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Chapter One
Thrones are a pain in the ass.
Shifting uneasily in the hard wooden chair, I tried not to let my discomfort show, but I’d been parked here for almost three hours and now my butt had fallen asleep. It didn’t help that I’d been asked to adhere to a strict dress code, and the high-waisted charcoal pencil skirt I was wearing was digging into my ribs.
I moved again, and my brand-new, red, four-inch Jimmy Choo peep-toe pumps made a grinding noise against the platform.
Sig pivoted his head slightly and gave me a disapproving look. Next to him Juan Carlos grumbled something in Spanish. At this rate I was going to have to learn the language if I had any hope of keeping up with him on the insult front. Maybe my live-in boyfriend, Desmond Alvarez, could teach me a few choice phrases.
I stopped squirming, but Sig kept staring at me.
“I understand it’s been a difficult adjustment, love, but you must try a little harder to radiate the appropriate authority.”
“I’d be a lot more radiant if I had a cushion to sit on,” I replied.
And why did I have to wear a silk blouse and skin-tight skirt when our fearless leader was wearing a pair of black trousers and nothing else? Compared to Sig, Juan Carlos and I looked conspicuously conservative. The former Spanish conquistador on Sig’s left was wearing a neat black Armani suit that made his already dark features appear somehow cloudier.
Under the scrutiny of Sig’s icy blue stare, I crossed my legs at the ankle and placed my hands in my lap. My grandmere would have keeled over to see me dressed up so ladylike. Even my typically wild-child loose blonde curls were pulled back in a sophisticated French twist.
Leave it to the Tribunal to make a lady out of a former assassin.
There was a soft knock on the heavy oak doors to my right, and I tensed. Once upon a time I dreaded coming into this room because it inevitably meant I was in trouble. Now that I was sitting on the other side of the doors, I dreaded those knocks for another reason altogether.
It meant I wasn’t getting out of here anytime soon.
Stifling a sigh, I bit my tongue and waited for Sig to permit entry to whoever waited on the other side of the door. Instead he continued to watch me, and when he spoke at last, it was to me and not our visitor.
“You will be responsible this time.”
I started to protest, but Juan Carlos did it for me. “Surely you cannot be serious.”
“I am never not serious,” Sig replied.
And don’t call me Shirley, I answered mutely but couldn’t hide the smirk.
“You find this humorous, Miss McQueen?” Juan Carlos asked, directing his attention towards me for the first time all night. It was difficult to find humor in anything when he looked at me that way. The furious curl of his mouth was punctuated by the scar which split his upper lip into a permanent snarl. That was nothing compared to the glimmer of abject hatred illuminating his eyes.
“No, Juan Carlos.” I no longer had to refer to him as a Tribunal Leader, because in the eyes of the vampire council we were now of equal power.
But try getting him to see it that way.
There was a second knock, this one more tentative. Juan Carlos leaned back with a huff, throwing his hands in the air and refusing to look at either of us.
“She’s been on the Tribunal for seven months,” Sig reminded the vampire at his side. “It’s time she be allowed to express her power accordingly. She cannot fail too badly.” He said this last line with a twisted smirk.
