Damien (33 page)

“Exactly,” she breathed in earnest. “And so should you! Damien, you are Prince and I am your most trusted advisor. I have always been in charge of domestic troubles, and you have always entrusted them to me.” She moved to grasp him by both shoulders, making sure he looked down into her serious eyes. “Since when do we allow others to manage our domestic problems? We have a responsibility here that must be attended to immediately. The rogue Vampire. His identity must be discovered. We must know who among us is a traitor, lest we find ourselves giving information away where we do not want to.”

Damien looked at her, searching for her motivations in her expression and body language. What she said made very good sense, but he could not escape the instinctive feeling he had that there were ulterior motives behind her logic.

Then again, Jasmine always had ulterior motives to everything she said or did.

“It is very likely one of those whom we would not trust to begin with,” he told her, unconcerned with her reasoning.

“And if it is not?” She sighed in frustration. “It is not like you to ignore potential threats.”

“I am not happy to do so, Jasmine,” he said darkly, “but I am not about to run off and confront a Vampire who is backed by someone like Ruth…and quite possibly black arts as well. Whoever he is, he has killed an innocent. There is no coming back from that. It will change him forever.”

“And you and I have both seen what a Vampire who crosses that line can become. In the past, you and I would not rest until we stopped such a being. Why do you hesitate now?”

“Because I no longer have only myself to think about, Jasmine.”

“You mean you are afraid of upsetting your fragile little mate?” she taunted him.

“I mean,” he snapped, “that I have a people to run and I am responsible for leading them into this era of peace even you have seen the wisdom of. If I should die now, who knows what manner of Vampire will supersede me?”

“It would very likely be me,” she said cockily. “Do you have so little faith in my upholding your ideals?”

“You?” He laughed harshly, purposely provoking her indignant emotions. “Jas, you cannot manage to stay aboveground more than a century at a time. You would be deposed the moment your first melancholy struck.”

“That is not fair!”

“It is, or you would not be so upset by it,” he pointed out, being a little more gentle with her now. “You do not have the patience to rule, dearest. I love you and I depend on you very much, but I know you. In your heart, you know it, too. My death, which would be necessary for you to reign, would by itself send you into a tailspin of pain and depression.”

“You think far too much of your importance to me,” she said, but they both knew it was pure bravado. “Anyway, I am not asking you to engage in battle. I think we should do some recon, however. Tell me you do not burn to know who would betray our people in such a way and I will promise you never to suggest it again.”

As usual, Jasmine knew him too well, so she called him on his bluff perfectly.

“I suppose you have a proposition on how we should go about discovering this?” he asked, ignoring the triumph that lit her eyes.

“We should start at the Library. Perhaps we will find a clue there. If we are lucky, Ruth’s trail will not be too cold to follow.”

“Jasmine…”

“Just to follow,” she said quickly. “Only we would have the power to sneak up close without detection from her.”

“And what if the Vampire is powerful enough to detect us?”

“Powerful enough to circumvent your cloaking abilities? Even I cannot do that.”

Damien went silent for a long minute, trying to make himself think clearly, rather than act on impulse. He wanted to do this; more than anything, he wanted to find out who would do such a thing. Unless punishing that person counted separately. That was one thing he wanted to do with an even greater passion. If they could determine who their traitor was, then they would have an advantage over him. He would think he could still move among them, with others none the wiser for his duplicitousness. Perhaps that would give them the advantage to separate the Vampire from the Demon, making each more vulnerable, to the point where Damien could take care of punishing his own, as he had always done. If there was ever going to be a time when that was possible, it would be now, before Ruth had the opportunity to exploit her knowledge of the Exchange or before the Vampire started to pick up the Demon female’s black magic tricks.

“Very well,” he said at last. “Just give me a few minutes with Syreena—”

“You do not have the time, Damien. Already there must be Lycanthropes tromping over and over our only trail as they start to empty the Library.”

“But I cannot just leave her alone with a house full of Vampires who do not realize who and what she is,” he argued.

“Is she as fragile as that? After killing Nico, I would think her more than capable of keeping a group of mere servants in line.”

Jasmine had a point. He was being a little overprotective. Syreena was a lot tougher than he gave her credit for, and she was very used to running a household full of strangers. There was no one who could really do her any harm. If she could defeat Nico’s son on her own as easily as she had, then she could certainly stand her ground against any one of the domestics.

Damien’s desire to know who the rogue Vampire was won out over all other concerns.

He left his Romanian holdings quickly, with Jasmine at his side.

It was over an hour before Syreena realized that Damien had completely left the property. In that time, she had been busy settling small squabbles, sorting out duties, and ignoring suspicious glances from more and more corners of the rooms she walked through. The Vampire staff was quickly beginning to realize she was not one of them. She could tell because it was getting increasingly difficult to get them to respond to her requests.

She did not want to go crying to Damien, so she tried very hard to handle it all herself, but she had not a single ally, and it was taking its toll on her ability to be efficient. Jasmine, of course, had been hoping for just such a thing to happen. That was no doubt why she was nowhere to be found.

Syreena expected that, but she had not expected Damien to leave her alone in such hostile conditions. On the other hand, she was glad he had moved out of the way and let her try to take care of everything without him hovering over her shoulder.

“Well, Syreena, you can’t have it both ways,” she muttered to herself under her breath.

He had probably just gone hunting for the night. With or without Jasmine, Syreena couldn’t care less. She did wish him a speedy return, however, as she saw a maid who was supposed to be sweeping out the fireplaces wandering the halls for the third time.

Syreena had had enough by then.

She marched up to the maid just as she entered the main parlor, where four other workers were trying to put it all in order. Syreena gave a glance at the already cleaned fireplace and then let her temper simmer over.

“Oria!”

The chatter in the room ceased abruptly as the girl jumped in her own skin at the way the Princess called her name, the cut of it slicing across raw nerves.

“Yes?” the indolent girl asked, clearly returning to her smirking, uncaring attitude.

“The fireplace in this room has already been swept,” Syreena informed her.

“So?”

Syreena glanced at the avid interest of the four others who were in the room.

“So unless you want to start washing down the lavatories,” Syreena said with pseudocharm, “I suggest you get back to the ones that need cleaning.”

The girl’s hands immediately shot to her hips, her spine straightening in indignation as she worked up a retort.

“And if you sass me,” Syreena interjected in a warning tone, “you will never return to this house again after you get kicked out of it, do you understand me?”

“You can’t do that. You aren’t anybody. Next month Damien will be tossing some other girl around in his bed and you won’t mean a thing!”

There were muffled chuckles from the others in the room.

For about three seconds.

That was how long it took for Syreena to grab the smart-mouthed girl around her throat and rush her up against the nearest stone wall with a smack that sounded frighteningly damaging. The maid made a gurgle of protest, her hands reaching to claw at the iron wrist that held her pinned to the wall. The Vampire girl was too young to have learned how to do without oxygen, so she struggled to catch even the smallest portion of a breath.

When the others moved to come to her aid, Syreena turned on them with a snarl of warning that froze them mid-step.

“Anyone who thinks to touch me will find out exactly how much I mean to your Prince,” she threatened with cold surety. “I assure you, he will do far worse to you than banish you from his home.”

Her confidence was unnerving to them. Enough to make them step back and watch her with wary eyes as they rethought their actions. She turned back to the chit she had clasped between her fingers.

“Yours will be the lesson that the others learn, girl. I do not like to repeat myself, and I only warn someone once. I am a Lycanthrope Princess, and I am used to being obeyed without question. I will accept no less in my mate’s household.”

And with that one statement, the Vampire grapevine was satisfied and forewarned. The four in the room would quickly tell who and what she was, and that her easy-going nature hid a very short fuse that probably should not be lit.

“Leave this house under your own power, or you will leave it under mine. And remember, you only get one warning.”

Syreena let go of Oria, letting her slide unprepared to the floor. Ignoring the crumpled heap of girl at her feet, she turned to smile at the others.

“You are doing an excellent job in this room. When you are done, do not forget to go to Sybil for new directions. Remember, her voice is the same as mine, just as my voice is the same as Damien’s. I expect you will behave for Sybil far better than this baggage has behaved for me.”

She cast a look of disdain down at Oria, then turned so she could find Damien.

After Syreena had left, the indignant female Vampire got to her feet in fury. She marched up to the others.

“Do you believe the nerve of that foreigner? Who does she think she is? Mate? Damien’s mate? Damien would never bind himself to a non-Vampire!”

“Shut up, Oria,” one of the men snapped impatiently. “What do you know of Damien? The Prince has been gone for a very long time, certainly longer than you have been alive.”

“You better leave, girl, if you know what’s good for you,” a second worker said. “If she’s telling the truth, Damien will have your head for mouthing off to her.”

Outnumbered now, Oria suddenly realized she no longer had a choice in the matter. The shapechanger had won, she had lost, and there was very little she could do about it.

So with a flounce of outrage, she left the compound.

When Damien still had not returned after an hour, Syreena began to question where he might have gone to. She did not know his habits all that well, but he had not struck her as the sort to dawdle over a hunt when he had so many things to do. Jasmine had not returned, either, and that only served to treble the Princess’s concerns. She left the main halls and rooms, leaving them to a measurably subdued household staff. After the incident with Oria, they were more agreeable and inclined to do as she asked, so she did not worry about leaving them to complete their tasks without cracking a whip over them every minute.

Syreena made her way to Jasmine’s new quarters. Perhaps they would reveal a clue as to where they had both disappeared to.

What she found upon opening the door was a very young Vampire girl, carefully folding and hanging clothes in Jasmine’s wardrobe. The small girl, just barely a woman by her looks, went wide-eyed when she saw Syreena. She sketched an immediate curtsy to the Princess, which made her smile. It was the first act of respect from any of her new staff.

“Hello, young one,” Syreena greeted her gently. “Do you know where your mistress is?”

“Standing before me, miss,” the girl answered instantly.

Syreena smiled at her eagerness to please and not offend.

“Perhaps. I suspect that Jasmine will expect you to be loyal to her over me, however, and I will not hold that against you if you are in conflict. What is your name?”

“Lucia.”

“Lucia, have you seen my…your Prince?”

“Yes, miss. He left with my mistress a couple of hours past.”

“Do you know where he has gone?”

Now Lucia hesitated, the contest in her thoughts clear in her expression.

“Lucia, I only wish to know because…because I am concerned that they have not yet returned. If my concerns are unfounded, merely say so and I will believe you.”

“I cannot say so,” Lucia breathed softly. “I am not supposed to know where they have gone, but I do.”

“Would you care to explain that?” Syreena asked as patiently as she could.

“I was in the hall and overheard my mistress—Jasmine, I mean, speaking in another room to the Prince. They have gone to discover the identity of a Vampire they were calling a traitor.”

Syreena felt as though her heart had suddenly stopped beating. She knew instantly what Lucia was speaking of, even if the girl herself did not.

“I thank you for your directness, Lucia.”

“And I thank you, miss,” the girl returned quickly. “The others will never say so, but they have longed for Damien to return to the homeland. If you are the reason why that has been possible, then we all owe you thanks. I know so many who have missed his attentiveness to this region.”

Syreena nodded in a combination of acknowledgment and farewell. She backed out of the room, her thoughts full of emotion and racing speculation.

Oddly enough, she focused on the more inane portion of information first. She had not realized that Damien had not been home in so long. Even though she had been faced with the layers of dust coating all the surfaces of his dwelling, it appeared that this had occurred over a much longer time than she had originally assumed. From what Lucia said, it had been long enough for Vampires to feel neglected, something that would probably take a great deal of time to occur in a species who marked time in large increments. She wondered why that was, and what had driven or kept Damien away until he’d had no real choice but to return.