Chapter Two
Elias
Security guards in matching uniforms stepped aside as I entered the foyer of the Queen’s Manor. Once the home of an eccentric billionaire playboy, the manor was a home that could house a small army. It worked well as the palace for Queen Marcella and her legions of courtiers.
A woman in a pencil skirt carrying a clipboard scurried across the marble floor. The click of her heels echoed as she approached. She stopped in front of me and glared at me through her thick black framed glasses.
Justine Pomodoro was one of the few humans that worked for the queen. I was pretty sure she was also a favorite lover, but I didn’t spend enough time at court to know the details of all the scandals and drama. And I honestly didn’t care.
“She expected you yesterday,” Justine said as she scribbled something on her clipboard. She looked up at me. “She’s going to want to know where you’ve been.”
“I don’t owe her my whereabouts all the time,” I said.
“You work for the queen, same as the rest of us,” Justine warned.
“I am a prince of my own realm, I work for her while I’m here because it suits me.” I respected her authority in this realm. If we were in my realm, she’d have to bow to me.
“You both want the same thing,” Justine reminded me. “And you made a promise.”
I did. I vowed to help her eliminate the Knights from this realm. It wasn’t a promise I took lightly. Just as I’d lost my sister to their cruelty, the queen had lost someone of great importance to her. We both wanted them gone.
During the time I’d been hunting them, they’d retreated some. Keeping more to the shadows and taking less risks. They were harder to hunt.
The Knights had brought me here, but that wasn’t what I wanted to talk to the queen about today.
“My word is good,” I said. “She knows that. But our alliance is only as strong as her word.”
Justine wrinkled her nose. She was intelligent and had been working for the queen a long time. I wasn’t sure when she’d first joined her ranks, but the strands of gray in her dark hair let me know she was older than most vampires when they were turned. Which meant the queen likely approached her when she was much younger and likely hadn’t turned her on Justine’s request.
We all knew the queen liked her lovers younger. Probably because she herself had been turned when she was seventeen.
It made me wonder if Justine was the real deal. The one who held the queen’s heart. I wondered if she’d let her live her whole life as a human or if she’d eventually turn her.
Justine spun on her heels, turning away from me. “This way.” The little tattoo on the base of her skull with the queen’s heart and cross crest was clearly visible when Justine’s ponytail swung from side to side.
She wore the queen’s mark of protection, something I’d declined. While I kept most of my abilities quiet, I knew there was nobody in this realm as powerful as I was. I didn’t need the queen’s protection.
The one thing Justine didn’t have was a necklace like the one in my pocket. The royal family was large, expanded over generations of nearly eternal life. For vampires, the family title was earned rather than given by birth. And each member of the royal house wore the same pendant on a gold chain. It distinguished them as important and identified them when they visited other territories. They were also spelled with a protection charm that didn’t come cheap.
I shoved my hand in my pocket, feeling for the necklace. It was going to lead to an uncomfortable conversation. Someone in the queen’s household was a traitor.
Justine turned down a hall lined with medieval tapestries. Each of the delicately woven hangings was as ancient as the queen herself. The palace was part museum in a way, a holding place for the art and antiquities the royals had acquired during their lives or purchased with their vast fortunes. I paused for a moment to look at an oil painting. “That’s new.”
Justine turned. “Yes. The queen has been hunting for that piece for a while.”
The stern-faced woman in the painting could only be one person, the queen herself. It was in the bold Baroque style with dark shadows and strong contrast. Marcella’s green eyes and jet-black hair were unmistakable against the bright ivory of her skin. She looked powerful and feminine at the same time. It was the first portrait I’d seen that really captured her.
“Caravaggio,” Justine said. “Though, it’s never been formally catalogued, of course.”
“Of course.” The painting was stunning and I could see why Marcella had added it to her collection. She had various portraits around her palace. Some from well-known artists and others from artists who had long left this earth, their names forgotten by humans.
Human lives were so short lived. And while there was no shortage of talent in this realm, so few artists ever gained the notoriety they deserved. It was one of the tragic pieces of being human. In my realm, some of our most well-known artists waited until after they were several hundred years old before they gained recognition. Humans didn’t have the luxury of time.
“She’s waiting for you,” Justine said.
I turned away from the portrait and resumed my place following Justine. We reached the end of the corridor and stopped in front of the double doors that led to the throne room.
Marcella was a modern monarch by vampire standards, but she held on to some of the old ways. Sitting in a gilded chair while she looked down on her subjects was one of them.