out the straight lines of her posture. Please, I tried to convey during the brief glance we exchanged. Please don’t confirm what he just said!
“Xun Guan.” Haldam’s commanding voice filled the amphitheater. “Did you witness a binding marriage ceremony between Veritas and this vampire? Or did you not?”
Xun Guan straightened to her usual, regal posture. My hopes plummeted. I might have gotten her to agree to “forget” what she’d seen as far as keeping silent in the face of my denials, but lying to the council? She wouldn’t, not even if she believed I’d made a terrible mistake while very drunk and spelled, which is what I’d told her. Xun Guan loved me, but she loved the law more. She always had. It’s why I’d never been able to share my secrets with her.
“Yes,” Xun Guan said in strong, if strained, voice. “Yes, I did witness that, honorable judges.”
The vampire world’s most notorious bachelor had just succeeded in proving the validity of our marriage to the highest court in vampire society. Now nothing but one of our deaths could end it. Why had Ian, of all people, done that?
Chapter 4
Ian’s voice shattered the silence. “Now that that’s sorted, I formally withdraw my lawsuit. Clearly my bride wasn’t being unlawfully kept from me against her wishes by this council. Poor lamb just didn’t remember the happy occasion.”
That snapped me out of my stunned muteness. “This ‘poor lamb’ still doesn’t owe you anything, marriage or no marriage.”
“She is correct,” Hekima said. “While our laws forbid divorce and also permit the slaying of any person a vampire spouse commits adultery with, they do not demand that spouses cohabitate or even speak to one another. If Veritas doesn’t want you, you have no recourse before this court, young man.”
“Agreed,” Ian said, making me more suspicious. He was never agreeable unless it suited him. “And for wasting your time, you have my sincerest apologies.” He punctuated that with a bow that managed to appear both graceful and contrite. “Since I’ve always considered words an insufficient form of amends, allow me to present an offering indicative of my remorse,” he finished, then whistled.
Three vampires I’d never seen before hurried into the amphitheater. Each carried three large crates stacked on top of each other. They set the crates down in front of the council. Ian whisked the lid off the first crate before I could sputter out an apology. He was trying to bribe the council into forgetting about his slanderous lawsuit?
“Ian,” I hissed through gritted teeth. “A word?”
“In a moment,” he said, pulling back a layer of packaging to reveal glass-enclosed, aged parchments. “Now, then, history considers the destruction of the Alexandria library in forty-eight b.c. as one of the world’s greatest losses of knowledge. Fortunately, as with many other things, history is incorrect. Not all the library was lost. Here is what remains.”
At that, Haldam actually got off his throne to take a closer look. After several moments of carefully rifling through the first crate, he turned to the other council members.
“This appears to be genuine.”
Haldam sounded so surprised, he didn’t seem to notice that he’d reverted back to speaking in his native Latin. Now all the council members got off their thrones to cluster around the crates and examine their glass-encased documents.
“How did you come to possess this?” Hekima asked.
Ian gave her a brilliant smile. “Mark Anthony presented the remains of the library to Cleopatra as a gift. Their daughter, Patra, later acquired it. You’ll remember Patra declared war on my sire, Mencheres, several years ago? After Patra was killed, her belongings were plundered by those who’d fought at Mencheres’s side. I claimed this library as my part of the spoils.”
I shook my head. Of course Ian wouldn’t settle for Patra’s gold, jewelry, or other everyday riches. He’d only want the rarest type of treasure as his prize. Now, he’d dazzled the council by gifting them with it. They would have taken offense at money, but the Alexandria library was priceless for its treasure trove of lost history. It was also rumored to contain many long-forgotten spells. In the council’s never-ending quest to stomp out magic, they’d want those spells in their hands versus the hands of other vampires.
I had to give Ian credit—the council was so entranced by discovering what treasures the scrolls contained, they barely seemed to notice him anymore. I had to take advantage of their distraction before one of them snapped out of their wonder over the return of the