“You said we needed to talk about something, Skye?” I asked.
Skye squared her shoulders. “Yes, Queen Leila.” She glided forward, stopping respectably short of the animals. She held out her hand, and both Kevin and Muffin meandered up to her.
Kevin licked her hand while Muffin twined around her like a house cat.
Apparently, they like all of my people. That’s a relief—but maybe I shouldn’t rely too much on their opinion. They liked Lord Linus a lot, which doesn’t demonstrate good judgment.
Irritated, I pushed away the memory of Lord Linus rubbing Kevin’s belly while the big shade twitched his paws in glee.
The glooms and shades opened up a little path for Skye, who took it, then set her tablet down. “We have two matters to discuss. Firstly, you must decide on your personal seal.”
I frowned. “My what?”
“Your personal seal.” Skye flipped her tablet around to show me. “The Night Court has an official seal that is used for any official statements, papers, alliances, etcetera, that need to be posted to other Courts, to the Curia Cloisters, or to other supernaturals. It stands for our Court—and by extension your will.” She tapped a picture of a seal—a crescent moon and a few stars—pressed into navy blue wax.
“However, you need a personal seal to use on all internal documents—any statements you might give specifically just in the Court, anything that needs you to bear witness like passing estates on to children, tax documents, basically anything that will stay in our Court but needs to be marked so the citizens know it comes from you.”
I plopped down in my leather office chair, which wheezed out air. “It’sjustfor internal stuff? No one outside the Night Court will see it—including other Courts?”
“Correct. Given Court loyalty—and the…competitive spirit between Courts—no one outside the Night Court would ever see this seal, given that it would mean they are looking at important internal documents.” Skye swiped on her tablet, showing a new display of seals, all pressed into wax blobs. “Here are examples from past rulers.”
The seals varied greatly from fierce—a scythe slashing through a full moon—to beautiful—a flower in front of tiny stars. There was even one with a gloom on it—although it didn’t look as underfed or have patchy fur like mine.
“Okay.” I thoughtfully leaned back in my chair.
Skye bowed slightly. “I expect you’ll need a few days to think it over.”
“Nah.” A grin crawled across my lips. “I know exactly what I want in my seal.”
Ohh, this was going to be fun.
Skye pulled a stylus out of a pocket in her suitcoat and took her tablet back. Once she got to a new screen, she held her stylus above the tablet in preparation. “Yes?”
“It’s a creature from the Night Realm,” I said.
Skye nodded as she started to write on her tablet. “An appropriate choice. What one?”
My big grin made my cheeks hurt. “For my seal, I want a pigeon-racoon-griffin.”
“You want one ofthosetrash pickers?” Indigo yelped. “But they’re disgusting—they’re vermin!”
“I know. That’s why I want it,” I said.
Skye’s eyes widened slightly, but she wrote it down.
“You’ve lost your mind,” Indigo flatly said.
“Nope—I have a really good reason for it.” I wanted to look cool and set my feet up on the edge of my desk, but it was areallynice desk, and my parents raised me better than that, so I leaned forward and rested my elbows on it instead.
“I’ve finished with the photos—I’ll explain things to my people immediately,” Chase interrupted. He bowed to me, nodded to Indigo and Skye, then beat a hasty retreat like a man who knew something was about to go down and he wanted no part of it.
Indigo had her hands propped up on her hips and didn’t even acknowledge Chase’s flight. “What kind of idiotic reason could inspire you to pick out the realm vermin as your seal?”
“Because every last noble is going tohateit,” I purred.
“But it’s not going to stabilize your position, or increase your reputation,” Skye said.
“Yeah, I’m aware of that. And I don’t care anymore.”
