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“What about Kaj?” Dante asked, trying to sound unconcerned.
Susan smiled, her eyes lighting up. “She’s a sweetheart. I don’t think you could have found a better consort, but I have my concerns. She’s never lived in a society like this.”
“She’s smart,” Dante said before thinking it. “She’ll adapt. She just needs time.”
Time to forget that she was connected to nature and now all she had were vampire-made structures around her? Everything was fake. Even the trees on the balcony were fake. They even faked photosynthesis.
“Of course,” Susan said, putting a hand on his shoulder. “She is very smart and quick. She’s really funny, too. I deeply enjoy having her in our family, Dante. I’m not worried about that at all. I’m worried about the press. My office has fielded about a hundred calls about your new consort.”
He’d known that would happen. Fuck. At the time he’d come up with what he now thought of as the stupidest plan ever, he’d counted on it. The press would be the thing that pushed his father to allow him to live apart from her. Now he would do just about anything to keep the vultures off his consort. He couldn’t stand the thought that people were talking about her, judging her. “Tell them to mind their own business. I’ve just been saying ‘no comment.’”
“Yes, I know, and that’s a problem,” Susan replied. “It’s making them curious. There are some people saying there’s something wrong with her. They’re wondering if she isn’t a little slow, if you know what I mean. It’s come up that if someone like Dante Dellacourt had to settle for a damaged consort, we should consider making a deal with Torin.”
Dante felt his fangs come out. “She isn’t damaged.”
Susan held her hands up in a conciliatory fashion. “I know that. She’s wonderful. But she is outside the norm, Dante. She changes into a wolf, for gods’ sakes. We have to reconsider the hardwoods in the penthouse because her little paws go four different directions when she tries to walk on them in her wolf form. And we need to talk to her about hanging her head out of the window in the hovercar.”
“She says it feels nice.” Kaja liked the wind in her hair. It was the only thing she liked about being up so high. He’d caught her trying to see the ground more than once. If she made it to the ground, she would be terribly disappointed. It was noxious down there.
“And I think it’s charming, but the press is going to eat her alive over it. I hate it, but we’re a society that thrives on conformity. The occasional oddball can be celebrated, but only when said oddball makes a ton of money. Kaja is going to be seen as a cautionary tale if we don’t fix her.”
“She doesn’t need to be fixed.” This was exactly what he’d been avoiding. This confrontation. He knew Kaja didn’t fit in. He knew she was miserable.
Not always, that voice said. When you’re inside her and you open up, she’s happy.
But it wasn’t enough.
Susan stared out the window. It was a rainy day. Gray clouds rolled by, making the world seem foggy. “Mom thinks bringing in a tutor would help. Kaja can learn to read and how our society works. I’ve already ordered a wardrobe fit for a princess, and I can have Dellacorp’s media advisor train her on how to deal with the press.”
“No,” he said as fast as he could get the word out of his mouth. Jana was a shark. She’d eat Kaja up and spit her out. And he’d slept with Jana. She was such a bitch she would probably throw it in Kaja’s face just to spite her.
Susan rolled her eyes. “Fine. I’ll try to find someone you didn’t sleep with, though that makes my job really damn hard.”
Maybe Susan was right. Maybe all Kaja needed was a little time and a little training to adjust to her new home. A little kindness from you wouldn’t hurt, asshole. Dante ignored that increasingly loud voice. A present. He’d get her a present, and that would pacify her.
He had work to do. Work he didn’t care about.
“Do what you need to do, Susie. I’m up to my eyeballs in this sunscreen project.” His eyes trailed back to the desk and his mountain of paperwork, but his brain went to a different place. His mind thought about the forest and how Kaja looked naked on the grass.
Susan cons
idered him carefully. “Yes, I can see that. It surprises me.”
“Because you’re shocked I can be professional?” There was that bitterness that was always lurking under the surface.
“No,” Susan replied with a tired smile. “That’s not what surprises me. I’m a little anxious about this turn in your behavior because I always believed you would leave this plane entirely and join Beck and Ci and fight for their cause. I don’t know how I feel about this, Dante. Part of me is utterly thrilled that I don’t have to worry about you dying in their war. And part of me aches because I don’t think this is who you are.”
Tears threatened. He bit them back. He’d never once imagined his sister knew him so well. He would have told anyone who asked that his sister rarely thought of him at all outside of how obnoxious he could be. Had that all been his perception? “This is who I was raised to be.”
She shook her head. “Oh, you’re more, little brother. I always knew that. You’re the kid who took on the older, bigger boys because they made fun of a girl you liked.”
He remembered her. Fourth grade. Trista. A very nice peasant girl on scholarship. He’d had no intentions toward her. She was just funny and sweet. She didn’t deserve to be picked on by sixth graders. He’d nearly gotten suspended for the fight he’d started. “I was very young then.”
Susan’s hair shook as she leaned forward. “You think I don’t know some of the things you’ve done? How about paying for our old nanny’s nursing home? You did that out of your own pocket.”
“The state-run places are terrible. I couldn’t send her there. You would have done the same thing.”
She sighed. “I didn’t keep in touch with her. You give a damn, Dante. You just don’t like to show it. You’re a crusader who’s hidden himself away as a playboy. I’ve always thought of it as you trying to reconcile Dad’s world with the one in your heart.”
