Page 125 of His Realm

“I know,” I said, smiling at him. He told me that often.

“So, did your matan powers work on the newer vampyrs here as Zev suggested to us they might?”

“I don’t think so,” I replied, thinking that I couldn’t recall anything I did affecting anyone much at all. “But my barrier changed. I was able to throw Ødger across the room when he came after me for my blood.”

He took a quick breath. “So your barrier acted not simply as a shield, but forcibly removed him from your space as well.”

“Yes.”

“Cirillo, Carice, and Keres told us of this incident,” Hadrian said. “They had never seen anything like that. You did well, keeping Ødger from taking your blood.”

“Thanks. I want my guards back, as it was not within Varic’s right to⁠—”

“Yes,” Hadrian agreed. “I will speak to them the moment Varic returns. I have the two of them here in the salon.”

I smiled at him.

“You must recognize, we all failed him that day.”

“No, you⁠—”

“We did,” Tiago stressed. “I saw the attack on the queen too late, and everyone else was more concerned with fighting than with your protection and the queen’s. By law, the prince should have all our heads for our lapse.”

“You guys were overrun,” I reminded him. “What else were you supposed to have done?”

“More,” Tiago said, his voice strained, thready. “We should have done more.”

I shook my head at him. “You’re judging yourself too harshly.”

“You don’t understand,” he husked, “I saw the queen screaming and crying, her pallor as the poison hit her system. I saw Decimus grab your hair and slit your throat. These are memories I will never be free of.”

Hadrian put a hand on his shoulder, and Tiago immediately took hold, needing the strength his mate always provided.

“I could not reach you between the contamination in my blood and those holding me down,” he rasped. “But then Varic was there, and took the heads of both Decimus and his son in one arc of his blade.”

I remembered their heads falling, but that was all.

“I saw you fall forward onto the queen like you were dead, heard her shrieking that your heart had stopped, and Varic roared so loudly, everyone came to a stop in the hall.”

“It was…chilling,” Hadrian whispered. “I have never heard such from him before. Ødger made the mistake of charging then, and even without benefit of the change, the prince caught Ødger’s face and crushed his skull.”

“I was not aware of that strength in him when not changed,” Tiago told me. “I believe in that moment; he was his beast without need of the shift.”

“I wish I’d been awake to help him.”

“The fighting ceased at that point, and Varic could not stop screaming.”

Tiago shook his head. “I cannot grasp that, losing Hadrian would be the only pain that could cause that reaction in me. He was…undone.”

Apparently moving me was hard, and Varic himself pulled the projectiles from my body. He’d held me in his arms as Keres took blood from him for the queen and made her drink, and then, though Varic screamed at her to leave him be, the queen told him she could hear my heart again now that the bolts had been removed.

Keres bound my wounds, and a bed was brought into the main hall, where the great hearth was, and I was placed in front of the roaring fire. When the king arrived a day later, he brought his personal physician, not the court one, who immediately put me on saline and blood transfusions. When the king sat down to give me his blood, Varic fell to his knees and wept.

“They hugged the whole time the king gave you the most precious blood in the realm.”

“I’m very thankful.”

“We all watched over you, and Varic raged,” Hadrian told me. “He removed Zev as your champion and your guards from your service. He screamed at all of us for allowing you and the queen to be harmed. Of course, he was most angry with himself…and inconsolable.”