Rina inclined her head in appreciation, and Mom gave my shoulder another squeeze, then Rina asked me to tell the men we were ready. Either more practice or another test—one I wasn’t sure I could pass. I had never reached out to multiple people at once or someone so far away before. Not on purpose, anyway. In fact, the other person had always been only a few feet away. I concentrated on the image of a black cloud in my head and pushed it outward. I extended it beyond the confines of my skull, while keeping it from enshrouding Mom or Rina—I would hear the thoughts of whoever came “within” the cloud. I continued pushing it out, beyond the room to search for Tristan, but the force was too much. My wall fell, and I heard a jumble of everyone’s thoughts. I sucked the cloud right back into my head and raised the wall.
“Sorry,” I mumbled, shaking my head.
Rina’s brows furrowed for an instant, reminding me of the look she’d given me at breakfast, then calm returned to her face.
“Do not worry, dear,” she said, “you will learn. Right now, however, we do not have time.”
She fell silent while she “called” for Tristan, Solomon, and Owen.
“How far out can you go?” I asked her while we waited for them.
“If it is to pick up any random thoughts from anyone, a few kilometers, though without proper control, it can be quite painful if it is a crowded area. If it is to communicate directly with someone in particular, much farther, especially if I am very familiar with them. You can identify your mother, Dorian, or Tristan across a large, crowded room simply from a laugh or a single spoken word, yes? It is easier because you are attuned to their voices.”
I nodded with understanding. Then I thought I must have been using my gift all wrong, with the visual of the cloud—it wasn’t a good enough analogy. I sighed with frustration. This was the worst time to be confounded.
“Rina, I don’t think I can do this yet. I have too much to learn.”
“You can do this, Alexis,” she said. “You were able to save Tristan, even with all the Daemoni and Amadis soldiers there. You blocked them out and focused only on him, no?”
Only a few days ago, I’d protected Tristan from a Daemoni attack on his soul, partially by talking him through it telepathically. I had no clue how I pulled it off so well, though, how I was able to keep out everyone else and only talk to him, without anyone but Rina, Mom, and Owen aware of what I was doing.
“That is all you need to do during the meeting,” Rina said. “Hold your wall and focus on one mind at a time. Just listen. That is all.”
There was no more time to argue. Mom opened the door right as the men reached it. Tristan took my hand and “led” me for the flash—all I had to concentrate on was going where he was, since I’d never been to the destination before. There were other ways to flash somewhere new, but I hadn’t learned them yet.
I was starting to feel like an alien, learning the ways of a whole new world.
We appeared next to Rina and Solomon in a small area that must have been a holding chamber and had been empty until we arrived. The room reminded me a little of the green rooms when I did television interviews, though the stone walls indicated the building pre-dated television by millennia. The chilly air—no fire in these grates—might have caused a mage or a Norman to shiver, but no one here noticed. Mom sent Owen out to see if all the council members had arrived.
I stepped over to the single window and was surprised to see a whole village outside below us. We were at the top of a hill, at one end of a main road that ended with a pier jutting out over the sea. Between here and the beach, people bustled in and out of an eclectic collection of shops and other buildings lining each side of the road, many with brightly colored awnings, others blank and austere. The rooftops of houses—some steep and pointed, some flat, and others rounded, all in various shades from white to blue to fuchsia—spread out beyond them.
“Where are we?” I wondered aloud. We had to still be on the Amadis Island since it was shielded—we could only flash within shields, but not through them.
“The Council Hall in the island village,” Tristan said from right behind me. “All those people out there are Amadis.”
“You mean . . . witches and wizards and vampires and everything?” I asked with awe.
“Yes, your very characters.”
Of course, they weren’t the exact characters in the books I’d written about witches, werewolves, vampires, and various other supernaturals. I thought I’d been writing all fiction, not knowing these creatures actually existed, but my fiction came somewhat close to reality, which I’d learned only a few days ago. Seeing the people out there—my people, the Amadis—was like seeing my characters come to life.
“I want to go meet them,” I said, momentarily forgetting the whole reason we stood at this particular window in the first place.
Tristan chuckled. “You’ll meet some today, don’t worry.”
Of course. The council members themselves weren’t exactly human. The cold-water effect of this realization doused my enthusiasm. How can I possibly concentrate on my task now? I’d be too distracted, overcome with excitement of meeting real-life creatures I’d been so fascinated with since I was a kid. My stomach fluttered with anxiety—I was doomed for failure.
“Tristan,” Rina said from the other side of the room, and we both turned toward her. “I have just learned some of our members have been delayed with . . . a situation. You may take Alexis into the village to orient her.”
“Alexis!” Why did she seem to be yelling my name all morning? I tilted my head, acknowledging her. “Please practice listening while in the village. It will give you the confidence you need before going into the meeting.”
I nodded as Tristan took my hand. He led me out of the large, stone building and down a path to the main road through town. As we meandered through the business district, I gaped with amazement at everything, keeping Tristan quite amused. The many shops sold a wide variety of goods. In one window, dried herbs hung from the ceiling and shelves contained jars of other reagents, some unidentifiable and others I wished I hadn’t been able to identify (lizard eyeballs!), for the mages. Others displayed bottles of thick, red liquid with pretty labels similar to wine bottles, but instead of “pinot noir,” “cabernet,” or “merlot,” they advertised “O+” and “B-’—donated blood for the vamps. Live animals roamed one window display, imitating a pet shop, but these weren’t pets. Rather, chickens, rats, and hogs waited to be selected for were-creatures’ meals. One shop sold wands and another enchanted armor for the warriors. People, dressed in a variety of fashions, present-day and not, frequently appeared and disappeared, flashing around the village.
I couldn’t help but wonder what my fellow fantasy authors would think if they ever saw this place. Many had described similar villages in their works, but what would they do if they actually saw it in person? Probably be like me . . . ambling about with their mouths hanging open.
“Are they scared of you?” I whispered to Tristan at one point, as we walked down a residential street by ourselves. “Everybody bows their heads, and no one looks us in the eye.”
“Maybe,” he said with a chuckle, “but that’s not why they do it. You’re royalty, my love. We both are. They do it out of respect.”
“Oh, right. I wish they wouldn’t. It makes me feel . . . weird. I thought this would be the last place I’d feel unusual, surrounded by all these mythical creatures that aren’t really mythical.”
He slid his arm around my waist and pulled me close to him. “Stop worrying about what everyone else thinks.”
“Easy for you to say. You’ve been beautiful and you forever. You’re used to it.”
“And you’ve been beautiful and you forever, too. Your forever is shorter than mine, but you should be used to it by now.”
“I’ve only been beautiful and royalty for a few days, and I don’t think I’ll ever get used to it.” In fact, every time I caught my reflection in the mirror since the Ang’dora, I had to stop for a moment, making sure it was really me. So I stayed away from mirrors as much as possible. It was too much to accept.
Tristan kissed the top of my head. “You’ve become self-conscious on me again. You remind me of when I first met you.”
I remembered how uncomfortable I’d been with him, torn between wanting him to know the real me and trying to be “normal” because I thought he was. It felt like several lifetimes ago.
“Sorry. I just feel so out of place here,” I said as I contemplated the odd assortment of houses lining the street.
Some were painted in vibrant colors or with wild patterns, and others appeared to be from the ancient Greek era, perfectly preserved. The mish-mash looked as though houses from Whoville were picked up by a tornado and randomly dropped into a neighborhood of Parthenon-like buildings. Various odors carried on the air, some pleasant, some not so much, making me wonder what kinds of concoctions were being created in some of the more eccentric homes. A few people were outside—one cutting herbs from a garden, another walking a pet tarantula the size of my head on a leash, making me shudder—and they all inclined their heads as we passed by.
“I’m the alien but they all treat me like . . .” A weirdo.
“Royalty?” Tristan finished for me.
I sighed. “Yeah. At this rate, I’ll be ready to get back to normal life sooner than I thought. At least in the normal world, I know how to behave, what to do.”
He gave me a squeeze. “We’ll be leaving soon enough, I’m sure. But first you have a lot to learn. You need to train. Have you been practicing at all, or just gawking?”
“Pretty much just gawking,” I admitted, and then I frowned. I hated listening to people’s thoughts, and it felt especially intrusive when the people close by thought they were in the privacy of their own homes. At least on the main street, people would be thinking fewer intimate thoughts and more about their business at hand. “Let’s go back downtown, or whatever you call it, so I can be with more people.”
As we walked, I pushed my cloud out to people we passed long enough to hear a brief thought, then quickly pulled the cloud in as soon as I’d succeeded. I kept to only one person at a time, afraid I’d lose control if I tried more. Fortunately, what I heard was mostly mundane, except . . .
“Can’t stop thinking of him as Seth. Look at him, walking around as though he owns the place, his hands all over the real royalty, as though he owns her. He’s such a traitor. He’ll be the downfall of the Amadis.”
As we walked by, the man—I picked up the thought he was a were-animal of some sort—inclined his blond head like everyone else, and hurried past us.
“Wow, he’s not quite a fan of yours,” I muttered to Tristan. “He thinks you’re a traitor.”
“Yes,” Tristan said with a hint of steel in his voice, “there are some who think I shouldn’t be here . . . and especially shouldn’t be with you.”
Before I could say what those people could physically do to themselves, my brain rattled with an agitation that exceeded my own. Somehow my mind followed the disturbance to pick up the disjointed thoughts.
“This meeting . . . a farce! . . . What to believe! . . . Another daughter? . . . And the boy?... Martin ruling?... Is it possible? . . . Tristan—a traitor!... Something needs to be done. . .the Amadis . . . Decimated!”
I peered over my shoulder, sensing the owner of such mental chaos behind me, but no one was there. Whoever had been so upset had disappeared.
My own mind spun. The fragmented thoughts made no sense. Were his thoughts really so disjointed, or did the telepathy cut in and out like a poor cell phone signal? Did he mean my future daughter? And Dorian? Who was Martin? And, most importantly, how many people thought Tristan would betray us, and how could they possibly still believe that after everything he’d done for the Amadis?
I opened my mouth to tell Tristan what I heard, but he cut me off. “Rina’s asking for our return.”
“She told you? But not me?”
Tristan shrugged, took my hand, and led me back to the big, white building at the top of the hill, the Council Hall. I wondered briefly why Rina had only spoken to Tristan as if I was inferior, but by the time we entered the little room in the council building to wait with Mom and Rina, my mind had returned to the commotion I’d heard.
The man had mentioned the meeting being a farce, but didn’t specify which meeting. The council meeting that was about to begin or another one? Thinking he might possibly be a council member, I knew I needed to gather my wits and courage and do a damn good job of “listening” for Rina. Something was definitely going on.
“You can’t go in there!” Owen’s bark came from the other side of the door, pulling me out of my internal thoughts.
“Owen, I am your mother. You let me in right now,” commanded a stern female voice. The door burst open. “Sophia!”
“Sorry,” Owen muttered, following the woman in.
Mom grinned widely. “It’s okay, Owen. I doubt your mother is trying anything sneaky with us.”
The woman slid out of her leather jacket and tossed it to Owen as she strode over to Mom and embraced her. She wore black leather from head to toe—a bustier, pants, and combat boots—and though her build was slight, the confident way she moved and held herself would make a bully cower. She appeared to be in her mid- to late-thirties, but she had to be nearly three times older: Owen appeared to be twenty-five, but was actually sixty-eight, and this woman, apparently, had given birth to him. With shoulder-length, straight hair the same shade of blond as Owen’s and eyes the same sapphire blue, the resemblance was obvious.
“I know I’m breaking protocol, but I couldn’t wait a minute longer to see you or to meet Alexis,” she said, already advancing on me. She didn’t wait for introductions. “Ah, yes, you are as beautiful as I’ve heard. Hello, Alexis, I am Charlotte Allbright.”
It took me a moment to recover from her straightforwardness. “Uh, nice to meet you, Ms. Allbright.”
She laughed. “You can call me Charlotte or Char.”
“Or Charred or Charcoal,” Mom said.
“You’ll never let me live that one down, will you?” Charlotte gave Mom a mischievous smile at some private joke.
“Alexis, this is Owen’s mother, as you’ve figured out,” Mom said. “And, I have to admit, a long-time friend of mine.”
“I apologize for my son’s irresponsibility while he was supposed to be protecting you. Sometimes I wonder why Sophia insists on him having the job. He should really—”
“Oh, no, please don’t blame him,” I quickly interrupted. “That was totally my fault. Owen’s great at his job—when I let him do it.”
Charlotte eyed me. “Hmm . . . well, I suppose I can understand, if you’re anything like your mother.”
“Worse,” Mom muttered. I tilted my head in question. “Charlotte has been my protector from time to time, and she thinks I’m hard-headed and rebellious.”
“Of course you are! I wouldn’t love you if you weren’t,” Charlotte said with a laugh.
Mom shrugged. “So, maybe I am.”
“You think I’m hard-headed and rebellious, worse than you?” I wasn’t sure what I thought about that.
“Of course you are. And I wouldn’t love you if you weren’t,” Tristan said from behind me as he placed his hands on my hips. Mom and Charlotte chuckled.
“Alexis, we will have our hands full with you,” Mom said.
I frowned. Charlotte placed her hands on each side of my face and looked me directly in the eye, an impish gleam in hers.
“These are admirable traits, Alexis. There are dark days ahead, and we’ll need your spunk and spirit. Martin says we all need to be prepared, especially you.” With that cryptic message—there was that name Martin again—she planted a kiss on my forehead. What did she mean by dark days ahead? And why especially me? I didn’t get a chance to ask as she turned away. “I suppose I should let Owen kick me out. I’ll see you soon. We have some catching up to do, Sophia.”
Charlotte held her arm out to Owen, and he took her elbow, pretending to forcefully escort her out of the room. She hooked her boot around the door, pulling it shut behind them.
“She’s a handful herself,” I muttered, and her laugh echoed from another part of the building.
Mom laughed, too. “Yes, she is. But she’s a great friend to me, a powerful warlock, and an excellent addition to the council.”
“She’s on the council?” I asked. She acted as though she hadn’t seen Mom for a long time, but Mom had been at the island for nearly a week. She and Rina returned before us so they could debrief the council on the recent events in the Florida Keys—my Ang’dora, Tristan’s escape, the Daemoni’s attack . . . and everything else.
“She is now. Martin, her husband, took Stefan’s place, but Char is a new addition. She’s been fighting in the Middle East and returned last night,” Mom explained. “Rina will swear her in this morning.”
So Martin was Char’s husband and Owen’s dad, and their family was apparently close to ours. Which made everything I’d already “heard” today much more confusing. This meeting may or may not be a farce, but it seemed as though it would certainly be intense, just as Tristan had predicted. I pressed my hands against my stomach, which twisted and turned with anxiety over Rina’s request.
“We’re ready to begin,” announced a low, booming voice.
Solomon stood at the door, beckoning all of us. I tried not to stare at him, but it was nearly impossible. After all, he was a real, live (or real, dead?) vampire. Now that I knew what to watch for, I realized he did look like a vamp, something I hadn’t noticed the other times I’d seen him. His complexion was an exotic ash color—the vampire paleness of someone who’d originally been dark-skinned. His features were broad and beautiful, his hair in cornrows, the front pulled back into a ponytail, and he had an accent I was sure originated somewhere in the Caribbean. He smiled at us, and his fangs were short, barely longer than a Norman’s eyeteeth, much less threatening than Vanessa’s and the other vampires’ fangs had been.
Solomon wasn’t the first vampire I’d seen in person, but he was the first good one I knew. Yet, as he continued smiling, my stomach tightened more with fear.
Rina joined him at the door, winding her arm with his. Mom stepped behind her, and Tristan and I stood behind Mom. Tristan took my hand as Owen led us through the door and down a short hallway. Seeing Mom alone between Solomon and Rina and Tristan and me made my heart ache for her. She’d given up any chance for a real mate—one who could handle her love and passion—to stay with me in the normal world. She’d had a handful of Norman boyfriends throughout my childhood, but none could give her true companionship. Even if she could have revealed her true identity, they would have never understood . . . and never survived.
We stopped at a doorway as Owen stepped inside and announced the matriarch’s entry. Wood scraped against stone—the sound of people rising to their feet—and then silence reigned. Rina and Solomon led us inside. Pillars lined the long sides of the rectangular room and on the walls at each end hung a large, ornate cross centered between two angels. But not peaceful, praying angels or cute cherubs—these angels brandished swords, daggers, and other weapons, their expressions fierce and their muscles large and defined, as if tensed for a fight.
At the center of the room stood a giant, round, wooden table with throne-like seats surrounding it. In front of all but five chairs stood an Amadis council member, their heads bowed. Rina and Solomon led us to the empty seats. Solomon sat on Rina’s left and Mom on her right. Mom and Tristan indicated I was to sit between them. Owen stood behind me. I felt as though I sat at King Arthur’s Round Table right in the middle of Athena’s temple.
As soon as the five of us took our seats, everyone else sat down, too.
Rina launched the meeting with a prayer, followed by swearing Charlotte in as “the second’s chosen confidante.” I’d gone through the Ang’dora and also had Tristan by my side, so Mom no longer needed to give me her full-time attention and protection. She would become a more permanent fixture on the council and, apparently, had chosen Char to be her personal advisor. Rina then introduced me to the council and Tristan officially as a member of the royal family. As soon as she said this, the room temperature seemed to drop a degree or two while the air thickened. I thought I’d imagined it until—
“Ms. Katerina,” murmured a man across the table from me. Well, not a man. A vampire, with dark, shoulder-length hair swept back from his lovely face, and an accent that rolled the “r” in a way that would make most women’s thighs tense.
“Yes, Armand?”
“Are you sure—”
Rina didn’t let him finish. “I am aware of your feelings. You have made them clear to me. And yes, I am sure. Do not forget we have given you a second chance.”
Armand pursed his lips and stared at the wooden table. Rina had effectively silenced him. The tension remained in the air, however, and I had a feeling Armand wasn’t the only one who had an issue with Tristan and his place at the table or in the family. Whoever I’d heard in the village was definitely one of these people at this table. I scanned the unfamiliar faces until my eyes landed on one I had seen before—the first guy, the blond Were, who had called Tristan a traitor. His dark eyes narrowed at me for a brief moment. It was time I went to work.
But Rina immediately distracted me when she mentioned a coronation ceremony—as in the official crowning of Tristan and me. In front of a crowd of strangers. My insides squirmed. The conversation didn’t last long, but my stomach still spasmed as Rina moved on to the next subject.
“Are there any regional updates since our last meeting two days ago?” she asked.
A woman of Asian descent, wearing a silver kimono and a ridiculous green hat the Queen of England would admire, stood first and delivered her report. I listened, taking time to become acclimated to the council before starting my task. That was my excuse anyway, but to be honest, nerves kept my mind from going there. The council members—not just creatures from my books, but the most powerful ones of our society—were intimidating enough. What if I screwed up? What if my wall fell and everyone found out what I was doing? I didn’t have the best control under ideal circumstances, and now I’d been thrown to the wolves. Part of me wanted to know what was going on, but the other part hid like a coward.
The Asian woman said the Daemoni had pulled back, with the last two attacks in China and Vietnam nearly twenty-four hours ago, about the same time Vanessa found Tristan and me in the Aegean Sea. Finding us was easy for the vamp—she’d drank my blood, creating a connection between us. It wouldn’t last, though. As she burned through my blood, consuming it as a fire consumes fuel, the connection would weaken and disappear. That’s what Tristan had told me, anyway.
Other council members simply said they’d experienced the same in their regions, although two had suffered rogue attacks. One this morning had delayed two council members.
Amadis all over the world were on edge, knowing attacks could resume at any time, and the council briefly discussed options for fighting back, but I tuned them out. The Ang’dora had enlarged the capacity of my brain, or, at least, allowed me to engage those parts most humans never do use, but I still had difficulty following the conversation, being unfamiliar with my new world—or with war strategy, for that matter. I observed my subjects a little longer, needing to gain a better understanding of them before tapping into their minds.
Besides Solomon and Armand, the French vampire who’d been shut down by Rina, the only other vampire on the council was Julia, who I recognized from the Keys. As Owen had mentioned, Julia definitely appeared to be a closer advisor to Rina than the rest of the council, besides Solomon. Rina looked to her often, and I suspected they exchanged silent communication frequently, though Julia never spoke aloud. The dark-haired vampire had eyed me during the meeting’s opening, more closely than everyone else, scrutinizing me just as she had done at the beach house. She still felt wrong to me, though I couldn’t explain the feeling.
Armand, it became apparent, oversaw the Amadis equivalent of the police—the group who ensured Amadis people managed themselves responsibly, whether within the Amadis society or while mainstreaming in the Norman world. In other words, that they didn’t bite or curse people.
My gaze skimmed over the were-animals, who were nearly as mesmerizing as the vampires and easier to identify than I expected. I couldn’t distinguish by sight exactly what kind of Were each was—by possessing animal bodies, the Ancients had created a Were bloodline in the form of every predatory animal on Earth. I thought one woman may have been a bird, perhaps an eagle or falcon. With thin limbs but powerful-looking shoulders and chest, round eyes, and a long nose, she certainly looked like a bird.
I identified the mages easily, too—not only because they obviously weren’t vamps or Weres, but while in the village, Tristan had pointed out their eccentric tastes, including their fashion styles. It wasn’t so easy determining what kind of mage each was—a female witch, a male wizard, or a more powerful warlock. All I knew was they weren’t sorcerers because according to Owen, the Amadis didn’t have any.
“Martin,” Rina said, the name catching my attention, “your intelligence update, please.”
The man sitting next to Charlotte stood, and I bit off a small sound of surprise. I’d expected to see an older version of Owen, but my protector definitely took after his mother, except his stature, which was exactly like his father’s—tall with long, sinewy muscles wrapping their lean frames.
“Yes, Ms. Katerina,” Martin said, giving her a nod. He scrubbed his hand through his shoulder-length, black hair, just as Owen would do, and, like Owen, three lines appeared between his eyebrows when he pushed them together in thought. The resemblance stopped there, however. Besides his dark hair that was nearly opposite Owen’s blond, Martin’s blue eyes were several shades lighter than Owen’s and set into a fine-boned face that made me think “pretty boy.”
Martin pressed his long-fingered hand down his white, button-down shirt, as if straightening it, pushed his shoulders back and lifted his chin. He spoke with a faint trace of an Irish accent and lilt, as if he’d had many years’ practice in hiding it. “As we expected, the Daemoni are preparing for war. Their attacks on Amadis villages may have stopped for the time being, but they’re making plans to grow their army.”
The statement sent a chill up my spine. Building their army meant attacking and infecting Normans—changing them into vampires and Weres. Of course, that meant the Amadis must fight back by converting the newly turned as quickly as possible, saving their souls and growing our own army at the same time.
“They won’t let Tristan—or Alexis—go easily, of course,” Martin added. “They will fight for them, harder than ever. Since we have them protected here, they appear to be in the midst of making plans for flushing them out. I recommend we keep them here on the island as long as possible, for their protection.”
“I disagree,” Armand said. “They need to mainstream. The boy is getting old enough to remember what he sees here. He cannot know our secrets, since he will . . .”
I didn’t hear the rest of Armand’s sentence—I didn’t have to, though, to understand he and others would want to protect the Amadis secrets from Dorian, their future enemy.
Rina broke into my mind.
“Alexis,” she said, again sounding as though she yelled in my head, automatically grabbing my attention. “Have you started?”
I pressed my lips together and wiped my palms on my dress as tendrils of anxiety slithered in and around me.
“Focus on the mages,” Rina instructed. “They are the only ones who could block me. You do not need to worry about the others.”
I pulled in a deep breath, tried to blow out the tension inside me, and commanded myself to proceed. The discussion of when we’d need to mainstream resided in one part of my brain, while I used another part to conjure my cloud. I envisioned enlarging the black cloud beyond my head, which took more work than ever before, probably because nerves tried to hold it in. With effort, I pushed it out to enshroud Charlotte, who I thought would be a good start. Nice and safe.
She wasn’t completely focused on the conversation either, but silently cussed at Mom for dragging her onto the council with all of its hellishly boring meetings, when she could be out fighting. Although, she also admitted to herself, she was happy to be paired up with Mom again and couldn’t wait for the paybacks Mom owed her for this meeting. Paybacks that involved margaritas on the beach and working with me. Hmm . . . what does that mean? I couldn’t linger on that last thought, though, and forced the cloud to Martin, but didn’t stay long with him, either—his mind was focused completely on the discussion, and he was Owen’s dad, after all. A pang of guilt stabbed at me for invading his parents’ thoughts in the first place.
My head already began to ache as I concentrated on moving my cloud along to Armand, and then, following Rina’s instructions, onto the next person, the were-falcon (a brief dip into her thoughts confirmed my theory of her being a bird). As everyone else discussed exactly how long we should stay on the island, I continued coercing my cloud around the table, taking my time with the mages. I learned nothing from their thoughts.
“We do not know for sure about the boy,” said a beautiful woman with raven hair and eyes, and skin the color of smooth caramel. Wearing an intricately embellished, gold sari, I figured she came from India and discovered she lived part of her life as a leopard when I checked her mind. I couldn’t help the intrusion, although she wasn’t a mage, after that statement about Dorian. Did she know something the rest of us didn’t?
“Of course we do, Chandra,” said the Italian blond man I’d seen in the village earlier. They had called him Savio, and I learned now, he was a were-shark. He and Armand were definitely on the same team, a team against Tristan. And, apparently, against Dorian. I didn’t like the French vamp and the Italian Were. Not one bit. “You are always optimistic, but all boys go to the Daemoni. That’s how it is, how it’s always been.”
“There is nothing wrong with having hope,” Chandra thought, but she didn’t respond aloud to Savio’s dismissive statement. I supposed she didn’t know anything, but simply wanted to hope, as I did.
“We will give them as much time as they need. Alexis needs to learn our ways before returning to the Norman world,” Rina said, putting that line of conversation to a temporary end. Surely they’d give us a move-out day sooner or later.
Although I hadn’t learned anything useful, I needed a mental break and allowed my cloud to disintegrate before my head exploded.
“As long as they’re trying for a daughter, who cares where they are?” Minh, the Asian witch with the green hat, asked. If she hadn’t been talking about me, I would have giggled with surprise at this little, soft-spoken woman bringing up the topic of sex. But she was talking about me. And her topic wasn’t sex, not really. It was the daughter I’d failed to give them.
The next daughter was a hotter topic than I expected. Everyone had something to say. They were more concerned about this subject than anything they’d discussed so far, even more than they were about the Daemoni’s preparations for war. After all, without a daughter to rule in the future, the Amadis would fall, regardless of what the Daemoni did. Having to face everyone in person made me feel worse than ever about this failure.
Armand went so far as to demand proof that Tristan and I were proactively working on this.
“Armand, you are not in France at the moment,” Martin said. “That is not an appropriate question.”
Armand banged his fist on the table. “We deserve to know.”
“We are working on it,” Tristan said. “I personally guarantee it.”
My face heated and surely became redder than the tomato on Minh’s hat. To add to my complete embarrassment, Solomon spoke up as a witness to confirm we were, indeed, working on it. Once again, I wanted to crawl under the table and never come out again.
My head pounded. The concentration of listening to everyone’s minds, the frustration of not learning anything, and the tension of this topic were like hammers taking turns on my brain. I felt so inadequate, in more ways than one, and didn’t want to disappoint Rina again. Since I hadn’t brought her the next daughter, I could at least do better with my so-called gift. So I tried once again, painstakingly pushing the cloud to only the mages, besides Owen, Charlotte, and Martin.
The conversation heated, though, making concentration on anyone’s thoughts difficult. Voices grew loud, and hands waved about as everyone’s emotional investment in this became clear. I tried to ignore the feeling of being personally attacked, even as my breaths grew shallow and my soul felt as though they physically pounded it. Just focus on your task. Don’t worry about them. Tristan will take care of it.
But it was too much. The emotions—mine and everyone else’s—overwhelmed me. My wall I kept so carefully in place crumbled. The thoughts came crashing in, wave after wave beating at my mind, swirling and tumbling about, pulling me under. I couldn’t distinguish thoughts from spoken words, let alone specific voices, except those I was most familiar with.
“Give them two years.”
“Too long. One year.”
“No, six months.”
“There are other possibilities to consider, too.”
“Not Tristan. Never right. Shouldn’t be here. Owen . . . the right mate.”
I gulped for air. My heart raced. I had no idea what thoughts Rina could hear or if she totally depended on me, but I was failing. A silent scream to her or Tristan or Owen that I needed help clawed at my mind, but I held it back, afraid I’d lose control and everyone would “hear” me, ruining everything.
“We do not need deadlines or other possibilities,” Rina said. “Tristan and Alexis are supposed to be together, their souls are made for each other. We must trust the Angels. They have told me there will be a daughter after Alexis.”
“I feel that truth. Tristan and Alexis have a daughter in their future,” Mom added.
“Not good enough. We need a daughter now!”
“We must take this into our own hands.”
“Stupid women. Basing everything on their feelings and non-existent messages from the Angels. Of course Alexis won’t get pregnant. We already have the girl. We just need to keep her hidden a little longer . . .”