“Um…” The arrant seemed to wake up a little more. “I think he took the night off, sir. I don’t know where he is.”
Felix went very still. “He took the night off.”
It wasn’t a question, but the arrant babbled like it was. “Well, yeah. The charge wasn’t working tonight, right? He takes those nights off. She sticks to her schedule, so he didn’t think it’d be a problem.”
“He didn’t think it’d be a problem.” A red veil slipped over his mind, muting everything around him.
I don’t know where she is.
On this night of all nights, when Yvanna and her lackeys were in his girl’s city, she’d been left without a guard. And now he couldn’t reach her.
Something expanded in him. It was huge and hot and explosive. A lesser man would’ve called it rage, but for Felix, it was the wild joy of a wildfire — a certainty that he’d be scorching the earth and leaving nothing behind.
“Listen to me very carefully,” he said, deceptively calm. “You are going to get out of bed. You are going to find your charge in the next hour. If you can’t, you’ll report back to me. Once you’ve done that, I have another job for you.”
At last sounding like he’d grasped the gravity of his situation, the man rasped, “Sir?”
Felix stared blankly out at the sprawling courtyard of his estate. The beat of his own heart was all he heard when he ordered, “You’re going to hunt Stevenson down and shoot him in the fucking face.”
SIX
“You haveto at least pretend that you’re having a good time,” Milo muttered.
Felix took a sip of his synth and flipped his second in command the bird. “Fuck off. I’m the boss. If I want to look miserable at this boring party, I will.”
Milo sighed. Squeezing his hulking frame into the chair beside Felix’s, he scolded, “You haven’t even tried talking to the elders tonight, man. You know you have to. That was the whole point of this.”
Reconciliation,they’d called it. The old fucks were all too happy to smile and pinch his cheeks and drink his booze inhishouse now that there were no other contenders for the throne.
He might’ve taken the opportunity to enjoy rubbing his victory in their faces if he didn’t feel like he was coming out of his skin. And if he wasn’t certaintheywould take the chance to push their candidates for his blood bride under his nose.
It was one thing to know he’d have to take one and quite another to feel like he was being forced into it. Especially now.
His synth tasted like ash on his tongue as he took another long swallow. It hadn’t tasted right since he met Dahlia all thoseyears ago, but he could usually force it down. He barely managed it tonight.
Milo gave him a long look. He was good at making people do things with just a look like that, probably because everyone except Felix found his massive scar and pale eye unsettling. “She still not talking to you?”
“Does it look like she’s talking to me?”
Felix tracked the movement of a gaggle of his distant cousins as they drifted toward the bar in the corner of his ballroom. Some of them were too young to drink alcoholic synth, but he had little doubt they’d try. He certainly had, and his grandmother had somehow always known. And whooped his ass for it.
He missed the old bat. It did a man good to have a strong woman around.
“You still plan on picking her up next week?”
“Obviously.”
Milo braced his elbows on the small round table Felix had posted up at. Clasping his hands together, he cautiously began, “I really don’t think it’s a good idea to?—”
“It’s incredible that you believe repeating the same point six times means I’m going to start listening. Maybe you should try for a seventh, for science.” Felix pulled his phone out of his pocket. His molars ground together.
He liked Milo. Milo was one of his only real friends. Milo was his cousin. Milo was a good second in command. Milo was smart and loyal to the bone.
He also wanted to kill him more often than not. Especially when he tried to get Felix to leave Dahlia alone, which happened roughly once a week.
In the itty-bitty part of him that was reasonable, Felix understood that his cousin was doing what he’d always done: trying to protect him from himself. Milo was the only one ofthe inner circle who knew how deep his obsession with the little blonde server went, and if Felix was forced at gunpoint, he’d even say that he trusted the man with her safety.
But that didn’t mean he planned to listen to his advice.
