Shadow's Claim (Immortals After Dark #13)(76)

Gentleman caller?” Raum shouted to Morgana as soon as the three of them had landed in his receiving room. Historically, Bettina had visited this place only to discuss the most serious of matters.

—Bettina, your father . . . he’s fallen on the battlefield.

—This is your summoning medallion, Tina. We only need a bit of your blood.

—You must be wed, m’girl. Without a protector, you risk another attack. What if something happens to me this Accession? Who will protect you?

“Curse you, Raum!” Morgana yanked her arm away. “Never trace me again, or your horns will decorate the grille of my new mortal car!” She flounced over to one of the rustic divans, draping herself over it with a great flourish.

Bettina perched on the divan opposite Morgana, gazing around warily. Raum’s spire was like an extension of him—a mix of violence and unexpected thoughtfulness.

Crossed battle-axes hung above a rough-hewn hearth. Centuries’ worth of armor lined the walls. Above them were the mounted heads of monsters he’d hunted: vicious Gotohs, ghouls, and Wendigos.

But he also possessed a collection of rare scales from myriad basilisk nests. Demons held those dragons sacred. In the room’s firelight, the scales gave off a mesmerizing shimmer, waves of iridescent pearl, jade, and crimson.

Caspion traced into the room, heading straight to the sideboard.

“I don’t like this,” Raum snapped. “Don’t like the way that vampire looks at Bettina, as if he’s wedded and bedded her already. As if he knows her.”

Bettina peered at her bitten nails, watching them begin to grow back.

“And as glad as I am about the Vrekeners, I demand to know how he found them!” Raum’s eyes widened, and he pointed a claw at Morgana. “You must have helped the leech! Predicted where Skye Hall would be!” Raum joined Cas at the sideboard. “When you wouldn’t assist us?” He sloshed demon brew from a pitcher into a mug, then thought better of it and palmed the pitcher in his big hand.

“How? I’m no soothsayer, as evidenced by my sanity.” Morgana spread her arms over the back of the divan with an insouciant grace. “And you know I tried to read Bettina’s mind to give you a description of the four. But she couldn’t even bring herself to picture them.”

Daciano had probably been able to see deeper into her subconscious than Bettina herself could.

“Your hand is in this, sorceress!” Raum insisted, adjourning with the pitcher to his oversize desk.

“One more time, Raum—the Hall is impervious to Sorceri. We can’t find it, reach it, attack it—”

“And I’m to take your word on that?” Raum all but yelled, “I don’t trust you as far as I can throw you!”

Morgana snapped, “The feeling is mutual, I assure you!”

Cas slid Bettina a glance that said: “This is so messed up.” She flashed one back: “I know, right!”

She felt as if they were two siblings watching their dam and sire fight.

Wait. Siblings? Were her feelings turning . . . sisterly toward him?

Morgana said, “Ah, Raum, you’re just angry that the vampire did something supposedly impossible! When you couldn’t.” With a pointed look at Caspion, Morgana added, “When even the vaunted ‘tracker’ couldn’t track them.”

Cas glowered. “Because Raum ordered me off their trail! Eventually I would have found them somehow!” To Raum, he said, “I always did before. Yet you commanded me to stop searching. You as good as handed this revenge to the vampire!”

Raum slammed his fist against the desktop, rattling writing utensils and skull paperweights. “I gave that order because you were exhausted. You’d barely finished transitioning to immortal, hadn’t even harvested a death yet! And I didn’t want you to repeat what Mathar did!”

Everyone fell silent. “What? What did my father do?” Bettina finally asked.

Raum scowled, knowing he’d said too much.

“Raum?”

At length, he muttered, “He hunted your mother’s killers until it nearly drove him mad. He monitored Skye Hall’s movements for years, trying to come up with a pattern, to predict where it would appear next. No use.” Raum scrubbed his hand over his craggy face. “Mathar existed, like a ghost, as long as he could, holding out for you. Then he sought the front line of the bloodiest battle he could find, knowing it would end him.”

He’d wanted to die? In a soft voice, Bettina said, “He couldn’t live without her?”

Raum shook his head sadly. “Had no interest in that prospect.”

Mathar’s love for Eleara astounded Bettina. His love for me. He’d existed—in misery—for me.

No wonder he’d seemed distant. He’d been tormented. “So devoted,” she murmured to herself.

Morgana sniffed. “Eleara was just as much so. Though I could never see it.”

Bettina’s gaze landed on Cas. Would she ever know such devotion from a male? And return it just as fiercely?

With the vampire. The thought arose without warning, startling her because it felt like . . . truth.

Cas met her eyes then, but again he didn’t seem to see her. What if I’ve been horribly wrong about us?

“There’s no finding the air territories,” Raum continued. “I didn’t want to doom Caspion to failure. I still don’t know how the vampire located them.”