Dorian had been noble in helping Elex save me from the carriage. What purpose did it serve to diminish that with his own agenda? I was honestly grateful for his efforts until he turned it into a ‘Dorian Festival.’
The man had a past, he had an agenda, but to dismiss my thanks as he would dismiss a servant really chapped my ass. To turn my danger into his gain?
“Kimber, wait.”
Danai was trying to catch up to me on the path. I realized how fast I had been walking and brought my pace down from ‘very pissed off’ to ‘I simply need fresh air.’
She was able to catch up in a moment. “My dear girl, you are just showing me that I need to get back into my fitness routines.” She panted for a moment, and my tension was broken with that comment.
“I am sorry, Danai. He just makes me so angry. He’s unfair and mean, and then does something noble, and squashes it in the next moment.”
Matching pace with me, she sighed heavily. “But, Kimber, that’s him. That’s who he is. He’s a brilliant man, a powerful magic master, and a complete asshole to everyone around him. You’re not an exception to his rule.”
“Why, though?”
“Because he’s thousands of years old, my dear. Thousands. He has machinations that have machinations that have plots with plans peppered with more machinations. He sees…well… We see patterns in everything. I am not young, and I see the wheels and cogs of patterns in our society. I am not yet cynical about it.
“Be warned, my dear. Many of us do have secret agendas we do not share with one another. We have lived and served under the same roof for more than a thousand years and some of us much longer. Our lives would be boring without our own agendas. If we did not keep secrets, we would be horrible people. Horrible. Worse than anything Dorian has shown you.”
I listened to the gravel crunching under our feet as we kept pace with each other. “I don’t wish to be a pawn in these games.”
Danai nodded. “I understand that. It’s noble.”
“I won’t be.”
Her hand landed on my arm. “But, my dear, you already are.”
CHAPTERTWENTY-TWO
~ GWYNNORE ~
Dia de los Muertos.
Day of the Dead.
The name was deliciously appropriate.
The Spanish sounded so romantic as it rolled off my tongue.
“The overlords moved the Blood Rite to coincide with the festival nearly a century ago.” Adelie fussed in my closet searching for something. “Everyone agreed it was just too marvelous a festival to not take advantage of. Mostly, it’s celebrated in Mexico, but there are a lot of people all over the world who love it, so we use it.”
I folded my arms. “They just up and moved the Blood Rite?”
She peered at me through the clothes. “Please. Isanythingin our world done that simply?” She ducked back down. “Of course it wasn’t just up and moved. It took years of petitions, and causes and revisions, and arguments and proofs… It’s like, come on, you ancient assholes. Just realize this is a good thing. This is just another way to hide. If our Blood Rite were at the same time as the humans heldDia de los Muertosand Halloween, it was just another level of protection.”
“Halloween. Hmm. That’s the Christian usurpation of Samhain, right?”
“It is. The human witches still observe it, but most human children in the New World dress up for Halloween. It’s just so much fun that we can go freak people out during Blood Rite and not be feared.”
“They don’t fear us—”
“Perfect.” She lifted a long black shift and held it out. “And no, they don’t fear us on that one day. Show up a week later, and you’d have humans pissing themselves. But that one day, we can go out, show everything about ourselves, and they love being terrified by it.”
“Interesting.”
Adelie shook her head. “Humans are so damn weird.”
I laughed and took the dress as she held it out for me. “What the hell is this? Am I dressing up as a nun?”
