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“Self-control?” I sputtered. “They were going to beat that poor woman! Someone needs to stop them!”
“No one is going to stop them, and if you try, you’ll find your neck on a chopping block,” the vampire said darkly. “You’d do well to remember that.”
“They can try,” I seethed.
“Try?” he mocked as he sailed over the Tower wall in one graceful bound. The guards startled as he landed in the courtyard, but their alarmed expressions settled as they recognized him, and they returned to their posts as if nothinghad happened. “It wouldn’t be hard. Look how easily I was able to capture you.”
I fumed, especially when two of the guards exchanged smug looks, gloating over my predicament. “I am going to pull your guts out of your belly and hang you by them from the battlements,” I hissed.
“Mmm, foreplay,” he purred. “I do love it when a woman knows how to talk dirty to me.”
My cheeks flamed, and I fell silent, refusing to give him any more ammunition. Humiliation burned in my gut as he carried me through the courtyard and into the Tower. Dozens of stares prickled along my skin, and I gritted my teeth, wishing I could fight back. But I’d already used too much of the precious little I’d siphoned from the greenhouse, and despite the powerlessness of my position, I wasn’t truly in any danger. I needed to conserve what was left.
Especially since it looked like I was about to get into another fight with the vampire lord.
8
“Sorry to interrupt, Sire,” the vampire said as he strolled into a room on the Central Keep’s third floor. I tried to twist my body around to see where we were, but the vampire hadn’t loosened his telekinetic grip, and I was forced to stare down at the carpet instead. “But I found this little menace out on the streets by herself, attempting to murder citizens.”
He dumped me to the ground without ceremony, releasing the telekinetic hold on my limbs right before I hit the carpet. Seething, I leaped to my feet and took a swing at him, but he danced out of my reach, his eyes laughing. They were a vivid cerulean, set into a handsome, swarthy face that pointed at human origins, but there was no mistaking his pointed ears and inhumanly beautiful features. His chestnut hair was cropped short, revealing a golden hoop that winked at his left ear, and he wore all black, his button-up shirt open at the collar to reveal the curling edge of a tattoo at his collarbone.
“What do you mean, she was attempting to murder citizens?” Nyra said sharply, drawing my attention away from him. I turned to see her sitting at an oblong table with Maximillianin what appeared to be a meeting room. Papers were scattered across the table’s polished surface, along with several leather books that looked like ledgers. “I thought she was with Eliza!”
“She was, but she wandered off, then decided to try to play hero when a human slave was being punished in the middle of the street.”
Maximillian arched an eyebrow. “And you just happened to be there to intervene, were you, Sparrow?” he asked, his expression suggesting he wasn’t even remotely surprised by this behavior.
The vampire tugged at his golden hoop. “I was on my way back into the city when I saw her. Couldn’t help but do a little stalking, especially since you made it my obsession to track her down for the past two years.” He winked at me.
“What?” I gaped. This was Sparrow, the vampire who had gathered all the intelligence Maximillian had on me? “What do you mean, for the past two years?”
“Leave us,” Maximillian said abruptly. Sparrow shut his mouth, and he and Nyra exited the room in a flash, sending several papers fluttering to the ground on their way out.
“Well?” I demanded once we were alone. “Are you going to explain yourself?”
“Explain what, exactly?”
Where did I even begin? “The gross mistreatment of humans in your city, for starters,” I seethed, stalking around the table. I jabbed a finger into his chest, and Maximillian blinked, staring down at it in bemusement. “I just watched a vampire whip his human in the middle of the street, simply because sheaccidentally tripped and spilled some trash on another vampire. And no one did anything to help, not even the city guards!”
“Is that so?” Maximillian’s expression darkened. He grasped my wrist and pulled me down into the chair Nyra had vacated. “Tell me the whole of it, Kitten. If someone has violated the laws in my city, I want to know about it.”
I blinked, so surprised at the sincerity in his voice that it took a second for me to realize he was still holding my hand. I tugged my wrist away and folded it into my lap, then recounted the incident, right up to the point where Sparrow had used his telekinesis to immobilize and spirit me away.
When I’d finished, Maximillian was staring at me over the tips of his fingers, which he’d pressed together, his elbows propped on the surface of the table. My abdomen tensed at the impassive mask that had settled over his face, and a bad feeling spread through my gut. “I don’t blame you for wanting to help that woman, Kitana,” he said. “It’s in your nature. But Sparrow was right to intervene.”
“What?” My heart dropped. “How can you say that?”
He sighed. “The vampire female was wrong to mete out physical punishment on a slave that did not belong to her,” he said. “Which is why the guards pulled her away. But it is against the law for a human to strike a vampire, even in self-defense. Her master was well within his rights to punish her for it.”
“But that’s ridiculous!” I shot to my feet and began pacing, unable to reconcile the logic. “That vampire had already kicked the shit out of her!”
“Which in a vampire court would be argued as a separate issue. Not that vampires go to court over human issues,” Maximillianadded dryly. “They are generally settled with the help of the city guard, as you saw today.”
“I can’t believe this.” I raked a hand through my hair, then whirled around to jab my finger at him again. “Eliza waxed poetic all afternoon about how you’re some champion for humanity, yet when I tell you about the atrocities being committed in your own city, you act like you don’t even care. You’re just as bad—”
“Yes, I am.” Maximillian rose from his chair, unfolding to his full height. I swallowed as he towered over me, excruciatingly aware that at any point, he could use his mental prowess to immobilize me and do whatever he wanted to my body. He crowded me until my hips pressed against the edge of the table, and I braced my hands against the glossy wood to keep from falling backward. “Eliza may have tried to paint me as some white knight, here to deliver humanity from the evil clutches of the emperor. But never forget, Kitten, that while I do not share the same proclivity for cruelty as my kin, I am still a vampire, and I am still beholden to the emperor. It is my duty to uphold his laws, no matter what you may think of them.”
“And yet you want me to murder him for you,” I said bitterly. “Would he still call you his loyal servant if he knew?”
