A growl erupted in the air. Pissed…off.
I shoved my sweater back down over my head and patted the air in my lover’s direction. “I’ll take care of it. Don’t worry.” I sidestepped a broken lamp lying on the floor in front of me and hurried to Bel’s bedchamber door. I opened it swiftly and stepped out into the hallway. I surveyed the scene, and stated, “Now is really not a great time, my lords.”
Lord Cato and Lord Xenon stood in the hallway, both wearing horrible scowls on their faces.
My father hissed, “It’s been four days. Without any word from him.”
I peered down my nose at him. “I’ve kept you informed.”
“All you’ve told us is that ‘he’s working on it’.” Lord Xenon shook his head hard, his black military-style haircut harsh with his features. “That isn’t good enough right now. We need transparency, and we aren’t receiving it.”
“We need to speak with him.” Lord Cato pointed at the door. “Now.”
I held up a stopping hand. “If you go in there right now, you’ll only make matters worse. He’s barely slept. He’s barely been eating. And he’s in a horrible mood tonight.”
My father glowered. “I don’t care if he’s in a bad mood—”
“You don’t understand,” I growled, cutting him off. “He’s agitated right now. Do you want to go in there when he’s pissed off? Doyouwant to poke the beast when he’s already in a bad mood?”
“It doesn’t matter. We need to go inside.” Lord Cato scratched his cheek and sighed. “We need to figure out how it’s going and speak with him.”
My eyebrows rose. “I think you’re making a mistake.”
Lord Xenon muttered, “Thank you for the advisement, your majesty, but we’ve been dealing with him longer than you have. We’ve seen his bad moods before, just like he’s seen ours. We know how to deal with him.”
I pinched my lips together.
Lord Xenon was probably right.
I still didn’t like them bothering him, though.
I leaned toward both men, and snarled, “If either of you upsets him too badly while he’s already troubled, I will fucking hurt you. Understand?”
Both stood silent for a long moment.
Lord Xenon broke the quiet first. He hummed softly, “You’re awfully protective of him, your majesty.”
My brows snapped together. “And?”
He chuckled. “I was simply stating an observation.”
I swung my gaze to my father. “Do you have any commentary you’d like to add?”
“Nope.” Lord Cato rocked back on his heels and placed his hands into his pockets. “You’re old enough to know what you’re heading for and make your own decisions on your personal life.”
“That’s very kind of you to say, mydarlingFather,” I muttered. I turned and opened the door for them. “Enter at your own peril, my lords.”
Leaving a grand total of five personal royal bodyguards behind us, we stepped inside Lord Belshazzar’s bedchamber. I shut the door behind us and went to sit on the unkempt bed—no housekeepers having been allowed in here—and watched the events with an eagle eye.
Lord Belshazzar had shoved all the furniture to the walls of the room, leaving a large clearing in the center of his intimate bedchamber. He sat in the center of it, unshowered for four days, wearing a pair of dress slacks and nothing more. The tomes written in the ancient druid language were spread around him in a circle, each one opened to an exact page, while he wrote on a pad of paper and crawled from book to book studying each one carefully as he took more notes.
My vampire Overlord didn’t look up from his work, but he did growl under his breath at their interruption.
Lord Cato stepped over the broken lamp and walked to the edge of the circle of books. He took a seat and crossed his legs, and then placed his hands in his lap. My father stayed silent as he looked over the situation happening before him.
Lord Xenon stayed farther away and leaned a shoulder against the door, asking quietly, “What progress have you made, my lord?”
Lord Belshazzar shifted from his sitting position. He crawled to a book on his right and stared down at it. His eyes slowly read the words there, and then he wrote on his pad of paper again. He finally answered in a voice rough from disuse, “The spell needed is complicated.”
