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“I left for the reason I said,” Louis-Cesare snapped. “I returned for the reason I said! That is all you need to know.”
And there it was, why my hubby had no more business on this mission than I did. ‘King to peasant,’ I’d heard my father say, when describing Louis-Cesare’s more aggrieved tones, and it had not been approving. Mircea had been a king once, too, or something very close, but he had learned how not to sound like it.
Louis-Cesare had not, and the vamps clearly thought so, too.
“Ah, malik, do forgive your humble servant,” the big, bald vamp said, giving the most sarcastic salaam I’d ever seen. The ‘malik’ was sarcasm, too; it meant ‘lord’ or ‘king’, and from what I understood, was once a common designation across the Middle East. But this group didn’t strike me as people who liked kings.
The female version was ‘malikah’, meaning queen, which I’d been called frequently since I got here.
It hadn’t been meant kindly, either.
“You’re forgiven,” Louis-Cesare said coldly.
I rolled my eyes.
“Perhaps we should ask your woman,” the big, bald vamp said, glancing at me.
“My wife,” Louis-Cesare snapped, and okay, things were heating up.
“Can I move yet?” I asked the healer.
“No.”
I sighed.
“Don’t ask me what’s going on,” I said, staring at the ceiling. “He ran off, leaving me at a court where I’d just been attacked, to chase an old enemy who may or may not be dead—”
“I had every reason to assume that you would be safe here!” Louis-Cesare said.
“Yeah, feeling real safe right now.”
“They were supposed to be our hosts!”
“And you were supposed to be guests! Not assassins!” the big, bald vamp said angrily.
I laughed.
“You think this is funny?” he demanded, and started towards me, only to find Louis-Cesare in the way.
“Not really.”
“You laughed!”
“At the irony. You’re a cult of assassins, or you started out that way, but now you accuse us—”
“With reason!”
“Rashid,” Zakarriyyah said, cutting off big, bald and hairy, who stayed almost nose to nose with Louis-Cesare, but didn’t try for me again. “You were saying?” Zakarriyyah asked me politely.
“I was saying . . .” I didn’t actually remember what I was saying. Oh, yeah. “He abandoned me,” I said, flapping a hand at Louis-Cesare.
Who frowned. “I would never abandon you—”
“You left me to run after Christine.”
“Who is Christine?” the healer asked.
“His old girlfriend.”
