"Or killed you." "Enough games," she said, louder.
"Call him for me." I froze.
That's why she wanted me.
She wanted Stefan back.
For a moment all I could see was the blackened dead thing that she'd dropped in my living room.
I remembered how long it had taken me to realize who it was.
She'd done that to him--and now she wanted him back.
Not if I could help it.
Adam hadn't moved from where he'd been standing, telling the room he trusted me to take care of myself.
I wasn't sure he really thought so--I knew I didn't--but he needed me to stand on my own two feet.
"Call whom?" he asked.
She smiled at him without looking away from me.
"Didn't you know? Your mate belongs to Stefan." He laughed, an oddly happy sound in this dirge-shadowed room.
It was a good excuse to turn my back on Marsilia and quit playing the stare game.
Turning my back meant that I didn't lose--only that the contest was over.
I tried not to let the sick fear I felt show on my face.
I tried to be what Adam--and Stefan--needed me to be.
"Like a coyote, Mercy is adaptable," Adam told Marsilia.
"She belongs to whom she decides.
She belongs everywhere she wants to, for just as long as she wants to." He made it sound like a good thing.
Then he said, "I thought this was about preventing war." "It is," said Marsilia.
"Call Stefan." I lifted my chin and glanced at her over my shoulder.
"Stefan is my friend," I told her.
"I won't bring him to his execution." "Admirable," she told me briskly.
"But your concern is misplaced.
I can promise that he won't be hurt physically by me or by mine tonight." I slanted a glance at Warren, and he nodded.
Vampires might be hard to read, but he was better at sensing lies than I was, and his nose agreed with mine: she was being truthful.
"Or hold him here," I said.
The smell of her hatred had died away, and I couldn't tell anything about how she felt.
"Or hold him here," she agreed.