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“A dhampir, if you will forgive me, has no Second. And Senator Dorina was captured, as I understand?”
I stared at him, a strange feeling starting in my belly. “What’s your point?”
“That you are welcome here at court despite your . . . disability . . . due to your father’s position. And your own as envoy from the North American Vampire Senate. But as for the rest . . .”
“What about the rest?”
“Well, if you will forgive me, the details of last night’s events are senatorial business. I cannot release that information to one of your status.”
I felt my blood pressure rise, to the point that Hassani could probably hear it pounding against my veins. But although he had a curved dagger at his waistband—a beautiful thing in carved steel, the only ornamentation he wore—he didn’t twitch so much as a finger toward it. Of course, he didn’t.
Dhampirs were a problem for lesser vampires, and the revenants that used to provide most of my income. But for someone like him? We were gutter scum. I was probably expected to be grateful that he wasn’t chucking me into a ditch.
But then, he couldn’t, could he? Because I might not be a senator anymore, by his reckoning, but I was still married to one. And Louis-Cesare could get all the information he wanted.
“Then tell Louis-Cesare,” I said tightly. “The point is—”
“But I am afraid I cannot do that, either,” Hassani said, looking remorseful.
“Cannot do what?”
“Give any assistance to your lover—”
“My husband! And why the hell not?”
A sly smile, the first real emotion I’d seen from him, flickered across his face for a second, before being replaced with more faux concern. “My apologies. I thought you knew.”
“Knew what, damn it!”
“Why, that he left this morning.”
I stared at him for a moment, then tore across the corridor and down to our old suite of rooms, where I found the door open and half a dozen servants cleaning up and repairing the damage. But no Louis-Cesare. And no luggage.
I stood there for a moment, vibrating.
Louis-Cesare had deserted me once, to run after Christine, despite the fact that she was a complete psycho. He’d received word that she had escaped from Alejandro, so he hadn’t really had a choice, but the fact that he’d gone without so much as a word had almost ended us before we began. The one, absolute, unbreakable rule of our relationship was that we communicated. If one or the other had to leave unexpectedly, fine, but at the very least we left a note.
I did not see a note.
I did not see anything, except for people mopping up what could be water from last night. Or what could be signs of another fight, one that I’d slept through. And that meant—
Fear clutched at my heart, sharp and dizzying, and a cold hand stopped my breathing. I whirled on Hassani as he followed me inside, as unhurried as if we were having a stroll through a garden. He didn’t so much as blink when I snatched his own knife and held it to his throat.
He did look faintly surprised, however.
“If you’ve killed him—” I growled.
“Killed him?” he blinked at me.
“Louis-Cesare! If he’s dead—”
“Oh, I sincerely hope not.” A finger pushed the knife away. “That would be . . . difficult to explain.”
I saw red. And this time, it wasn’t from Dorina, who wasn’t here to help me. But then, she hadn’t been for most of the last five hundred years. She’d intervened on some occasions, when she happened to be in residence and judged me to be out of my depth. But the rest of the time I’d been on my own, and fighting creatures far more powerful than me.
And I didn’t fight fair.
I grabbed a small tab from my jacket, slapped it to the front of his clothes, and sprang away. I didn’t want to be caught in an inverse shield, one that contracted upon contact, trapping the subject. Usually trapping the subject, I revised, as Hassani broke out of it pretty much immediately.
