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“The princess did.”
“She told me they wouldn’t come.”
“I persuaded them,” Ledger says.
I approve of Ledger’s persuasion methods. “News?” I ask.
Leroy shrugs off a worn-out brown backpack and opens it, fiddles inside it, looking for something.
I raise an eyebrow at Ledger and point at the bag. “This thing is older than I am.”
“Stole it from a beggar, and nothing is older than you.”
“There’s beggars?”
Ledger nods. “They’re taking shelter in abandoned houses under collapsing roofs.” He copies the hand gesture the lycan baby alpha showed me that means a folding roof.
“Haha. Very funny,” I say.
“Here you go,” Leroy hands me a stack of papers.
I move away from the desk, and he puts them there.
“What are these?” I ask.
“Signatures.”
“Signatures?”
“Mmhm. Of fae traitors who will trade immunity from persecution for a lifetime of service to you, oh great Vampire Lord of the Winter Court.”
I scrub my face. “Is that my title now?”
“Catchy, no?”
I shrug. “It’ll do.”
“It’ll more than do. A lord is a fae term, a familiar term, and it sounds much nicer than general. If you say general, they think you’re creating an army.”
“Iamcreating an army.”
“They can’t know that. Not on paper, anyway.”
Ledger snorts. “They’ll find out soon enough.”
Leroy continues, “That’s when we anticipate trouble.”
“More trouble than we originally planned for,” Ledger adds.
“Which is why we must replan,” Leroy says.
“Why do we need their signatures?” They forfeited their lives when they sided with a male who wasn’t their king. Traitors get executed. Permission to make them vampires isn’t necessary and most certainly not from them. I pick up a piece of paper and read. “It’s an agreement. A…a lifetime of service. Duh. I don’t need this.”
Leroy lifts a finger. “The houses do it this way, and if we’re to integrate into society, we just do what they do. Or at least appear so on the surface.”
“We won’t be a house,” I tell him. “I thought that was clear.”
“I get that, General. But there’s a question of legitimacy, and without the signatures, you appear to have forced the fae into service.”
