The King

TWENTY-SIX

As Saxton stared at himself in his dressing room’s mirror, he pinched the butterfly ends of his bow tie and tugged the knot tighter. When he released the patterned silk, the thing kept its form and its symmetry like a pup well trained.

Stepping back, he smoothed his freshly shorn hair and pulled on his Marc Jacobs cashmere winter coat. He gave one sleeve then the other a tug; then he stretched out his arms so that the cuff links under his suit jacket showed.

They were not the ones with the family’s crest on them.

He didn’t wear those anymore.

No, these were VCA from the forties, sapphire and diamond, platinum setting.

“Did I do the cologne?” He looked at his Gucci and Prada and Chanel bottles, all of which were lined up on a mirrored tray with brass handles. “No comment from you all?”

A quick sniff of one wrist. Yes, that would be Égoïste, and it was fresh.

Turning away, he walked across the heavily veined cream marble floor and out into his white-on-white bedroom. Passing by the bed, he had an instinct to remake the whole thing, but that was nerves talking.

“I’ll just double-check.”

Plumping the pillows and rearranging the throw into the exact position it had been in when he’d gone in to dress, he glanced at the vintage Cartier clock on the bed stand.

There was no putting things off any longer.

And yet he looked around at the white chaise lounge and the white armchairs. Inspected the white mohair throw rugs. Walked over and made sure the Jackson Pollock over the fireplace was perfectly plumb.

This was not his old house, the Victorian that Blay had once spent a day in. This was his other place, a Frank Lloyd Wright single-story that he’d bought the second it had come on the market—because how could he not? There were so few of them left.

Of course, he’d had to do some clandestine remodeling and expansion of the basement, but vampires had long been working their way around humans and their pesky little building inspectors, et al.

Double-checking his Patek Philippe, he wondered why he was making this dreadful pilgrimage. Again.

It was like a horrible Groundhog Day thing. But at least it didn’t happen with great regularity.

As he ascended the stairs, he was dimly aware of fiddling with his bow tie once more. Unlocking the door at the top, he emerged into a sleek forties kitchen with fully functional, modern repros of all those Hello, Lucy appliances.

Every time he walked through the house, with its Jetsons furniture, and complete and utter lack of frills, it felt like he was back in post-WWII America—and it calmed him. He liked the past. Liked the different footprints of the various eras. Enjoyed living in spaces that were as authentic as he could make them.

And it wasn’t like he was going back to that Victorian anytime soon. Not after he and Blay had essentially started things there.

As he went out the front door, just the thought of that male made his chest tighten—and he paused, concentrating on the sensation, the memories that came with it, the change in his blood pressure and thought patterns.

After the two of them had broken up, which had been at his instigation, he’d done a lot of reading on grief. The stages. The process. And it had been funny … oddly enough, the best resource had been a little booklet he’d found on getting over the loss of a pet. It had questions that you were supposed to answer about what the dog had taught you or what you missed most about the cat or what your favorite moments with your cockatoo had been.

He wouldn’t have admitted it to anybody, but he’d answered each one of them in his diary about Blay—and it had helped. Up to a point. He was still sleeping alone, and though he’d had sex, instead of wiping the slate clean, it had just made him ache even more.

But things were better than they had been. At least he had an operating principle that was halfway normal now: He’d been walking dead for the first couple of nights. Now, though, he had a scab over the wound and he was eating and sleeping. There were still triggers, though—like every time he had to see Blay or Qhuinn.

It was so hard to be happy for the one you loved … when he was with someone else.

Like all of life, however, there were things you could change and things you couldn’t.

On that note …

Closing his eyes, he dematerialized and re-formed on a snow-covered lawn that was easily as big as a city park—and just as carefully maintained. Then again, his father hated anything out of order: plants, grass, objets d’art, furniture … sons. The grand manor house beyond was some fifteen thousand square feet in size, the different wings having been added over time by generations of humans. Staring up at it through the winter night, Saxton was reminded of exactly why his father had purchased the estate when some alumnus had left it to Union College—it was the Old Country in the New World, home away from the motherland.

A traditionalist, his father had relished the return to roots. Not that he’d ever truly left them.

Approaching the front entrance, the gas lanterns on either side of the mile-wide door flickered, casting ancient light on stone carvings that had actually been done in the nineteenth century as part of the Gothic Revival style. As he halted, he thought perhaps he would not ring the bell because the staff would be waiting for him.They, as with his father, were always in a hurry to get him in and out of the house—as if he were a document to be processed or a dinner to be served and cleaned up hastily.

No one opened the door preemptively, however.

Leaning in, he pulled on an iron chain with a velvet cover to generate the bell sound.

There was no answer.

Frowning, he stepped back and looked to the side, but that got him nowhere. There were too many manicured bushes to see into any of the diamond-paned, leaded-glass windows.

Being locked out of the house was such a testimony to their relationship, wasn’t it: The male requests him to come on his birthday and then leaves him out in the cold at the front door.

Actually, Saxton had decided that his existence was now a fuck-you to his father. From what he understood, Tyhm had always wanted a young—a son, specifically. Had prayed to the Scribe Virgin for one. And then he’d been granted his wish.

Unfortunately, there had been a caveat that had turned out to be a deal breaker.

Just as he was debating whether to ring again, the door was opened by the butler. The doggen’s face was frozen as always, but the fact that he did not bow to the firstborn and only begotten son of his master was plenty of commentary on his opinion of who he was about to let in.

It hadn’t always been like this in the household. But his mother had died, and then his little secret had come out so …

“Your father is currently engaged.” That was it. No, May-I-take-your-coat?, How fare thee?, or even, Verily, how cold is this night?

Not even a conversation about the weather would be spared for him.

Which was fine. He had never cared for the guy, anyway.

When the butler stepped aside, and focused on the silk-covered wall opposite him, walking through that fixed gaze was like getting stung by an electric fence—although at least Saxton was used to it. And he knew where to go.

The lady’s parlor was on the left, and as he entered the frilly room, he put his hands into the pockets of his coat. The lavender walls and lemon-yellow rug were bright and cheerful, and the truth was, even though putting him here was intended as an insult, he much preferred it to the wood-paneled gentlemale’s equivalent across the foyer.

His mother had died about three years ago, but this was no shrine to the loss. In fact, he didn’t have the sense that his father had missed the female.

Tyhm had always been most interested in the law—even over matters of the glymera—

Saxton stilled. Pivoted toward the rear of the room.

Distantly, voices mingled—and that was unusual. The house was typically silent as a library, the staff tiptoeing around, the doggen having developed a complex system of hand signals with which to communicate so they did not disturb their master.

Saxton approached a second set of doors. Unlike the ones leading out to the foyer, they were closed.

Cracking a panel, Saxton slipped through into the lofty, octagonal room where his father’s leather-bound volumes of the Old Law were kept. The ceiling was some thirty feet high, the molding of all those shelves dark mahogany, the cornices over the doorways carved into proper Gothic relief—or at least a nineteenth-century reproduction of it.

In the center of the circular space, there was a tremendous round table, the marble top of which was … a bit of a shock.

It was covered with open volumes.

Glancing up at the shelves, he saw slots in the endless lineup of tomes. About twenty of them.

As a warning sounded at the base of his skull, he kept his hands in his pockets and leaned in, tracing the verbiage that was exposed …

“Oh, Jesus…”

Succession.

His father was researching the laws of succession.

Saxton lifted his head toward the voices. They were louder now that he was in this room, although still muffled by another set of closed doors across the way.

Whatever meeting was taking place was in his father’s private study.

Highly unusual. The male never let anyone in there—didn’t even permit clients to come to the house.

This was serious—and Saxton wasn’t stupid. There was a cabal against Wrath in the glymera, and obviously, his father was involved.

No reason for anyone to care about the next generation of King if they weren’t trying to target the current one.

He walked around the table, locking eyes on each open page. The more he saw, the more concerned he became.

“Oh … shit,” he muttered in a rare curse.

This was bad. Very bad—

The sound of a door opening in the study energized him. Jogging on the balls of his loafers, he scooted back into the ladies’ parlor and reclosed the panels silently behind himself.

He was facing the John Singer Sargent over the fireplace when the butler called his name about two minutes later.

“He will see you now.”

No reason to throw a thank-you out. He just followed in the wake of the doggen’s disapproval—and braced himself for more of the same from his father.

Usually, he hated coming here.

But not tonight. No, tonight, he had a far greater purpose than thwarting what was no doubt going to be yet another of his father’s attempts to shame him into going straight.

Purrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.

Trez frowned at the sound. Cracking one eye open, he found his brother standing over his bed, Boo the black cat in the male’s arms, an expression of disapproval narrowing those icy eyes.

His brother’s, not the cat’s.

“Are you spending another night on your ass,” iAm bit out.

Not a question, so why bother throwing out an answer.

Groaning as he sat up, Trez had to brace his arms to keep his torso vertical. Apparently, while he’d been out of it, the world had turned into a hula hoop and the planet was going around and around his neck.

Losing the fight, he flopped back down.

As his brother kept standing there, he knew that this was the siren call back to reality. And he wanted to answer it, he really did. His body, however, was out of gas.

“When was the last time you fed?” iAm demanded.

He shifted his eyes over and dodged the question. “Since when are you an animal lover?”

“I hate this goddamn cat.”

“I can tell.”

“Answer me.”

The fact that he couldn’t even think of when he’d … nope, total blank.

“I’ll send someone,” iAm muttered. “And then you and I are going to talk.”

“Let’s talk now.”

“Why, so you can pretend you didn’t hear it right later?”

Well, there was a thought. “No.”

“They’re going after our father and mother.”

Trez sat up again, and this time he didn’t need any extra help. Shit. He should have expected this from the s’Hisbe, but …

“How.”

“How do you think?” His brother shifted his gentle scratching from the black cat’s ears to under its chin. “They’re going to start with her.”

He rubbed his face. “Jesus Christ. I didn’t expect the high priest would be so—”

“It wasn’t him. Nah. He was the second person who came to see me last night.”

“What time is it?” Although the fact that he could see out the windows into the night at least partially answered that one. “Why didn’t you wake me up when you got home?”

“I tried. Three times. I was going to send for a crash cart if you didn’t come around on this trip.”

“So what did the high priest say?”

“s’Ex is the one we have to worry about.”

Trez dropped his hands. Staring up at his brother, he knew he must have heard that wrong. “I’m sorry, who?”

“Not the kind of name I need to repeat, is it?”

“Oh, God.” What the hell was the queen’s enforcer doing paying a visit to his brother? Then again … “They’re really upping the ante, aren’t they.”

iAm sat on the edge of the bed, his weight causing the mattress to shift. “We are at the impasse, Trez. No more pretending, no more persuasion. They’ve used the carrot; now they’re going to use the stick.”

As Trez thought of his parents, he could barely picture their faces. The last time he’d seen them had been … well, there was another thing he couldn’t remember. What was crystal clear, though? The quarters they lived in. Marble everything. Gold fixtures. Silk rugs. Servants everywhere. Jewels hanging from lamps to create a sparkle effect.

They hadn’t started out like that—and that was another thing he could picture: He’d been born in a modest two-bedroom flat in the far corner of court—nice enough by normal standards.

Nothing close to what they’d gotten when they’d sold his future.

And after that? While they’d upgraded to the best of the best? He’d been sent to be raised by the queen’s staff, alone in a white room. It hadn’t been until he’d refused to eat or drink for nights upon nights that iAm had been sent to him.

And that was how their dysfunction had started.

Ever since then? Somehow, iAm had become the one responsible for keeping him going.

“Do you remember when we saw them last?” he heard himself say.

“At that party. You know, for the queen.”

“Oh … that’s right.” Their parents had been sitting with the queen’s Primaries, as they were called. Front and center. Smiling.

They hadn’t acknowledged him or iAm when they’d come in, but that was not unusual. Once sold, he had become the queen’s. And once drafted into service to smooth things over, iAm was no longer theirs, either.

“They never looked back, did they,” Trez murmured. “I’m just a commodity to them. And, man, they got a good price.”

iAm stayed silent, as was his way. He just sat there, stroking that cat.

“How much time do I have?” Trez asked.

“You have to go tonight.” Dark eyes shifted over. “Like now.”

“And if I don’t…” There was no reason to answer that, and iAm didn’t bother: If he didn’t get out of bed and turn himself in, his parents were going to be slaughtered. Or worse.

Probably much worse.

“They’re such a part of the system,” he said. “Those two really got what they wanted.”

“So you’re not going.”

Once he set foot back within the Territory, he was never going to see the outside world again. The queen’s guard was going to shut him in that maze of corridors, lock him up so that he was the male equivalent of a harem, separate him even from his brother.

And meanwhile, his parents would live on, uncaring.

“She looked at me,” he muttered. “That night of the party. Her eyes went to mine—and she gave me this secret little smile of superiority. Like she’d made all the right moves, and the added benefit had been that she hadn’t had to deal with me. What the fuck kind of mother does that?”

“So you’re going to let them die.”

“No.”

“So you’re going back.”

“No.”

iAm shook his head. “It’s binary, Trez. I know you’re pissed off at them, at the queen, at a hundred thousand things. But we’ve reached the crossroads, and there are only two options. You’ve really got to understand that—and I’ll go back with you.”

“No, you’ll stay here.” As his muddled head tried to wrap itself around the variables, his brain was all fizzle, no flash. “Besides, I’m not going.”

Shit, he needed to feed before he tried to deal with this.

“Fuck, that human blood is for crap,” he mumbled, rubbing his temples like maybe the friction could jump-start his IQ. “You know what? I really can’t talk about this right now—and I’m not being an asshole. I literally can’t think.”

“I’ll send someone.” iAm got up and went to the door that separated their suites. “And then you need to make your mind up. You’ve got two hours.”

“Will you hate me,” he blurted.

“About them?”

“Yeah.”

It was a long while before he got an answer. And the cat stopped purring, iAm’s hand stilling at that throat.

“I don’t know.”

Trez nodded. “Fair enough.”

The door was shut and his brother well on his way when Trez’s brain coughed up a hey-wait.

“Not Selena,” he called out. “iAm! Yo! Not Selena!”

He did not trust himself with her on a good night—the last thing he needed was to get close to her right now.