I answered with annoyance at the interruption, just to recoil from the face waiting for me. It was Lord Clement. Though we hadn’t met, his resemblance to Emmeline was unmistakable. He was all business, his golden eyes leonine, piercing and predatory. A pair of vampiresses flanked him, holding bundles of parchment and writing kits.
“Lady Ilyana, if we may have a moment to speak,” he said.
“By all means.” I stepped aside for them to enter.
Finn and Zane retreated to the bedroom. I’d figured it would be easier to navigate around Clement’s truth-seeking magic if he was only speaking to one of us.
“Can I get you all some refreshments?” I offered.
“That won’t be necessary. We only have a few questions for you. Please, make yourself comfortable.”
I sat with them, not missing the casual arrogance of him inviting me to relax when he was a guest in my space. The two scribes set up and flipped their notes to clean pages, quills at the ready.
“My darling Emmeline speaks well of you,” he began, baring his fangs in the merest of smiles. “I understand that you’re in some sort of early-trial alliance.”
“That’s right. I wouldn’t have survived the first trials without help.”
A familiar weight pressed on my forehead where Clement’s gaze was resting. It felt exactly like when Emmeline used her magic on me. His expression didn’t change. It seemed Nemea’s old inquisitor accepted technical truths just like his daughter did.
That didn’t stop the tremble in my fingers. I hid it by keeping my hands in a tight holdin my lap.
“I’m afraid I cannot fully wish you well, but I admire your good taste. You probably know what this visit is about,” he said. I merely nodded, and his attention sharpened on me. “Did you kill your fellow candidate for the throne, Genevieve Mercier?”
So direct. It required the same sort of answer in return. “I did not.”
He released a weary sigh. “It’s never so easy, is it?” he murmured. One of his scribes made a forced titter in response. “Do you know who might’ve had a reason to want her dead, Lady Ilyana?”
“Well, she is a candidate in a trial to the death.” I shrugged. “So don’t all of us desire her death on some level? Besides that, I heard she came out of the labyrinth without a single living member of her old Devotion. Perhaps it was one of their family members?” I suggested.
Quills scratched across parchment. Clement’s unblinking stare remained focused squarely on me. I set my spine to keep from shifting in discomfort. “Anyone else?” he pressed.
I couldn’t say no; he’d notice the lie. Razira was at the forefront of my mind. I worried for her, wondering how she’d answer when asked bluntly about Genevieve. “I witnessed her lose control of herself and fully drain a blood servant. Some humans have ties to the Temple of Aetherius, you know. Perhaps she murdered the wrong person and a slayer made her pay for it.”
The three of them recoiled before the scribes noted it down. Inwardly, I felt badly for the human staff. If Lord Clement hadn’t thought to question them before, he would now.
“One last question. Where were you that night?” he asked.
The question I’d been dreading but also expecting. I didn’t have to tell him everything, only enough for him and his scribes to connect curated facts strung into an incomplete account and assume I’d been in the mansion the whole night.
“You may be aware I’d just finished the bonding ritual to take my first two devotees. We were a bitengagedthat evening.” The scribes smirked knowingly as they wrote, while Clement didn’t react at all. “After that, I was here planning for the next trial and practicing my new magic. I haven’t gotten the hang of it yet.” Quite the understatement at this point. “And then I spent most of the night in the great hall after the Lord Regent ordered all candidates and their Devotions within the mansion to be sequestered.”
I forced a neutral expression, the courtly mask Ilyana would wear. If they accepted my answer, then they wouldn’t ask me about Lorelei. They’d assume I wasn’t connected to her murder.
Lord Clement softened his stance and finally glanced away from me. “Well, I wish you luck with your new magic. It took my Beloved a few weeks to get the hang of using mine.”
“Time I can ill afford to lose,” I sniffed.
“Isn’t that the truth?” A feline smile crossed his lips. “I shall not take any more of it from you, Lady Ilyana. Thank you.”
It took all of my self-control not to breathe a sigh of relief until I had the door shut behind them.
Weset out with enough supplies to last us a few days in enemy territory. There’d be no need for Finn’s rat-based deterrent plan for Tahlia, because I didn’t intend to return to the mansion until we had a nemesis shackled in spelled restraints. There was, indeed, no time to waste. We were on day four of the trial and the second week of my disguise.
Zane gathered up a few odds and ends; then we set off on horseback for the House of Whispers. We took a rural path through the outskirts of the Crimson Wharf borough, where Ash could follow from the trees. Boris and many of Finn’s rodent friends hitched a ride with him. The mastiffs trailed behind us.
I heard many small voices from the animals but focused on one like Finn taught me. My horse, who maintained a sizable distance from the tree line.“Predator. Run fast. Faster. Rider not scared?”
I patted her neck and tried to reassure her with magic. But her attention was too firmly fixed on Ash to hear me. Either that, or I truly couldn’t speak to animals mentally like Finn could. The idea of it burned. I was inadequate, half a vampire, and thus half as strong as either mate I called mine.
