Blood Double (God Wars #1)(8)

Gavin, I knew, was younger than Flavio, but not by much. I was surrounded by ancient vampires and I wanted to demand answers as to why I'd been put on display and paraded about as the Queen of Le-Ath Veronis. They really didn't know the underlying reason for it either—they'd only been instructed to do it.

"I hate that Lissa is gone, now of all times," Gavin grumbled. "We have a full session of meetings scheduled and she should be here instead of this." He swept a hand in my direction.

A terrible desire to slap him across the room engulfed me. Quelling that thought, I worked to bring my face into a smooth countenance. With an effort, I forced the frown away from my mouth and eyes. Here I was, stuck with the worst sire imaginable. Would I ever call him father, as Flavio had done with Wlodek, his sire? Not even on the coldest day in the deepest portion of hell.

"She was brought here for this purpose, Gavin," Flavio pointed out. "Kyler says this."

"But the turning was not on my agenda." Gavin was angry about that, I could tell.

I wanted to shout at him, then. I wanted to remind him that I'd said no. Twice. I hadn't wanted to be vampire just as much as he hadn't wanted to turn me.

"You could have called Casimir," Wlodek said softly. He'd been studying my face and likely caught a brief glimpse of my anger.

"You know Casimir would have coddled her. We have to have a firm hand, here, if she is to behave as we desire. Casimir does not need this information—that we are placing someone in the Queen's chair during her absence." Gavin snorted.

My fists clenched. Coddled? I'd never been coddled. I wanted to fling insults and profanity in his direction. Tell him exactly what I thought of him. I didn't. And just as I'd done so many times before, I held it inside and hoped it would go away.

*

If I'd thought I'd met with frigid indifference from my vampire sire, it was only because I hadn't visited the kitchen, yet. I needed a bottle of blood substitute before going to bed and the moment I entered the massive palace kitchen, I knew.

Somehow, the palace staff had been informed that I was masquerading as the Queen. They'd been given compulsion not to reveal that fact to anyone outside the palace, but they knew; I read it in every face I encountered. Cheedas, the vampire who oversaw the kitchen staff and worked as head cook, muttered angrily the whole time I was in his domain, and angry conversation broke the moment I left, carrying my bottle with me.

Did I want to cry? The simple answer is yes. I wanted to weep and shout and curse. Not only was weeping dangerous, it had never gotten me anywhere during my life and I didn't expect it to help me now.

Once inside the Queen's suite (I'd been instructed to sleep there whenever I looked like Queen Lissa) I wearily sat on her dressing bench and examined my new face in the mirror.

Larentii are a powerful race. Atoms form at their command, and anything can be forced into any image, should they desire it. Full lips, blue eyes and strawberry-blonde hair. That's what I had, now. I wanted my face back. I wanted my curly dark hair back. I wanted the past few weeks of my life to be undone. I wanted to walk away from my former life, too, but there were some who'd likely suffered at my absence. It didn't matter; there was nothing I could do to change any of it, now.

Unable to sleep at first, I turned on the massive vid-screen inside the Queen's bedchamber and watched the late news produced on Le-Ath Veronis. "Who stole from you, and how much?" A journalist had a microrecorder shoved in the face of a local casino owner.

He obviously thought himself handsome—with thick, dark hair and hazel eyes. He was using every bit of airtime he could muster to further his agenda, too. Alliance vids were of such good quality that I could read anyone from a digital image. The casino owner was lying.

Snatching my comp-vid off the bedside table, I hastily searched for the casino owner's profile. It wasn't difficult to find. Surprisingly enough, the friendly snake crawled into the Queen's bedroom and lifted himself onto the bed.

"Found me, huh?" I ran a finger over smooth scales. "See this?" I showed him the photograph of Weren Kele on my comp-vid. Kele had owned the Moonstone Casino for three years. He was complaining to a journalist that someone—an employee, perhaps—had embezzled nearly a million Alliance credits.

"This is Weren Kele," I informed the snake. "He says someone stole a lot of money from him. He's lying. He has a pile of non-identifiable credit chips in a safe inside a jewelry business he owns with a partner. That partner's name is Shale Parc. See, you know something you didn't know before." I kept stroking the snake's head. He rose, looked me in the eye, blinked twice and then slid off the bed.

"Okay, maybe you didn't want to know that," I muttered as I watched him crawl from the Queen's bedroom.

*

Nobody spoke to me unless it was inside the Council Chamber. There, I was addressed as the Queen and Gavin, employing mindspeech, told me who they were and what to say. I'd already known who they were, but I wasn't going to share that information with a cold and indifferent sire. I didn't attempt to return Gavin's mindspeech, either. Likely, I didn't have it; few vampires did. My sire had it.

Sire. What a useless word to me. I'd never had parents. My mother had been a drug addict who'd gotten arrested shortly after she became pregnant. After her conviction and incarceration for manufacturing meth with two cousins, she gave birth to me while in prison. My father's name was left blank on the birth certificate—she didn't know who the father might be. I often wondered if it were my father or my mother's drug habit that left me with the curse I bore.