“What were you thinking?” His voice rose in the quiet chamber as he paced the floor.
“I was thinking my love was gone, and I know there is a Darkness coming. I can feel it just as you!”
“But you cannotseeit.” Leonid stopped pacing and looked at her. “That is why I have been held, because I canseeit.” His eyes closed in understanding. “You have damned us all.”
“I am sure I can talk to the Great Council and make them understand,” Kateryna suggested. She stood in front of her husband, and for the first time in many hundreds of years, he saw her uncertainty.
“What will you tell them?” Leonid stood over the dresser where he had placed his empty goblet and wished it was filled once more. His mind roved to Salem’s fine bourbon, and he longed for the liquor one more time.
“That I thought my actions would save my subjects.”
Leonid snorted. “Subjects. You know you are not anactualqueen, my love?”
“I am. I rule this Court, and every single Akrhyn knows it,” Kateryna snapped at him, fierce and proud once more, her earlier vulnerability gone.
“Why did you call me back?” Leonid felt exhausted again, the heaviness of the events his wife described weighing on him.Where was Tegan?The fact that Kateryna had walked away and taken the Vampyres with her, he simply could not understand her actions.
“I had a dream.”
Leonid knew that if he still breathed, he would have choked on his own air. “You had a what?”
“A dream.”
Leonid looked her over quickly. “You do not sleep.”
“I know, I am not a fool, Leonid.”
“Then tell me, wife, how you had a dream when you do not sleep?”
“Fine!” Kateryna threw her hands in the air in exasperation. “A vision then?”
“What did you foresee?” Leonid knew his voice was thick with scorn, but the pressing need to check on Tegan was eating at his patience.
“Drakhyn.”
“And?”
“Attacking in numbers, masses of them, Leonid. They stained the ground as they crossed the snow like a blanket of darkness covering the land.”
Leonid felt fear rising in his belly. “I have seen the same,” he admitted quietly.
“They are coming for us,” Kateryna said almost inaudibly.
“You think they come here?” Leonid asked curiously. “Your vision showed them at the Court?”
“They were at the foot of the mountain and as far back as I could see.”
Leonid rubbed his jaw. He had shaved when he was in the bath, and he enjoyed his smooth skin. “You had a vision that the Court was going to be attacked by an army of Drakhyn?”
“Yes.”
“And your action as queen was to call all your subjects home and cast the spell that made Akrhyn forget we exist?” Leonid looked at his wife with barely concealed contempt. “This was your plan?”
“I knew I would need all my Vampyres!” Kateryna protested.
“You put us all in the one place where our enemies can reach us!” Leonid shouted. “They do not even have to search for us! We are all sitting here, under this damned mountain, ready to be killed! One. By. One.”
“We have all our warriors to defend us,” Kateryna tried to reason with her husband, but she had never seen him so angry. Especially with her.