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I didn’t look at him. “I need a little time. Ten minutes.”
A sigh. “As you wish.”
The lights in the conservatory glowed at a low level comfortable for vampire eyes. Leaves brushed my arms—ficus, corn plants, palm trees, ferns. I’d deliberately placed the plants close together in an imitation rainforest.
I kept walking until I was out of sight of Jean-Michel and the entrance, then sagged against the gazebo. Ten minutes, that’s all I needed.
Ten minutes in this oasis I’d made for myself, enfolded in its moist green air.
Jean-Michel had told me that my father had loved plants, too, that he’d designed the night garden as a gift to Victorine. I’d hugged that information to myself, a connection to the man I barely remembered.
Sometimes I wondered how my life would’ve been different if Father were still here. I’d been so young when Karoly Kral had sent him to his final grave. I couldn’t even picture him clearly—all I had were fragments; images that, like a puzzle with too many missing pieces, I couldn’t form into a whole.
Mikhail Romanov.
A Russian prince, and not just in the vampire world. He’d been a distant cousin to the last czar, the one executed by the Bolsheviks after the Russian revolution. My father might have lost his life, too, if he hadn’t been a vampire. He’d escaped Russia concealed in the shadow dimension.
Memories flitted through my mind: A darkly handsome man helping Victorine into a little red sportscar.
Tiger-gold eyes that could be hard as metal but that warmed for me.
Strong arms lifting me from my crib when I woke at dusk and carrying me to a window to view the last orange fire of the setting sun.
That Victorine had smiled. Not often, but when she had, it had been genuine, not a cool, calculated curve.
I fingered a palm’s broad fronds, thinking about what my mother had said the other day: “I only made peace with Karoly to save you.”
Victorine could be ruthless, even brutal, but her word could be trusted. When she signed a treaty, she kept it.
Unless the treaty was with Karoly Kral.
Her hatred for him went bone-deep. She wouldn’t break the treaty, but setting the slayers on his sons was exactly the sort of devious thing she might do.
Stop it.I compressed my mouth.That’s Rafe talking, poisoning you against her.
The ferns rustled, and Victorine appeared as if conjured up by my thoughts. “So, you’ve made your decision?”
Her pleasant tone made my shoulders tighten. I willed myself to relax.
“Not yet. It’s hours until dawn.”
“Then why are you here instead of the ballroom? I intend to make the announcement at midnight.”
My stomach muscles jittered. I fingered the soft purple petals of a moth orchid.
“I needed some air. And midnight is too soon. I need more time.”
“Is that so?”
I turned my head to see her eyes slit with suspicion. I stared back steadily. If she didn’t believe me, if she got it into her head to check my suite, Rafe was dead.
“Étan is agreeable,” she said at last. “I know he’s spoken to you.”
“Oui.” My fingers constricted, snapping the orchid off its stalk. I stared, horrified, at the crushed petals.
Victorine made an impatient sound. “Look at me, Zoe.”
I set the broken flower in the pot and turned to face her like the obedient doll I’d been raised to be.
