Brave the Tempest (Cassandra Palmer #9) - Karen Chance Page 0,49

of the kings of the light fey. Whose lips were twitching.

“What a pleasure to see you again, Lady Cassandra,” he said, bowing, and kissing my hand with exaggerated gallantry.

It was weird, to put it mildly. Not the kiss, but running into him like this. The last time I’d seen him had been on a battlefield in Wales, fifteen hundred years ago. Or, rather, fifteen hundred for him. It had been about two weeks for me, because time travel.

Yet here he was, acting as if we’d just seen each other yesterday.

It was bizarre.

Like his slight smile that said he was putting on a show for the ill-mannered help, and inviting me to go along with it. While his lips on my skin, lingering a little too long, said something else. Something that might have gotten more of a response if I didn’t already have two men in my life, and no idea what to do with either one of them.

But damned if he wasn’t amazing to look at.

At least seven feet tall, with blond hair spilling over broad shoulders and piercing green eyes, he also had the perfect face. Like, literally perfect—I couldn’t find a flaw. With strong, aristocratic features paired with eyelashes longer than a Hollywood starlet’s and a fuller, more sensual mouth than any man had a right to, he would have been stunning in a cardboard box.

But he wasn’t wearing a box. He was wearing golden armor with thin traceries of vines and leaves and winged animals all over it, slightly raised from the rest of the metal and blackened, so that the designs stood out. And, as if that wasn’t enough, among the greenery were sapphires, some around the neckline as big as my thumb, others tiny, almost bead-like, in the eyes of the strange animals peering out of the foliage.

“Gryphons,” Caedmon said, seeing the direction of my gaze. “The sigil of my house.”

“There are gryphons?” I’d always thought those were a myth.

But then, I’d thought the same about the fey, not so long ago.

“In the mountain fastnesses of my realm,” he told me. “They build their nests on the very highest peaks. Some of our more courageous—or more foolhardy—warriors occasionally climb up in an attempt to steal an egg.”

He smiled. “Sometimes, they even come back.”

I swallowed. “How, uh, how interesting.”

“Visit my realm, princess, and I’ll take you for a ride.”

“I’m not a princess,” I told him, before what he’d said registered. “You ride gryphons?”

I couldn’t quite keep the excitement out of my voice.

His smile widened. “Your mother was Queen of Heaven; I believe you deserve the title. As to the other, you shall have to visit and find out.”

Caedmon tucked my hand under his arm and pulled me away from the stunned-looking guards and down the hall. “I—I’m looking for Mircea,” I told him, wondering why I was walking away from anywhere Mircea was likely to be.

But I kept on doing it anyway.

Caedmon was a little overwhelming.

“As am I. Let’s find him together, shall we?”

It sounded like a plan, but it quickly became obvious that it was going to be tougher than I’d thought. The consul’s palace had been damaged in the attack, and rebuilding had been going on ever since. But it looked like she’d decided to throw some renovations in there, too, while she was at it.

Big ones.

Caedmon and I passed through a wall that used to indicate the end of the passage, but which now opened onto a massive new wing. Workmen were running everywhere, down a corridor the length of a football field and at least half as wide. One which I knew, I knew, hadn’t been there a month ago.

“Impressive, isn’t it?” Caedmon asked. “I’m told that they are working around the clock: vampires at night and human servants during the day.” He leaned closer and dropped his voice. “I’ve also heard that the consul visits daily, to check on their progress. I believe that may have helped to expedite matters.”

I flashed to an image of Darth Vader visiting the Death Star, only with more snakes. I’d seen her send vampires hundreds of years old running for cover with barely a flash from those dark eyes. I was surprised the workmen weren’t pissing themselves.

What they were doing was moving mountains, or at least sizable hills, considering the countryside around here. Which I guess I should have expected. The consul had recently found herself with a distinct lack of living space.

The world’s six vampire senates had joined forces for the war, something