since it has arisen as a discussion point, let us discuss it,” Mircea said calmly. “It has come to my notice that some of my orders pertaining to troop allocations have been ignored or countermanded by some of the people in this room.”

“What of it? I need my people—”

“I wasn’t finished yet.”

It was said quietly, but the effect was electrifying. If I’d thought the room was quiet before, it was nothing to this. Vampires didn’t need to breathe, but I didn’t think even the humans and weres were doing so at the moment.

“Shit,” I heard someone