Pulling my legs free of the frayed rope, I had to thank my guardian angel, who was so obviously working overtime, for the hasty, and botched, job of tying me up.
Standing, nearly falling over from the blood rushing back to my feet and catching my balance on the portrait, I smiled at Livia.
“I’m going to avenge you,” I promised her, and really, the smile behind her eyes, I could see it clear as day.
Limping across the room, I saw what looked like a much longer pugio, but was certain had another name, and picked it up so I had something moderately sharp in each hand.
“You may want to drink from the consort before you slit his throat,” Gideon told him. “If the flavor of his blood is anything like the scent—tasting blood meant only for the prince will be a once-in-a-lifetime experience.”
“Why don’t you drink?”
“I have my reasons.”
“Which it seems you’re not willing to share.”
“Not today.”
“You know,” the other man said with a laugh, “Varic finding his consort as well as his brother’s dead wife in his home, you might very well break him.”
“No, he’ll be too incensed that Gaius’ power grab set all of this in motion. He’ll kill his cousin first, then his uncle, and we’ll have a king to be feared, that all the Noreia will be proud to follow to whatever future we deem best.”
“We’re so close to the end.”
“Yes,” Gideon agreed. “We need only finish.”
Slipping behind the door, I waited, listening for Gideon to take his leave, and when I heard the door latch, I knew he was gone.
“He’s insane if he thinks that I’m only going to taste the consort’s blood.”
“What?” Nerilla gasped, and I could hear the rising horror.
“I’m going to drain every drop of the exquisite vintage I’m sure he is—and you are.”
“No, please,” she pleaded. “We’re—our blood is only for our princes.”
“Your blood, his blood, it’s mine, and I’m going to enjoy taking it from both of you, but first my men are going to make you both a bit more receptive.”
There was no mistaking what he’d be watching his men do to both Nerilla and me. As Gideon said, he liked to watch.
“No!” she shrieked, and I heard something crash, more glass.
“This is inevitable,” he threatened her, at which point I flew around the door and out into the great room where Nerilla stood holding an ornate vase, the remains of others scattered near the man in the Venetian clown mask.
“Oh, that’s creepy,” I said, darting over to Nerilla, keeping an eye on him as I moved.
“You see!” she shrieked at him. “I told you he would save me! What did I say? What did I say?” she roared before hurling the vase at him.
He leaped out of the way, and I was going to attack, but I didn’t want to leave Nerilla. Spinning around, he bolted for the double doors, flung them open, and rushed out, yelling for his guards at the top of his lungs.
“You better run!” she roared after him.
“Why’re you taunting him?” I snapped at her.
“He started it!”
“Do you even know what you’re saying right now?”
“I don’t know!” she yelled again.
“Kill the decibel level, crazy lady. There are guards downstairs,” I reminded her. “Help me barricade the door.”
Instantly she was with me, closing and locking the doors as I put my sword and dagger on the couch and pushed it against the doors as a barricade.
“Is there a phone in here anywhere?” I asked her.
“Not that I’ve ever seen, and I’ve been here more than once over the centuries.”
“And you never thought to mention to Gideon that he needed to get an interior decorator that wasn’t from Las Vegas? It looks like Caesar’s Palace vomited in here.”
“Oh yes, you’re hilarious. But… are you mad at me?” she blurted, her voice hitching as she knocked over an end table with a marble top that cracked the floor. I picked it up and put it onto the couch with the coffee table and chair I had already piled there.
“You were shocked,” I told her, hefting a carved giltwood bench onto the stack of furniture before darting over to get an ottoman that I thought wouldn’t be quite as heavy as it was. “I know—Jesus,” I complained, nearly breaking my back, “that when he told you how I claimed both Varic and his wolf, you were surprised.”
“Yes,” she told me, and I saw the tears welling up in her eyes. “That was all it was, just—I was shocked. Cassius always said that the wolf was what made him strong,” she said, knocking over a column only to have it shatter into large pieces of hollow plaster.
“Disappointing,” I teased her, trying to keep her focus on the task at hand and not on any residual guilt with me, or fear of what was most likely going to happen to us.
She laughed then, crying at the same time, and I grabbed the weapons from the end of the couch and rushed over to her.
Lunging at me, she wrapped her arms around my neck and squeezed tight. “I’m so sorry,” she said, crying now, the tears running down her cheeks. “I was just caught off guard. I worried that Varic would be weak, but I know you love him, and he loves you, and neither of you could ever make the other anything but strong.”
I squeezed her so tight because I knew it, I knew my friend had only a moment of uncertainty, just as I would have, but that she and I were solid, always. It was so new, our friendship, begun at a run instead of a walk, but I loved her already, and there was nothing better than having my faith restored.
“Forgive me,” she begged me. “Please forgive me. I don’t want to lose you.”
“You’re not gonna lose me; you’re never gonna fuckin’ lose me.”
The smile I got, through her tears, I would remember for the rest of my life.
“Were you buying that whole thing about Carice?” I said, changing the subject.
“No,” she said, catching her breath, leaning back, wiping at her eyes as she stared at me. “I’m so glad you thought that was strange as well.”
“To me, the king seems like the kind of man who does nothing grudgingly or on a whim,” I said, offering her my opinion. “If he was so hot for Carice, why not take her for his courtesan after Cassius died, as was his right?”
“That’s exactly what I was thinking,” she admitted. “And though the king did, in fact, spend weeks drinking and whoring to grieve his son––”
“Which is really poor form,” I chimed in.
“Yes, agreed,” she said quickly. “I don’t think any of that had a thing to do with Carice, but instead everything to do with the king not wanting to face the loss of his firstborn son.”
“From what I’ve seen of the man, that sounds right to me,” I said, putting all the conviction I felt into my voice. “I don’t think Gideon knows the king quite as well as he thinks.”
“No,” she affirmed, looking better, stronger, girded. “Gideon knew how to hurt me, and what exactly to say. He knows Carice is my weakness.”