Waiting for my father.
Waiting for blood to be spilled.
Feet braced apart, I watched from the balcony, hands clasped behind my back, scanning every family, down to the youngest member. From up here, I saw everything—the sweep of blood-red carpet leading to the dais, the semicircle of gilded chairs reserved for the five family heads, the glittering crowd pressed back behind the velvet cordon.
Five hundred pairs of eyes.
Five hundred potential threats.
The Draconi Brotherhood lined the perimeter like pillars of carved obsidian, silent and lethal. To mortal eyes, they wouldn’t even appear human. Impossibly large, stronger than any man, predators filled with primal menace. To us, they were guardians, each bearing the mark of the dragon branded onto their chests.
My father’s personal swords, sworn to protect, to enforce.To kill.
And tonight, they were mine to command.
Nico Draconi prowled from one shadow to the next, blending into the darkness so thoroughly, I doubted anyone but me saw him.
“North balcony secure,” Nico’s voice crackled in my earpiece. “No movement on the roof. Wards holding steady.”
“Good.” My gaze swept left, over the guests clustered beneath the towering marble columns. “Keep an eye on the DiSangue delegation. Paolo’s acting nervous… well, nervous for him.”
They were our most unpredictable bloodline, secretive and dangerous—blood-obsessed priests and occultists in charge of our most ancient vampire rites and forbidden blood magic, with ever-shifting loyalties. The last thing I needed today was a twitchy priest going rogue.
“Already on it.”
The heavy air was scented with beeswax, expensive perfume, and the metallic tang of a bloodthirsty crowd anxious to get the ceremony over with and onto the debauchery that followed. This palace—ourpalace—was wrapped in enough magic to deaden even my powers, the very foundation sunk deep enough into the lagoon’s mud to grow roots.
Power. History.Threat.
That was what every member of the D’Immortali Dynasty felt the moment they set foot inside our domain.
In moments, the Blood Compact would begin.
Every ten years, the heads of the five great families of the D’Immortali Dynasty came here to renew their oath to my father. To the Dominico line. To our unimpeachable rule.
Every decade, they bled for us.
And every decade, my father reminded them exactly what happened if they broke that oath.
I let my gaze drift over the crowd, cataloguing faces.
The DiSangue Order claimed the left side of the room, a splash of crimson against pale stone. Their matriarch, Signora Emilia DiSangue, wore a red velvet gown and a collar of rubies, every inch the cunning female who had spawned that deadly bloodline. Dressed in black robes, her eldest sons flanked her like matching weapons—Paolo, with his constant restlessness, and Vincenzo, an opposite study in stillness.
Vincenzo lifted a second glass of blood wine from a passing tray, his jaw already tight, downing the entire thing in one go.
The son who abstains is drinking tonight,I noted.Interesting.
The Demente Syndicate lingered in the darkness between the columns, and the other families kept well away, putting a good ten feet between them and their patriarch. With his ever-present cane, Rocco Demente gave the impression of a male who lived in perpetual twilight—straight, silvered hair, hollowed-out cheeks, eyes like chips of obsidian. There were no smiles, no greetings; his people didn’t bother with small talk. Dark clothes, small movements, the constant awareness of exits.
But that was what made them masters of shadow and secrecy. Rocco’s syndicate controlled our intelligence networks, a vast matrix of spies stretching across Europe and smuggling routes from here to Newfoundland.
The Draconi Brotherhood didn’t have a “delegation.” Theywerethe walls that protected us, especially tonight. Their Master, Severin Draconi, was posted at the base of the dais itself, to the right of the throne, shaved head gleaming, his expression carved from stone.
I leaned out, balanced on the balls of my feet. Looking for…
There she was.
The DiRavello Court stood shoulder to shoulder right beneath me, the daughter draped in midnight-blue silk, her long, fragile throat encased in diamonds. She seemed even smaller tonight, a picture of cultivated elegance and grace, solemnly staring at the empty gilded chair.
