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“Well, bully for you.”
“I do not understand.”
“Yeah, let me try for less slang and more clarity,” I said.
“Clarity is good, we should be very clear with each other,” he said.
“At least we agree on that,” I said, moving a little to face more toward him, the chains rattling as I moved. I should probably play nice until I got unchained, but I didn’t seem to have any nice left in me. Fuck it.
“We will agree on many things once we are married.”
“Excuse me, what did you say?”
“My lord Deimos, we discussed that you would ease her into your grand plan,” Rodrigo said.
“She asked for clarity between us; I am giving her what she asked for.”
“I do not believe that is what she meant, my lord.”
“Are you seriously telling me that the grand plan is to steal me away from the man I’m in love with and planning to marry, so you can force me to marry you?”
“It will not be force once you are my human servant, Anita. You will come to me willingly, joyfully, and see only me after it is done.”
“I’ve been Jean-Claude’s human servant for ten years, and trust me when I say it took him a couple of years to convince me that us dating was even an option.”
“I did not follow all of your words, but of course you did not want to tie yourself to Jean-Claude. He is corrupt and has turned you into his whore. I will treat you as a queen should be treated.”
I looked at Rodrigo. “Are we having a language barrier issue here, Rodrigo? Because I sure as hell hope so.”
“Speak to me, not my slave.”
“Slave, really?” I said, and looked harder at Rodrigo. “Did you trade being the trusted right hand of the Queen of All Darkness to become this guy’s slave?”
He looked angry but made sure that only I saw the expression. “I was briefly the Bride of a necromancer before I sacrificed my life to save her and two of her lovers. Then I woke as a vampire and Deimoscalled to me; without the protection of a more powerful master I had no choice but to answer him.”
Deimos was just suddenly in front of Rodrigo; I hadn’t seen him move. He slapped the smaller man in the face hard enough that the sound echoed through the huge open space. Rodrigo crumbled to the floor. I thought for a second Rodrigo had been knocked out, and then he groaned and pushed himself slowly up on one elbow.
Deimos turned toward me with his hand still raised. I slid one foot back and found as much balance as I could in the folded carpets, though I wasn’t sure what I was going to do with the fight stance with my hands still chained to the pipe.
“It’s hardly a fair fight if she’s chained up,” Rodina said as she walked into the room.
I wanted to stare at her, but I didn’t dare take my attention away from Deimos. If he hit me as hard as he’d hit Rodrigo he might snap my neck. Especially now that I didn’t have Jean-Claude’s vampire marks to protect me.
Deimos lowered his arm and turned toward Rodina. Good, now I could keep an eye on both of them at the same time. “She is only a woman, there is no fair fight between her and me.”
Well, at least he and I agreed on one thing.
“She is your future queen, is she not?” Rodina asked, walking into the room with that predatory sway she had. Maybe she and Rodrigo could give Deimos lessons on how to enter a room with menacing flair.
“She will be my queen.”
“Not if you hit her so hard you break her neck,” Rodina said, keeping her distance from Deimos and circling around him to get closer to her brother, who was still on the ground.
“It is good that you admit how weak she is; that is better than these stories that paint her as such a fierce warrior that her fellow marshals have named her War. As if any woman could be mentioned in the same breath as my father.”
I opened my mouth to say something, but Rodrigo made some motion that made me look toward him. The look on his face pleaded with me not to make things worse. It reminded me of Ru. Was he going to come walking through the door next? Were they all traitors? I didn’t think Brides could even do that. Didn’t they have to obey me? I wanted to blurt out an order to Rodina to take me home, but if I still had that kind of control over her I wanted to wait until Deimos wasn’t standing there. I was pretty sure he’d kill her to keep her from helping me. I’d wait to try it when we were alone. If we got a chance to be alone.
I wanted to ask him about Athena, Goddess of Righteous War, but Rodrigo was right; I could debate mythology and misogyny with Mr. Crazy later. “Echo and Fortune are going to know you’ve abandoned your duty at the hospital, Rodina.”
