Shala had been imprisoned in the palace dungeon—and she had someone else in the cell next to hers. Another pleasure worker—Elthine. Shala admitted under compulsion that she and Elthine devised their plan carefully, with Shala sneaking into the palace with the scheduled tour and then separating herself from it, waiting for the Queen to return. Garde had gone to the dungeons and paced before their cells in full Thifilathi, blowing smoke and frightening both women. Neither had seen Gabron since they'd been incarcerated.
Merrill and Wlodek performed the initial questioning with Drake, Drew, Tony and Gavin looking on. The two women hoped that with Lissa out of the way, the rule would be shared among her mates, giving Gabron more importance. They'd intended to convince Gabron to make them his concubines so they might live in the palace with him. Gavin had snorted in disbelief at their plan.
"And just how did you think you might get away with this?" he demanded. Shala shrank from his anger. Gavin wanted to execute her immediately but Lissa forbade it, choosing to wait and see whether Roff accepted the turn.
* * *
Gabron sat and drank at a bar in one of the casinos. In the beginning, Lissa had set both Shala and Elthine's applications in the pile not to be considered. Like a fool he'd pulled their applications back and hired them anyway. They'd been trying to kill Lissa. Instead, Roff had protected her. Gabron was a very old vampire and he'd allowed two scheming women and his own lust to bring him down.
"Drinking generally doesn't solve anything." Erland settled on the stool next to Gabron's and ordered a drink.
"She will ask for her ring back and dissolve the union." Gabron fingered the ring in his pocket. He hadn't worn it since the night he'd taken it off and foolishly left it behind at the brothel.
"You can't say that for sure." Erland sipped his bourbon.
"The odds are very good, my friend." Gabron wiped the condensation off one side of his glass with a finger.
"She loves you. You can't just turn that on and off," Erland offered.
"But she will do it," Gabron sighed. "I remember the night I first saw her," Gabron said. "Walking along a street in Ordinandis, more than three hundred years ago. I caught the scent of a female vampire and was drawn like a magnet. She was beautiful. The rarest of jewels, had I but known it at the time. We talked and she seemed unafraid of me. I gave her my card and she came to find me the following evening. She almost left me when she discovered what kind of business I ran. I allowed two women, the most selfish and conniving I have known, to bring me down. If they'd managed to kill Lissa, where would we be at this moment?"
"Without a home," Kifirin folded in and sat on the empty stool next to Erland. "This world exists because of Lissa. I would have allowed the comesuli to stay, but all others would have been forced away. You might be living again on Refizan. Lissa may forgive you, vampire, but I may not." The bartender set a glass of wine in front of Kifirin without a blink. Kifirin had placed his order mentally and the bartender automatically complied. "I do not know yet if Roff will survive and Lissa loves Roff very much. What do you think that will do to her, if he dies?"
"My ability to end my life by walking into the sun has been negated. What do you wish me to do?"
"Make amends with Lissa, if you can. Or walk away from her, if that is her desire. How much do you love her, vampire? Of all her mates, your love is the weakest, I think."
"I kept telling myself that I could have sex any time I wished, whenever I was not in her bed," Gabron held up his empty glass. The bartender went to make another drink for him. "That is what I was used to. I had my pick of any of my girls and they enjoyed the bite. Some even said they loved me. I shored myself up with that. Kept myself alive with that. It wasn't love, though, was it?"
"You weren't willing to give yourself in return," Kifirin replied. "How many of those girls did you love? Did you tell them so? And if you told them, did you mean it?"
"If I did, I didn't mean it. My heart has been cold and still for a very long time."
"You do not love Lissa?"
"Lissa makes me ache. She makes me ashamed, that I cannot be as warm and loving as she."
"She asked for nothing more from you than what you gave."
"Except for her disagreement with me over my brothels." Gabron snorted.
"Even though she feels no jealousy, that made her feel inadequate," Erland said. "Those girls are trained to give pleasure. She cannot compete with that. Before she was turned, she only had one lover during her lifetime. I learned this from Gavin. Did you miss your trained girls when you were in bed with her, Gabron?"
"No. All I could think about when we were together was pleasing her. And pleasing her pleased me. It made me feel warm, to bed her."
"Because she gave love in addition to sex." Kifirin drained his glass. "Those girls you hire and train may give you the exotic and the unusual, but they will not give you love. They take your money and go to the next customer. Tell me this is not so."
"Are you telling me to never bed another woman?"
"Lissa herself did not tell you that, so who are we to gainsay it? We have immortality facing us, my friend. Boredom can become a very real malady. Lissa told you that she was hoping you cared for whomever you took to your bed."
"The truth is that I almost got her killed." Gabron was back to the crux of the matter. "And she will dissolve our union. Those things matter not from this point."
Chapter 10
I sat with Roff the entire second night. The minutes and hours passed in tiny, ticking eternities. There was no change. No change. No change. I talked to Roff after a while. Told him I loved him, even though Griffin was there. Or Merrill or Flavio. What if Roff's warm brown eyes never opened to me again? That pain was too hard to bear. I concentrated on the clock. I'd asked Wlodek earlier for the signs that the turning was not successful. He hadn't wanted to tell me, but he did anyway. "The skin will become gray and then turn to ash," he replied. "Lissa, this was not your fault. Roff would have died with you, if you had been the one hit. Do not second-guess yourself or his actions in this matter. Accept the gift from Roff. This is what he desires."
I hadn't been to the dungeon to see Roff's attacker, either. She'd had an accomplice, but Shala had been the one to put the stake in Roff's chest. I was afraid that if I did go see her I wouldn't be able to control myself and she would die. According to our laws, she must be judged by the Heads of all the City Councils. Those laws had been devised for a reason and I had no right to circumvent them, even though I wanted to. Kifirin was the only one not bound by the laws of Le-Ath Veronis and I didn't expect him to weigh in on this. Justice would come, eventually. And Gabron had not come forward to apologize or to check on Roff. He was receding farther and farther away from me. It seems he'd made a choice and that choice had not been me.