“Okay.” I stood up and headed for his door. “I’ll see you at dinner?”
“Yeah. I look forward to it.” He leaned his cheek against his door while I stood in the hall. “Maybe we’ll announce our plans to be a couple.”
I shook my head. “No way. Not yet.”
“Why?”
“I don't think Mike would take it too well, Jase. I'm pretty sure he's on the verge of a nervous breakdown.”
Jason’s shoulders lifted with his single breath of humour. “Well, I don't really give a damn about him, Ara. We have limited time until Drake comes along and reveals his true plan, by then, we need to have flushed out the traitors and have some kind of defence prepared.”
I reached across and touched his left arm, imagining his Mark beneath the sleeve of his shirt. “I'm glad you’re here. I hate to think how things would’ve turned out if you’d not come back.”
He nodded. “Arthur’s been watching out for you, Ara. He probably suspects Morgaine already—probably knows exactly what's going on.”
“I hope so.” It felt kind of scary to know I’d been left here alone with traitors in the mix—possibly people I was close with.
“It’s always the people you’re close with, Ara, they’re the ones you really have to watch.”
I frowned up at him, rolling my eyes when I realised he’d just read my mind. “Will you stop that?”
“Sorry.” He grinned. “G’night, Ara.”
“Night, Jase.”
Our new guest didn't join us for dinner, but despite his absence, Mike was super quiet and everyone else was charged with excitement, except Arthur, who was clearly sulking.
“It doesn't matter,” Margret said. “It’s the law. The queen must take a king within her first six months and produce an heir within a year.”
“Those laws are out-dated, Margret,” Mike said, practically spitting. “She’s too young to have a baby, and without blood of Knight, there’s no hope of the prophecy child, so what’s the point?”
“To have an heir to the throne.”
“You can have one. Just not yet,” Mike finished.
“Have you considered a child with Arthur?” Walter asked; Arthur dropped his fork onto the table and folded his napkin. “He’s a firstborn—perhaps you should try. The worst that can happen is that the child be powerless.”
“Yes, but that would make Arthur king regnant,” Margret said, and everyone on the table broke into mutters among themselves.
I looked at Arthur; he looked away.
“Well, Jason has returned,” Grey Sideburns said. “Was it not rumoured he and our queen were once in love?”
“No,” I said, smiling at the almost audible sound of Mike’s blood boiling.
“Perhaps we should switch focus—forget this prophecy. I knew nothing of it until recently and I care nothing for it, either. I care for our freedom, and it seems—” the woman motioned around our table of united breeds, “—that Her Majesty has already achieved this much. She should focus on finding a king and bearing an heir.”
“Here, here.” Mutuality united the table with rapping knuckles.
“Drake plans to attack in a month,” Mike said. “We should focus on a battle plan—or a way to kill him.”
“That’s your job, young man,” said Margret, waving her hand as if he was a fly. “Ours is to worry what the queen and the people do.”
“Yes,” said another snooty old woman with almost purple hair. “Let us do our part, and you can take care of yours.”
I blocked out the other conversations around the table and leaned in to Mike. “Did you speak to your informant—about Quaid and Ryder going to Elysium?”
He nodded. “He took my side. We wait.”
“Oh.” I looked down. “Did he mention…anything else?”
“No, why?”
I sat back in my chair. So he hadn’t told Mike that Jason and I were planning to feign a relationship and a pregnancy. I wondered why. Maybe he really was opposed to it and was using it to distract Jason and I from something else. But what?
“Morg?”
“Yes.”
“You know it makes sense, right?”
“What does?”
“Me being with Jason.”
She studied me carefully, her eyes narrowed.
“We could crown him king,” I said suggestively, hoping she ‘got’ me. “And, who knows, maybe I’ll fall pregnant straight away.”
She looked at Mike; I could feel his burning gaze in my neck. They weren’t getting it.
“I mean,” I continued, half aware that several people had stopped talking and were listening. “He looks just like my dead husband. Maybe I could just imagine it’s him—maybe I’ll come to love him one day.”
I saw the light switch on in her head.
“What do you think?” I asked.
Mike huffed, sinking back in his chair, while Morgaine sat straight. “She has a point, Mike.”
“I know,” he said.
“I think that's a wonderful idea,” Margret joined our private conversation. “What does our new guest think of this?”
“I…I haven’t mentioned it, but I think he’ll be happy with it,” I said.
Arthur slammed his napkin on the table then pushed his chair out and stormed away. Mike sat staring into his plate, his face red, holding his breath for about two beats after Arthur left, then shoved out from the table and stormed away, too. A quiet hum of laughter settled over the room, lightening the mood. And it stayed that way for the rest of the night. With the tension of a kingless nation eased and the renewed possibility of an heir to the throne, I think my people felt a sense of hope for the first time in so long, even if that heir to be born wasn't the prophecy child Morgaine had told everyone about.
I placed a soft hand to my belly and looked around at all the smiling faces. Very soon, I was going to make everything all right for these people. Very soon, their king would return and, together, we would finally unite all vampires and Lilithians.
Chapter Fifteen
A circle of darkness made the field an eerie place to be; I slowly wandered forward, seeing the grass appear at my feet with each step, following a distant, gloomy hum of a song. Each word came like a lost soul sung its last wish, and the hollow, haunting ring of the tune left bumps of chill down my bare arms.