Aurelia sat back against the seat with her arms crossed.
“Word will get back to him about your gift anyway. It won’t look good if we delay this any longer. And I need to warn Caspian.”
Atlas’s jaw twitched.
“General Lee won’t kill me,” I said, and everyone turned to look at me. “Neither will her brother. He said he needed Aurelia to obey, and killing any of us would make it difficult.”
“He may be bloodthirsty, but he’s lazy,” Cedar concluded. “He had General Lee there, likely doing the harder strategy work, whatever that may be. And he has his inner circle, the ones who are enforcing what he wants. Has anyone actually seen him kill anyone since… Levana?” Her voice got thick toward the end.
“Only in hissparring matches. He’s killed guards, and more recently moved on to his inner circle,” Aurelia answered her. “He had me do most of it. Up until now, as far as anyone is concerned, he hasn’t been the one to kill anyone outside the family.”
“He’s making sure you’re the one to step up if anyone wants to challenge him,” Atlas offered. “Didn’t you learn anything during your time under your father?”
A growl ripped from my throat. Aurelia placed her hand on my lap, quieting me.
“She’s right, unfortunately. He’s trying to separate me from everyone. It makes it less likely for people to side with me if there’s an uprising.”
But an uprising was exactly what we were trying to accomplish. We needed something to turn people against him. Adrian only killing the vampires who followed him wasn’t enough.
We needed something shocking. A kill that would make a statement.
“I have an idea,” Cedar said.
I turned to her with a smile.
“Scheming witch! I like where this is going.”
She sent me a smile that had my stomach flipping.
“First, let’s get through this, hm? Adrian will want to meet us first. After that trial, we can consider everything else.”
I knew what awaited us wouldn’t be easy, but the dread coming from Aurelia told me it might be harder than I imagined.
“And somehow the strays have made it back,” Adrian said from the nest of a bed he built for himself, feeders surrounding him. “Let’s hope this time they’re on a tighter leash, or I may need to get rid of them myself.”
My body was still weak, and the bastard was having Cedar and me kneel on the ground as Aurelia stood before him.
I had seen Adrian only twice in my life, once when he killed Levana and then at the engagement-turned-wedding, but having him so close now was giving me the same feeling as General Lee.
There was something evil about him. Especially in the way he looked at his own sister. I had seen those same eyes before, and it hit me again that his were nothing like his sister’s—or even their father’s, which never looked that…malicious.
“We won’t have a problem,” Aurelia declared, looking back at us.
I almost lost my balance but quickly righted myself before anyone could say anything. Adrian smiled, then looked us up and down, no doubt taking in our uniforms.
This part had been Aurelia’s plan. We had even gone as far as to dress in the new guards’ uniforms. It didn’t escape me how many times I’d played this same role, all of them feeling like different realities.
“They follow me, and now that I have sworn my loyalty to you?—”
Faster than I had ever seen a vampire move, he appeared in front of her.
Fast. Too fast. How did he move so?—
Aurelia gasped as his hand wrapped around her neck. It didn’t look like he was hurting her, but that didn’t convince my body that it was right.
I pushed myself forward, needing to get his filthy hands off her. Cedar’s hand on my arm, pulling me down, was the only thing that gave me pause.
I couldn’t stop the growling, though. Red covered my vision. My body wouldn’t go back into position, but at least Cedar’s hold on me kept me still.
