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“Would you rather I came across dimensions to get you into bed?”
I frowned at him.
“No, then?” He chuckled, then rose from the seat so I was staring up the full six-and-a-half-foot length of him. It was a daunting view. “I came to give you your next job. ”
His announcement reminded me of the last job he’d assigned me, and phantom pains stabbed through me at various key places.
“Peyton. What happened to him?”
“We are taking care of that. ”
“He’s alive?”
“As alive as a vampire can be. Though I’m certain he wishes he were not. He will say nothing about what he learned of you from Mercy, I’ve seen to that. You did excellent work. Ingrid was very complimentary, which is rare for her. ”
Apart from telling him how well I was able to bleed out, I couldn’t imagine what kind of compliments Ingrid had paid me.
“And my mother?”
Sig’s calm veneer flickered. “She escaped. Your wolf king sent someone back so she could be dealt with under the covenants of the pack, but she was gone. I’m sorry. ”
I took a moment to think about that. Mercy McQueen, the mother who hated me enough to sell me out to her mate and his vampire associate, was still out there somewhere.
“What do you want?” I was exhausted, weak and so sore the slightest shift made me feel like I was being compressed by the Death Star trash compactor. What I wanted more than anything was to be in a bed with Lucas or Desmond beside me, and to feel whole again. I did not want a vampire protégée or more responsibility from the council. I certainly didn’t want whatever job Sig had felt the need to hand-deliver to me before I’d been given a chance to heal.
He withdrew a small black envelope from his pocket and placed it on the seat next to me. It looked different from the white linen envelopes I usually got from him. “I am so very sorry. ” He bowed down and placed a hand on my cheek, staring at me for a long time with such intensity I was unable to turn away.
“She was never really my mother. ”
“That’s not why I’m sorry. ”
He dropped his hand and walked away. Before I could think of a proper response he had disappeared into the shadows and was gone.
I picked up the black envelope and flipped it over in my hands several times, tracing the outline of the wax seal with my fingertips. The seal was an engraving of a peacock feather.
Never in the six years I’d worked for the council had Sig met with me alone to give me the name of a target. I almost always received them from Holden. It felt too intimate to receive my orders straight from the hands of the Tribunal’s leader, and I was instantly suspicious of the envelope.
My heart was pounding inside my rib cage like a frightened bird trying to use its body to invent freedom where there was none. I took a deep, rattling breath and broke the seal on the envelope, but paused before opening it.
This was big. It was important. Sig wouldn’t have brought it to me this way if it weren’t. Something in me understood that when I opened the envelope the whole game changed. When I opened it nothing would ever be the same.
I released the breath and slid out the stiff white card inside. On it, in Sig’s sharp, looping scrawl, a name was written in mottled black ink.
That name was Holden Chancery.
