That tub almost made me forgive the senate for everything.
Almost.
But it was a little hard to forgive when the manipulation was ongoing. I scowled and lathered up my hair, because I didn’t want to think about that right now. Or, you know, at all. But my brain had different ideas.
The vamps had wanted my power under their control ever since they knew there was a potential Pythia who hadn’t been raised by the Circle. That wouldn’t have bothered me so much; it was politics 101, and the senate was just better at it than most people. If, that is, their brilliant plan hadn’t involved having Mircea get me to fall in love with him.
That hadn’t been too hard, since I’d already been halfway there. I’d had a crush on him ever since I was a kid, when he’d visited Tony’s terrible court. And had left quite an impression.
The warm, dark eyes were the first I’d ever dreamed about. The mahogany hair, long enough to flow over my hands like silk, had probably given me a lifelong fetish. But it was the humor that really got to me, the way the handsome face could light up, and the sensual mouth could quirk at the corners with an appreciation for the absurd that someone like him wasn’t supposed to have—senate member, master vampire, dangerous über Alpha of dangerous über Alphas . . .
And yet he did. He always had. It was the thing I’d loved best about him, although, let’s be honest, I’d loved practically everything.
And he’d loved me, at least for a little while, even though he wasn’t supposed to. He was supposed to be the manipulator, the one who kept me enthralled while staying well out of harm’s way himself. It must have seemed easy, to anyone looking at us from the outside. After all, what did I have to attract him, other than my position? What did he need with a screwball blonde with too-skinny legs, too-plump cheeks, and freckles on her nose?
But then, Mircea had always had quirky tastes. His many residences were known for their designer opulence in the public areas, meant to overawe his guests. But his private rooms were full of unusual little touches, like carved wardrobes from Maramures, the woodworking heart of the old country, or a tubby porcelain tambourine player from his stint as the consul’s ambassador at the East Asian Court, or some old wooden spoons. They’d cost practically nothing, they wouldn’t cause awe in anybody, anywhere, and they were frankly kind of tacky. But he liked them.
Like he’d liked me?
Cut it out, I told myself, angrily scrubbing my scalp. You know damned well what happened there, and it had nothing to do with your dubious charms. The senate’s happy little plan to get themselves a Pythia had been messed up by the geis, a spell gone wrong that had caused Mircea and I to genuinely fall in love with each other. And that was a no-no.
The consul had started to get nervous about what might happen when an already too powerful senator with huge wealth, a winning personality, and an extensive family behind him also acquired a Pythia. Not wanting to get hoisted by her own petard and end up having him use me against her, she’d started working to muddy the waters in paradise.
Of course, she’d had some help with that.
Mircea had failed to mention that he had a daughter, a crazy dhampir who’d been sired during the short period between when he was cursed with vampirism—because he was one of the rare type of vamps who hadn’t been bitten—and when the Change finished taking effect.
That in itself was a problem, since we were basically married under vampire law, thanks to an incident that took place when the geis was screwing with his head. And you’d think a daughter was something a person might mention to his wife. Like he might take her to see his main court, or introduce her to his family, or actually put a ring on it—things that also had not happened.
Of course, I couldn’t complain too much, since I’d stubbornly refused to recognize the marriage, which I’d never agreed to in the first place. And since recent events had called into question our compatibility when a spell wasn’t controlling us. And because Pythias weren’t supposed to get married anyway. But Mircea kept insisting that it was a done deal, so why not tell me about his daughter?
Probably because that might have brought up questions about the mother, too.
Mircea had also failed to mention anything about his first wife, Elena, a human woman he’d married before the Change who had died centuries ago. And that should have been that, because death tended to be pretty final, right? Only no. Not when he’d spent months trying to figure out how to ask me to use the Pythian power to go back in time and prevent her demise.
Yes, you heard that right. He wanted his current “wife” to save his former one, risking the timeline in the process, and bring her to this century, where, I guess, we were all supposed to live happily ever after? It was insane.
At least, it wa
s for a human. For a master vampire, it was Tuesday, since most of them had harems anyway. The Change tended to cause a surge of devotion that felt a lot like love, from what I’d been told, and one thing tended to lead to another. Maybe that was why Mircea had never Changed a woman.
He’d had lovers through the years since Elena’s death, but they’d been temporary flings. An immortal paramour, on the other hand, one bound to you by blood, was something else again. That might have felt like he was cheating on his dead wife, who he was so devoted to that he’d been romancing Pythias for the last five hundred years, trying to find one who could go back and rewrite time for him!
Of course, I was bound to him by blood. He bit me, half-crazed and ridden hard by the geis, but he bit me nonetheless. And not any normal old bite, either. But one that bound the recipient to a vampire family for all eternity, the one considered the same as a marriage in their culture, the one I still carried the memory of in two little bumps on my neck. He’d taken me when he felt like it, and thrown me away when he felt like it, and that was just—
Oh, but I forgot.
He hadn’t.
His and Elena’s marriage had ended with his death, he’d said. I was his true love now, he just felt an obligation to Elena, he’d said. This didn’t have to change anything, Cassie, why are you getting so upset, you’re still my second favorite wife, he’d said!
Okay, he hadn’t actually said that last one, but it had been heavily implied. For someone who was usually highly intuitive to human emotions, Mircea was surprisingly tone-deaf on this subject. There was, of course, a reason for that.
Just like the geis had played with his head, causing him to fall in love with the boring little Pythia who he was supposed to be manipulating, another factor—not a spell, but a syndrome—was screwing with him now.
Mircea was currently suffering from a condition common among ancient vamps, one that explained why there weren’t many ancient vamps. The consul was older than dirt, and many members of the senate had five or six hundred years under their belts, but they were the exception, not the rule. “Older” for vamps usually meant a couple of centuries, not a couple of millennia, which was weird, when you stopped to think about it.
New vamps were created all the time. And while many never managed to make it beyond a normal human life span, getting killed in duels or on errands for their masters or from “greeting the sun,” as they called it when one decided to suicide by waiting for the dawn, many others did just fine. So where were they?