The King (Black Dagger Brotherhood #12)(118)

The receiving line that had formed proceeded apace, and soon enough Abalone was kissing the powdered cheek of the female.

“So glad you could come,” she said grandly, flicking a hand in the direction behind her. “The dining room, if you will.”

As her rubies flashed, he pictured his daughter as such, a grand lady in a grand house with glassy eyes.

Mayhap the punishment for not going along with this affront to the throne was worth it. He had found love with his shellan for the years she had been on the Earth, but that had been luck, he’d come to realize. Most of his contemporaries, now slaughtered in the raids, had been in loveless, sexless relationships that had revolved around the party circuit instead of the familial dinner table.

He did not want that for his daughter.

Yet, if love had happened for him, surely there was a chance for her even in the glymera?

Right?

Walking into the dining room, he found that it was just as it had been when the King had addressed them all so recently: the long thin table was moved out and the twenty or so chairs were set up in rows. This time, however, the survivors of the aristocracy were settling in along with their mates.

Usually shellans were not included in Council meetings, but there was nothing usual about this gathering. Or the last.

And indeed, the gathered should have been more somber, he thought as he picked a silk-covered seat in the back: As opposed to showing any respect for the historical significance, the danger, the unprecedented nature of all this, they were chatting among themselves, the gentlemales blustering, the ladies casting their hands this way and that so that their jewels flashed.

Indeed, Abalone was alone in the back row, and instead of greeting those whom he knew, he freed the button on his suit jacket and crossed his leg at the knee. When somebody lit up a cigar, he took a cheroot out and did the same, just to give himself something to do. And as a doggen immediately showed up at his elbow with an ashtray on a brass stand, he nodded thanks and focused on tapping the ash.

He was small potatoes to all of them, because he had long ago decided that under the radar was best. His blood had seen firsthand the cruelties of court and society, and he had learned that lesson through reading the diaries that had been passed down to him. The truth was, he had financial resources that all of them in this room collectively could barely meet.

Thank you, Apple computer.

Best investment anyone in the eighties could have made. And then there had been big pharma in the nineties. And before that? The steel corporations and railroad companies around the turn of the century.

He’d always had a knack for where humans were going to want to go with both their enthusiasms and their necessities.

If the glymera knew this, his daughter would be a commodity of great value.

Which was another reason he didn’t talk about his net worth.

Incredible how far his bloodline had come over the centuries. And to think they owed it all to this King’s father.

Ten minutes later, the room was full—and that, more than the party-party affect, was the sign that the glymera had at least some appreciation of the magnitude of what they were doing. Fashionably late did not apply this evening; the doors were going to be locked right about …

He checked his watch.

… now.

Sure enough, there was a reverberation of sound as heavy wood slid home.

All and sundry sat and went silent, and that was when he was able to count the heads and find out who was missing. Rehvenge, the leahdyre, of course—he had allied himself with Wrath and no one was going to shake that tie. Marissa was also missing, although her brother, Havers, was here—but then she was mated to that Brother no one really knew who was supposedly from Wrath’s line.

Naturally, she would be absent as well—

The paneled doors on the right side of the fireplace opened and six males walked in. Instantly, the assembled straightened in their seats. He recognized two of them immediately—the aristocratic-looking one in the front … and the ugly harelipped one in the back who had come to visit him with Ichan and Tyhm. The four in between were shades of the same dark hue: big-bodied, sharp-eyed fighters, who were alert but not twitchy, ready but not jumping the gun.

Their control was the scariest thing about them.

Only the unafraid could be that relaxed in this situation—

The lady of the house led her hellren in, the male bent like the head of the cane he used with his free hand, his hair white, his face lined like pleated drapes.

She sat him down as if he were a child, arranging his suit coat, smoothing his bright red tie.

Then she addressed the assembled, hands clasped like a soprano about to belt out an aria to a packed house. Her glow at the attention turned upon her was wholly inappropriate, in Abalone’s mind.

In fact, this whole thing was a nightmare, he thought as he tapped his ashes again.

As her mouth got to working, spewing out thank-yous and acknowledgments, he wondered how things were going to fare for her after her “beloved” went unto the Fade. Undoubtedly, that depended upon the will and whether this was a second mating and if there were young of the blooded line preceding her in the race to the assets.

Ichan was the next to take the stage. “…crossroads … necessary action … work of Tyhm to expose the weakness set before the race … half-breed mate … quarter-bred heir…”

It was the rhetoric that had been spelled out to him, the recap simply posturing to pretend that this was the first anyone had heard of it. But all had been prepped, the expectations laid out beforehand, the repercussions avowed as necessary.