power. To create a single vampire government for the first time in history, with her at its head. That is what Parendra suspects, and he is not alone.”
“That’s why you went through all that today,” I realized. “Telling them what Jonathan has been up to. You were trying to scare them.”
Mircea sat forward suddenly. “I was trying to give them some concrete examples of the seriousness of the threat we face, something they could independently verify. They may not believe that ancient gods are trying to return, but vampire-killing bullets and crashing cities will destroy them just as easily. They must face reality.”
“And if they don’t?”
He sat back again and drank wine. “Then I am about to invade Faerie, something that has never been successfully done, with a divided army, a shaky alliance, and a consul who is possibly planning to murder me.”
He said it so matter-of-factly that it took a moment to register. “You noticed that.”
He smiled slightly, his lips redder than normal from the wine. “It is becoming less subtle by the day.”
“And I didn’t help,” I guessed. If she’d bought that little farce, then I looked powerful and like even more of a threat than before. If she didn’t—the more likely scenario, considering that she’d been there when I fell on my face—then I looked weak, which meant she might not have to worry so much about my wrath if she took out Mircea.
I honestly didn’t know what I was supposed to do!
“I never know what she thinks,” Mircea said, agreeing with me. “No one does; it’s part of the reason she’s stayed in power for so long. But you helped greatly with the alliance. The consul has had an apology from Parendra for misinterpreting the situation, and I have his men under my direct control for the first time—along with those of several other holdouts.”
I frowned around my fork. “But you just said he thinks this is a power grab.”
“Oh, he does. That was the most grudging apology I’ve ever heard.”
“Then why give it?”
Mircea looked at me, the dark eyes gleaming. “You, Cassie. The other consuls know you are on our side, and while some of them suspect me of manipulating you into supporting the consul’s power play, they aren’t sure. Pythian involvement introduces an element of doubt, and your power worries them. They had a demonstration of it the night the alliance was first signed, if you recall, and another tonight.”
I stared at him, hoping I was hearing wrong. “So I need to almost die every month to keep them in line?”
The eyebrow was back, along with a slight quirk of the lips. “Once every two months should suffice.”
“Gee. Thanks.”
Mircea laughed and leaned over to wipe some strawberry jam off my cheek. He hesitated, and then put the finger in his mouth, licking it clean. And I felt an unexpected pulse of pure lust tear through me.
Damn it!
Just when I’d thought he was going to behave himself!
Who was I kidding? This was Mircea. That was behaving.
“I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone appreciate their food so much,” he told me, as if nothing had happened.
“You ought to spend more time with Fred,” I said sourly.
“I beg your pardon?”
I drank wine resentfully. “Your vampire Fred? You ought to see him over a dish of—”
I stopped, because Mircea was suddenly looking at me strangely. And then continued to do so without commenting, without moving, without even breathing, for a long moment. He looked like a film that had been paused, or a man frozen in time. It was eerie.
Especially since he wasn’t one of the vamps who went out of their way to emphasize the difference between themselves and humans. Some made a point of never breathing, rarely blinking, and not bothering to turn their skin anything other than dead white. They moved with a boneless, silent grace that sent the hair ruffling at the back of your neck, because humans didn’t walk like that. Some of the most extreme had fingernails they allowed to grow into long, gnarled talons, bodies that were sometimes morphed in weird ways by their master powers, and eyes that glowed inhuman colors all of the time, not just when their power was up.
Or when they were too distracted to mask it.
I studied Mircea’s face, but there was none of that in evidence. I’d seen him once without the constant glamourie he wore, but he had been strangely beautiful, not hideous. Terrible, but in an awe-inspiring, otherworldly kind of way: glowing, alabaster