“Look, you and I are together because we love each other. A piece of paper one way or another is not going to change us—”

“No, absolutely not—I’m not going to give those a**holes the satisfaction of f**king you over—”

“Listen to me.” She grabbed onto his forearm and squeezed. “I want you to calm down and listen to me.”

It was the weirdest thing. As wound up as he was, when she gave him a direct order like that? He followed like a foot soldier.

“Predate the dissolution of marriage—mating—whatever. Don’t give them any rationale, you don’t want to look like it’s reactionary. Then decide whether or not you want to stay King. But that way? It’s not my fault. Right now, like it or not, I’m the reason you’re losing the throne, and I can’t go through the rest of our lives feeling responsible for something like that. It’ll kill me.”

“Sacrificing you is not the way—”

“We’re not sacrificing me in the slightest. I don’t care about being queen. I care about being by your side—and no crown or edict or whatever is going to change that.”

“You could be carrying our offspring right now. Are you saying you want to bring that young into the world a bastard?”

“They wouldn’t be to me. They wouldn’t be to you.”

“But to others…”

“Like who? You telling me Vishous would think the kid’s something less? Tohr? Rhage? Any of the Brothers—their shellans? What about Qhuinn and Blay—Qhuinn’s not mated to Layla. Does that mean you’d look down on that child?”

“This household’s not the ‘others’ I was talking about.”

“So who is, precisely? We never see the glymera—thank God—and I don’t believe I’ve ever met what you guys call a commoner. Well, except for Ehlena and Xhex, I guess. I mean, all these citizens of the race—they never come here, and is that going to change? I don’t think so.” She squeezed his arm again. “Besides, you were worried about putting our kid on the throne? This takes care of that problem, too.”

Wrath broke off from her hold on him and wanted to pace—except he didn’t know the weight room layout well enough not to land on his ass.

He settled for wiping his face again. “I don’t want the throne enough to divorce you. I just don’t. It’s the principle, Beth.”

“Well, if it makes you feel better, I’ll divorce you.”

He blinked behind his wraparounds. “Not going to happen. I’m sorry, but I will not do this.”

His leelan’s voice cracked. “I can’t spend the rest of my life thinking it’s my fault. I just can’t.”

“But it isn’t. It honestly isn’t. Look, I just … I gotta let the past go, you know? I can’t hold on to my parents this way. That shit isn’t healthy.” He let his head fall back. “Goddamn, I mean, you’d figure I’d be over it by now. Losing them, that is.”

“I don’t think people ever get past that kind of thing—especially the way it happened to you.”

Flashes came back of his scrawny pretrans self locked in that crawl space, watching through a knothole in the wood as his parents were cut into pieces. It was always the same film reel, the same glints of sword blades and screams of pain and terror … and it always ended the same, with the two most important people in his life up to that point gone, gone, gone.

He wasn’t going to lose Beth. Not even in a figurative way.

“No,” he said with utter finality.

Reaching over, he put his hand on her womb. “I’ve lost my past and there’s nothing I can do to change that. I will not lose my future—even for the throne.”

FORTY-NINE

One of the problems with marriages, matings, whatever … was that when the person you loved laid down a veto? Not much you could do about it.

As Beth stepped out of the weight room with her hellren, she was popped-balloon deflated. Out of arguments, out of plans, she hated where they were, but all the avenues to a better place were obstructed by a “no” she couldn’t get past.

Instead of following him into the showers, she went to the office and sat at the desk, staring at the laptop’s screen saver of bubbles floating around the image of Outlook—

The hot flash came out of nowhere, blasting up through her pelvis and spreading like a brushfire to the tips of her fingers, the soles of her feet, the crown of her head.

“Christ,” she muttered. “I could fry an egg on my chest over here.”

Billowing the collar of the nightgown helped a little, but then the internal oven blast was over as quick as it came, nothing but the cooling sweat on her skin left behind.

Swiping the screen saver off, she watched as Outlook updated itself with a send/receive. The account that was configured on this computer was the general mailbox for the King, and she braced herself for a long lineup of unread e-mails to start appearing at the top of the list.

There was only one.

A tangible representation of the switch in power, she supposed …

Frowning, she sat forward. The subject line read: Heavy Heart. And it was from a male whose name she recognized only because it had been on the list of signatures on that f**king parchment.

Opening the thing, she read it once. Twice. And a third time.

To: Wrath, son of Wrath

From: Abalone, son of Abalone

Date: 04430 12:59:56

Subject: Heavy Heart

* * *

My lord, it is with a heavy heart that I greet the future. I was at the meeting of the Council and I executed the Vote of No Confidence, with its antiquated, prejudicial grounds. I am sick for myself and the race over the glymera’s actions of late, but more so over my lack of courage.

A long, long while ago, my father Abalone served your father. Family lore has passed down the story, although its details are not widely known anymore: When a cabal went against your parents, my father took a stance with his King and queen and honored this bloodline of mine for e’ermore in doing so. In return, your father provided the generations of my family with financial freedom and social elevation.

I did not live up to that legacy this night. And I find that I cannot stomach my cowardice.

I do not agree with the actions taken against you—and I believe that others feel the same. I work with a group of commoners to help field their concerns and approach the glymera for appropriate redress. In my dealings with such citizens, it is clear that there are many at the root of the race who remember all the things your father did for them and their families. Although they have never met you, that goodwill extends to you and your family. I know they shall share my sadness—and my worry—as to where we are headed the now.

In recognition of my failure, I have resigned from the Council. I will continue working with the commoners, as they need a champion—and although I am sorely remiss in that role, I must try to do some good in this world or I shan’t be able to e’er sleep again.

I wish I had done more for you. You and your shellan shall be in my thoughts and prayers.

This is all so wrong.

Sincerely, Abalone, son of Abalone

What a lovely guy, Beth thought as she got out of Outlook. And he probably needed to ditch the guilt. Given the aristocracy’s steamroller approach to everything, he hadn’t stood a damn chance.

The glymera had ways of ruining lives that had nothing to do with coffins.

Checking the clock on the wall, she figured Wrath would be along any minute. And then they would … well, she had no clue. Usually at this time, they were heading up to bed, but that didn’t hold any appeal.

Maybe they could switch bedrooms today. She didn’t think she could handle even seeing that bejeweled suite of rooms.

Idly heading over to Internet Explorer, she stared at the Google screen, shaking her head at the I’m feeling lucky line.

Yeah. Right.

God, if only V didn’t hate everything about the Apple company, she could have had an iPhone in her hand and asked Siri what to do.

She so appreciated Wrath standing by their marriage, but jeez …

For absolutely no reason, that scene from The Princess Bride flashed through her mind—the one where they were getting married at the altar in front of that priest.

Meeeewidge, a dweam wifin a dweam—

Beth froze.

Then typed fast and hit that frickin’ lucky button.

What came up was—

“Hey, you ready to head up?”

Beth slowly lifted her eyes to her husband. “I know what we have to do.”

Wrath recoiled like someone had dropped a piano on his foot. And then promptly looked like his head was pounding. “Beth. For the love of f**king God—”

“Do you love me, all of me?”

He let his huge body fall back against the office’s glass door as George curled in for a lie-down—like he expected this to be another long one. “Beth—”

“Well, do you?”

“Yes,” her hellren groaned.

“All of me, human and vampire.”

“Yes.”

“And you don’t discriminate one side versus the other, right?”

“No.”

“So it’s like Christmas. I mean, you don’t celebrate the holiday, but because it’s what Butch and I are used to, you, like, let us put up Christmas trees and decorations, and now everyone in the household does the present thing, right?”

“Right,” he muttered.

“And when it comes to the winter solstice, I mean, if you were going to ever do one of those balls, you wouldn’t think it was any more or less important or significant than Christmas, right.”

“Right.” This was spoken in a tone that suggested in his head, he was answering the question, If I put the gun right here, and pulled the trigger, I could get myself out of this misery, right?

“No difference. At all.”

“None. Can we stop now?”

“My beliefs, my customs, just as important as yours, no difference, right?”

“Right.”

“At all.”

“Right.”

She burst up from the computer. “Meet me in the front foyer in two hours. Wear something nice.”

“What—what the f**k are you doing?”

“Something we’d talked about a while ago and never followed through on.”

“Beth, what’s going on?”

“Nothing.” She ran for the closet so she could get into the tunnel ahead of him. “Everything.”

“Why aren’t you telling me?”

She hesitated before disappearing. “Because I’m afraid you’ll argue with me. Two hours. The foyer.”

As she bolted out the hidden panel, she heard her hellren cursing, but she didn’t have any time to go into this with her man.

She had to find Lassiter. And John Matthew.

Now.

Selena experienced her first true lockup that morning.

Sitting at the kitchen table of Rehvenge’s great camp, she was nursing a cup of coffee and a homemade scone when her mind began to agitate over the King’s fate, Trez’s kisses, iAm’s hard stare, her own uncertain future …

Most especially Trez’s kisses.

She hadn’t seen him in public or private since they’d left that bathroom and proceeded downstairs to find his brother in the kitchen.

She was kind of glad.

The unfinished business between them—the sexual unfinished business—was too intense for her right now. When she’d been in the moment, it had all seemed so natural, so predestined even—but with a clear head and wide-open eyes in the aftermath, she wondered what she had been thinking.

The future was coming, and it was going to be hard enough without the pressure of falling in love.

And that was where things were headed with him …

As her brain twisted in her skull, she took a sip of coffee, burned her lip, and in her frustration, decided there simply wasn’t enough sugar in with her caffeine. And she’d put too much of the grinds in the filter. And the water hadn’t been cold enough, so there was a tinny aftertaste.

In reality, the mix was pretty perfect. It was her internal sense of self that she was struggling to get into balance.

But she could do something about the java, as the Brothers called it.

Reaching forward for the little sugar pot, she extended her arm from her shoulder, tilted her torso over her hips, and—

Her body didn’t so much stiffen as freeze in that position—as if all the joints that were engaged had become solid at once.

Terror quadrupled her heart rate, sweat flushing across her face and her chest. And when she went to open her mouth to breathe more deeply, she found that even her jaw was stuck in place—although that may have been the fear.

Abruptly, the silence in the house pressed in on her.

There was nobody else in the cedar-shingled camp. The other Chosen had gone up to the Sanctuary to visit with Amalya, the directrix following Wrath’s dethroning. Rehvenge was down in Caldwell. The doggen who now rotated between this location and the Brotherhood mansion had stayed in town in light of the sad news.

In a frantic calculation, she tried to remember how long it had taken her sisters to be permanently affected.

Not days. Maybe months in terms of Earth time?

Dearest Virgin Scribe … what if this was it?

Focusing all her energy, she tried to unhinge the locked doors of her joints, and got nowhere. Indeed, the only thing that moved were the tears that pooled in her eyes and slipped off her lashes. And it was so utterly bizarre: For all her immobility, she could feel everything. The hot paths down her cheeks. The warmth from overhead that drifted by her temples and the tips of her ears. The cool draft across her soft-soled shoes. The lingering burn on her tongue and the back of her throat.