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“Are you going to tell me how to break the spell over the Court?”
“Are you going to tell me how you heal so miraculously?” Leonid countered.
“I have many talents,” Cord deadpanned and heard Leonid huff in derision.
“Why did you take Tegan?”
Cord turned to look at the Vampyre once again. “Take her where?”
“My wife told me she went to the Headquarters and you took my daughter.”
“Your wife tells you half a story,” Cord answered easily. “Was it your wife who put you in peril?”
“Tell me the other half of the story,” Leonid answered instead. “My daughter can be whimsical but not usually reckless.”
Cord laughed loudly. He couldn’t help it—the veryideathat Tegan was whimsical was enough to make him cry with laughter. “Whimsical? The only time that female iswhimsicalis when she is sleeping and silent.”
“And you know what my daughter is like when she is sleeping?” Leonid asked quietly.
“Yes.” Cord met his stare boldly. “I prefer when she is sleeping and not pestering me with her questions and her inquisitive looks.”
“And you are familiar with her when she sleeps?” Leonid persisted. “Have you shared her bed?”
Cord almost,almostlied. Just to see the Vampyre’s reaction, but even with a hand wrapped around his throat and half-starved, Leonid Novikov was not a male that Cord wanted to fight. “I have been in her room once when she was asleep, or I thought she was asleep.” He smiled in recollection. “She threatened to gut me where I stood if I lingered too long.” Cord met the dead stare of her father. “As I said, I prefer when she is quiet.”
Leonid’s teeth bared in the semblance of a smile, but there was no doubt that the smile, if that is what it was, was not meant to be friendly. “It is good you found me, Castor. It seems I have been away from my daughter for too long.”
Cord huffed out a laugh as he stood looking out of the cave mouth. “How did you get in here?”
“Fell.”
“How did you get your throat slit?”
“Fell.”
“You don’t trust me, I get it, I really do,” Cord said as he turned to look at the Vampyre. “You’re one of the most famous of the Made I have ever known, the peasant who was rescued and became a Prince of the Court.” Cord looked away from the expressionless face. “Which makes me wonder how the Princefelland what caused him to step off that ledge.”
“Truth laced with mockery, you must be the pride of your father,” Leonid scoffed as he looked away.
“My father died when I was a babe,” Cord said quietly as he looked back at Leonid. “Which you know, as you trained him.”
“His passing was a loss,” Leonid admitted grudgingly. “Olezka Lebedev was a great warrior, Brindlelay claimed him too early.”
“Hmm.” Their eyes met and held, and with a long-suffering sigh, Cord walked the few steps he needed to reach the Vampyre and held his hand out. Leonid merely looked up at him. Cord gave him a tight-lipped smile as he held back his frustration. With a sharp slice, he cut his palm and held it out to the fallen Made. “Feed, Leonid, I need you, the Ancients need you, and more importantly than our game of words,sheneeds you.”
“She is in danger?”
“It hunts for her,” Cord told him quietly, “which is why it is doing whatever it can to keep us both in here.”
“I drink and you tell me everything?” Leonid asked as he looked at the blood steadily dripping onto the floor of the cave.
“Better than that, I can show you.”
Leonid squinted up at him before he stood slowly. His hand fell away from his neck, and Cord stared in open-mouthed horror at the cut. It was as if they had tried to decapitate him. “They tried to take your head?” he whispered incredulously.
“Tried,” Leonid said grimly as he raised Cord’s unresisting hand to his mouth. “I need a lot, Castor,” he warned.
“Take it,” Cord said absentmindedly as he still stared at the ragged wound on the Made’s neck. “I would rather return you whole, or my little tiger will indeed gut me where I stand.”
