For what seemed like a long time, he looked at me, a smirk on his face. A boon, then. If I back down, I want something in return.
You brought the fight, I reminded him. You came into my House, threatened Ethan.
And you just took my blood.
I rolled my eyes. You leaned into my blade. God, but he would argue with a signpost.
You pulled your weapon first, Sentinel. That was threat enough to prompt a reaction. I looked at him for a while, long enough to make the vampires around us stir nervously, as I considered his position. He was right - he'd verbally threatened Ethan, but I'd pulled steel first. I could have taken a softer approach, thumbed the guard, reached for it without unsheathing it, but I'd seen him pull back his arm and assumed he was going to throw a punch. That was when I stepped forward. And in return for my trouble, I stood in the middle of a throng of vampires, their eyes on me as I psychically negotiated with the vamp who started the scuffle in the first place.
Fine, I told him, hoping irritation carried telepathically. I owe you a favor.
A favor, unspecified.
There was my mistake.
I had to give him credit - he saw his opportunity, and he took it. I omitted terms, failed to identify the thing I owed him, failed to clarify that I owed him a favor equal to the one he'd given. Vampires, I belatedly realized, negotiated via a system of verbal trades and barters and, just as to overzealous attorneys, every word mattered. These were oral contracts of a sort, backed by steel rather than law, but just as binding. And I'd just handed Morgan a blank check.
He grinned wolfishly, offered a smile so possessive it made my stomach flip, and then sank to one knee. My own eyes wide, I followed him down with my sword, kept it pointed at his heart.
You made it too easy, he said, then announced to the room, "Merit, Sentinel of Cadogan House, I hereby claim the right of courtship. Do you accept?"
I stared down at him. I wasn't even sure what it meant - not the details, anyway - although the gist of it was bad enough. You cannot be serious, I told him.
Once you go fang, babe, you'll never go back.
I was about to respond with a few choice maxims of my own, but the landscape shifted, and I was hurling down another tunnel, Ethan whispering at the end of it.
Take his hand. Accept his claim.
My stomach dropped again, this time for an altogether different reason. What?
You heard me. Take his hand. Accept him.
I had to fight back the urge to turn on him and level my sword at the shrunken black nugget of his heart. Tell me why. Explain to me why. "Why you're pimping me out," was the unspoken end of that request.
Silence, until: Because it's a chance for us. For Cadogan. If Morgan courts you, he courts Cadogan by proxy. And he has made this request before representatives of Cadogan, Navarre, Grey, and the Rogues. For Navarre to court a House that drinks, to court Cadogan so openly - it's unprecedented. This could be the gateway to an alliance between our Houses. Things are . . . unstable, Merit. If your courtship brings Navarre closer . . .
He didn't finish the thought, the obvious implication being that I was a useful bridge between Cadogan and Navarre, a leather-clad link between the Houses. My feelings, my desires, were irrelevant.
I looked down at Morgan on his knees before me, his smile bright and hopeful even while he'd manipulated his way into a relationship, and wondered which of them was the lesser evil.
The crowd around us shuffled, getting antsy as they waited for a response. There was chatting. I heard snippets, whispered behind cupped hands:
"Do you think she'll say yes?"
"Morgan dating someone from Cadogan - that's huge."
"I didn't know they knew each other."
And the real kicker: "I thought Ethan had a thing for her?"
My eyes still on Morgan, I squeezed the handle of my sword, sent Ethan another question: If I accept his claim, what does that mean?
It means you accept his suit. You acknowledge that I am, and that you are, receptive to his courting you.
I locked my knees and forced out the question that needed asking, unpleasantly surprised that the answer mattered so much. And are you? Receptive?
Silence.
Nothing.
Ethan didn't answer.
I closed my eyes, realizing I'd made the lamentable, and incorrect, assumption that, at the least, we had reached an accord that would have prevented him from using me, from passing me to a rival to meet a political goal. Oh, how wrong I'd been. Wrong to discount the fact that he was first and foremost a strategist, weighing outcomes, considering options, debating the means that would best achieve his ends. Wrong to think that he'd make an exception for me.
While his end might have been laudable - protecting his House, protecting his vampires - he was willing to sacrifice me to meet those goals. I'd just been sent to the sacrificial altar, given to the man who only moments ago, and quite literally, wielded the ceremonial dagger.
I'd imagined myself safe from Ethan's machinations because I'd thought, naively, that he cared for me, if not as a friend, then because I was a Cadogan vampire.
I squeezed back tears of frustration. Damn it, I was supposed to be one of his vampires, to protect, to shield. Not to offer up.
But there was something worse beneath that sense of House betrayal, some undefined emotion that made my stomach ache. I didn't want to pick at it, examine it, consider why tears pricked at the corners of my eyes, why his passing me along to another vampire hurt so much.
Not because he'd given me to Morgan.
But because he hadn't wanted to keep me to himself.
I squeezed my eyes shut, lambasted my own stupidity, wondered how in God's name I'd managed to form an attachment to a man so obviously determined to push me away. It wasn't about love, maybe not even about affection, but rather some bone-deep sense that our lives were bound together in some important way. That there was - and would be - something more between us than the awkwardness of unfulfilled sexual attraction.
It would be so easy, so handy, to blame it on the vampire inside, to attribute the connection to the fact that he'd made me, turned me, that I was his to command, that he was mine to serve. But this wasn't about magic or genetics.
This was about a boy, and a girl . . .
Gently, quietly, Morgan cleared his throat.
... and the other boy still on his knees before me.
I opened my eyes, recalling that I was still standing in the middle of a room of anticipatory vampires, all waiting for me to act on Morgan's proposal. So I pushed down the pain of the betrayal Ethan likely didn't known he was committing, and did my job.
I lowered my sword, smiled softly at Morgan, and took his hand. I let my voice go flat - no sense in pretending I was thrilled to play political go-between - and offered, "Morgan, Second of Navarre, I accept your claim on behalf of Cadogan House, on behalf of my Master, on behalf of myself."