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The vampire in question glanced up at me, seemingly surprised I was now coming to his defense. Why should he be? If I let Monica bite him, the truth of his innocence would be apparent enough. I’d once believed he had tried to set me up because I was sure he would do anything to eliminate me. But Juan Carlos was a rules man. He would live and die by the council’s laws, and that meant he wouldn’t act directly to kill me.
I wouldn’t put it past him to enlist someone he trusted to do away with me, but there were very few people Juan Carlos trusted.
No, the blame for treachery fell somewhere else, and just this once I was willing to believe Juan Carlos had nothing to do with it. He wouldn’t have let himself become such a spectacle if he was guilty of something. He’d have sat back and let everything unfold around him naturally. All his bluster and yelling had proven to me he was a pompous ass, but not a traitorous one.
“Of course I’m not a traitor.” His gaze cut to Sig, plainly hoping the other man believed him.
Sig looked bored.
But that was a skill of his too. He never expressed undue interest in anything, because to do so would be showing his hand. Any display of emotion was a display of weakness in a situation such as this.
“Him.” I jerked my chin towards Arturo. “He’s come here to see me burned at the stake like a witch. He thinks you’re all stupid enough to believe I would betray you, but the truth is he’s the guilty one. Arturo worked with Alexandre Peyton, a known rogue and escaped prisoner of our council. He provided aid and supplies to Peyton, as well as a steady flow of information. Specifically information about me.”
Arturo glared at me. “These are the desperate accusations of a madwoman and a liar.”
“Rebecca,” I said, letting my voice rise above the mounting din of the room. “What is the punishment for conspiring to kill a Tribunal leader?”
Sig answered for her. “Death. The punishment is death.”
“And you would take the word of a half-breed piece of filth over someone who has sat in a Tribunal seat for over a century? This is madness, Sigvard. You are smarter than to take the trollop at her word, aren’t you?”
“First, you will not insult any member of my council while you are a guest in my city. You were invited here as a gesture of friendliness between our communities, but you would spit on the good name of one of our Tribunal?”
“I would spit directly on her if she would step a few paces closer,” Arturo answered.
Sig went on as if Arturo hadn’t spoken. “Second, you dare to question my judgment?”
“Only when you are obviously blinded by your affection.”
“Are you not blinded by bigotry? Have you honestly sacrificed the laws of your people, laws you have upheld for centuries, because you cannot stand the idea of someone with werewolf blood having the same level of power as you?”
“She is not equal to me. She is an abomination.” He was sounding more and more like Juan Carlos by the second, only this time I didn’t think his hatred was because of love. These were the raving words of someone who loathed what he didn’t know and wanted to stamp out anything different. Arturo didn’t hate me, he hated what was inside me. Knowing me as a person wouldn’t change that, nor would any logical discourse about my leadership skills.
“Did you go looking for Peyton, or did he find you?” I kept my distance, not wanting to discover if he would follow through on his promise to spit on me.
“Any question of yours I answer will serve to implicate me. Since I am innocent of any charges, I will not disgrace myself by acknowledging your words. You are the one on trial here, not I.”
“On the contrary,” Rebecca interrupted. “No one is on trial at all. This was merely a council meeting to determine how we should proceed with Secret’s position, and to establish if she’d done anything wrong. Monica has now cleared her of any treasonous suspicions, and in my opinion, Tribunal Leader Secret is as fit to maintain her seat as ever she was. Is there anyone present among the elders who disagrees with this assessment?”
No one spoke.
“However,” she continued. “New allegations have now been brought forward, and they cast you, Tribunal Leader Arturo, in a less than attractive light. Naturally, though, if you are innocent, you will not mind submitting yourself to the seer’s test.”
“This is absurd. I am a Tribunal leader.”
“So am I,” I snapped. “It didn’t stop you from waltzing in here expecting to see me strung up, did it?”
“We’d all have been better off if you died. Monsters like you don’t belong in our ranks. There’s a reason we don’t drink werewolf blood. It’s filthy and tainted. And that’s what you’ve brought into your council.”
“Actually, I’ve tried her blood, and I think it’s quite remarkable.” Holden threw this comment in so casually it sounded like an observation on the weather, but when I looked back at the others,
I noticed Sig was smirking the slightest bit. Holden, too, seemed quite proud of himself.
Whatever amused them, I guess.
Now that I wasn’t precariously balanced on the edge of death, my stress began to lessen, and the threat of a panic attack abated. I wasn’t done here by any means, but it didn’t sound as though the council had any plans for my immediate execution. I’d say, in the grand scheme of bad things that had happened to me in the previous few weeks, this was ranking pretty low in my list of concerns.
“Enough stalling,” another council vampire said. “Either you are willing to let Monica sample your blood and prove your innocence, or we will assume you are guilty.”
