Heading down the stairs to the second floor, she realized there was another aspect of the whole child thing she hadn’t considered: She’d been so focused on getting one, she hadn’t considered having one in this kind of life.
They’d be a prince or a princess. The former the heir to the throne.
Oh, and P.S., how do you tell a kid his or her father had been shot in the throat by someone who wanted the crown?
God, why hadn’t she thought about any of this?
Which was Wrath’s whole point, wasn’t it.
Stepping out of the staircase, she went to Wrath’s office, only distantly aware of conversation rising up from the foyer.
She was a little surprised that he wasn’t behind the desk. She’d assumed when Fritz had brought up the food that her hellren had gotten sucked into work.
Stepping into the room, she stared at that huge wooden boat of a throne and then squinted, trying to imagine a son—or a daughter—sitting behind it. Because screw the Old Laws: If they had a little girl, Beth herself was going to make sure her hubs changed the rules.
If the British monarchy could do it, so could the vampires.
God … was she really thinking like this?
Rubbing her temples, she recognized that all of this was the tip of the iceberg Wrath had been crashing into—and meanwhile, she’d been Fisher Pricing it in her head, enjoying an internal debate on cloth diapers versus Pampers, what kind of video monitor to buy, and whether or not she liked the new crib styles at Pottery Barn.
Infant and baby stuff. The kind of things she’d watched Bella and Z wrestle with, and purchase, and use.
None of what had been on her radar had been about raising children into adulthood. Which was what Wrath had been focused on.
Suddenly, the pressures inherent in that great carved chair had never seemed so real: Although she had witnessed them firsthand, the true burden of it all didn’t really set in until this moment … as she pictured a child of hers sitting where her mate did every night.
She left the room fast.
There were two other places he would be—in the gym or maybe in the billiards room.
Oh, wait, no one was in there anymore.
At least until they got new furniture.
Man, what a mess this was.
Hiking up the nightgown and the robe, she hit the stairs at a trot—until the jiggling of her internal organs made her nauseous and she had to slow it down.
Crossing over the mosaic depiction of the apple tree, she figured she could ask whoever was in the dining room to—
The moment she came under the arches, she froze.
In spite of the fact that it was not mealtime, the entire household was at the table—and something awful had happened: Her family was like a collection of Madame Tussauds versions of themselves, the bunch of them arranged motionless in the chairs, with faces that had the right features, but expressions that read wrong.
And everyone’s eyes were on her.
As Wrath’s head lifted and angled her way, it was like her transition all over again, when she’d come out of her father’s basement and walked in to find the Brothers at the table. The difference, of course, was that back then there had been surprise in the room.
Now, it was something altogether different.
“Who died,” she demanded.
Back in the Old Country, Xcor and his Band of Bastards had stayed in a castle that appeared to have risen from the earth, as if the very stones of its construction had been rejected by the dirt, expelled like a tumor. Situated upon a scruffy, otherwise uninhabitable mount, the construction had glowered over the small hamlet of a medieval human town, the fortification not so much regal as resentful. And inside, it had been no less uningratiating: Ghosts of dead humans had wandered the many rooms and the great hall especially, knocking things off heavy tables, swinging cast-iron chandeliers, toppling stacks of burning logs from the fireplaces.
Indeed, they had fit in well there.
In the New World, however … they lived on a cul-de-sac, in a Colonial with a master suite the color of one’s lower intestine.
“We did it! Verily, we have the throne!”
“We shall rule fore’ermore!”
“Huzzah!”
As his fighters congratulated each other and proceeded unto the alcohol, he sat upon the sofa in the living room and missed that castle’s great hall. It seemed more fitting a space to play witness to the history they had set in motion and succeeded at.
Eight-foot ceilings and velour couches just did not make the grade for an event of this magnitude.
Besides, their castle … had formerly been the seat of the race’s First Family. Wrath’s dethronement announced at the very place he had been born and reared would have had such greater resonance.
Mayhap this weak, suburban locale was what was robbing him of the joy his fighters shared.
Except no, it was something else: This fight with Wrath was not over.
There was no way it ended here, like this. Too easy.
Reflecting upon his journey to this moment, Xcor could only shake his head. Before he had come unto the New World, flying across the ocean at night, things had seemed rather much in his control. Following the death of the Bloodletter, he had taken the reins of the soldiers and enjoyed centuries of conflict with the Lessening Society after the Brotherhood had come to Caldwell.
Eventually, however, after all their successes in the field, there had been no one save humans to chase after, and it was difficult to find much sport in those rats without tails.
He had wanted the throne as soon as he had landed because … it was there.
And perhaps he knew that unless he took the crown, he and the Band of Bastards would be hunted: Sooner or later, the Brotherhood would discover their presence and want to exert superiority over them.
Or eliminate them.
Through his efforts, though, those tables had been turned; he had gained power over them and their King. And that’s what was so strange. The sense that he was in some way out of control now was illogical—
As Balthazar let out a whooping laugh and Zypher poured more gin—or was it vodka?—Xcor’s temper lit.
“He has not responded yet,” Xcor cut in.
The group of them turned upon him with frowns.
“Who has not?” Throe asked as he lowered his glass. The others had red plastic cups or were drinking from the bottle.
“Wrath.”
Throe shook his head. “He cannae have one, as legally he is powerless. There is naught he can do.”
“Do not be naive. There will be an answer to our cannon shot. This is not over the now.”
He got to his feet, a restlessness drumming through his body, animating him with twitchy movements he struggled to keep within himself.
“With no disrespect intended,” Throe hedged, “I fail to see what he can do.”
Turning away from the joviality, Xcor said, “Mark my words, this is not over. The question is, on the basis of his reply, may we still sustain.”
“Whither goest thou,” Throe demanded.
“Out. And I shall not be followed, thank you.”
“Thank you” was rather more like “fuck you,” he thought as he dematerialized through the flimsy front door and reappeared upon the lawn.
There were no more houses in this part of the development, the only other structure a pump house for the municipal sewer system.
He tilted his head back and considered the sky. There was no light from the moon, a cloud cover that promised more snow blocking out the illumination.
Yes, in this moment of his triumph, he felt no great joy or sense of accomplishment. He had expected to be … well, happy would be one word for it, although that emotion was not in his lexicon. Instead, he was as empty as he had been when he’d arrived upon these shores and ill at ease to the point of anxiety—
Oh, fuck. He knew the cause of the worry.
It was his Chosen, of course.