Dragos Goes to Washington (Elder Races #8.5)(20)

He strained to hear what they might be saying, but even though he was very good at pinpointing something specific from some distance away, there were too many people, and the orchestra was too loud, for him to catch any of their conversation.

Who is that man standing with Colton? he asked Bayne.

The other man turned to follow his gaze. I think that’s her chief of staff, Aaron Davis.

If he was Colton’s chief of staff, then Davis would be coming to dinner tomorrow evening. Dragos’s eyes narrowed. There might be something he could do to increase the tensions between the two. He would make a point of talking with Davis, to see if the other man’s loyalties might be less than concretely fixed.

Anything else you need? Bayne asked.

No, not now, thanks. Circulate, and see if you can overhear anything useful.

Will do.

Bayne disappeared into the crowd again.

Deep in thought, Dragos joined Pia, Niniane and Tiago. Waitstaff threaded through the crowd, offering platters of hors d’oeuvres to people as they passed.

While Dragos responded to the conversation, and smiled when the others did, in the back of his mind, he began to lay plans.

If Colton announced a bid for the presidency, he was going to funnel money into every PAC he could find that operated against her candidacy.

Because he was always thinking of contingencies.

He played with budget numbers for a while, but ultimately set it aside as unsatisfactory and considered other options.

There was always assassination, of course. But assassination was tricky to pull off without having it backfire. If Colton announced a bid for the presidency and gained any traction—and even if she didn’t—her death could potentially add fuel to her causes, which would eventually make everything worse.

No, assassination wasn’t the most preferred course of action, at least not in this case. He could work to discredit her. Hire human spies to dig up dirt on her. That might have some merit, but it still wouldn’t dispel the antipathy against the Elder Races and the Wyr that she had whipped up.

He needed to think of something else to address that particular problem. And in case that didn’t work . . . what other contingency plans could he set into place?

Just then, Xavier del Torro, regent of the Nightkind demesne, and Tatiana, the Light Fae Queen, strolled up, and he set aside that train of thought with a mental note to pursue it later.

The evening passed in a grueling haze of forced pleasantries and hidden tensions.

And, occasionally, some not so hidden tensions.

The Light Fae Queen Tatiana apparently refused to talk to the Elven High Lord Ferion, not even in pleasantries, and she cut him dead when he approached. The gods only knew what that was about.

And at one point the head of the Demonkind assembly and the head of the witches demesne broke into a soft-voiced argument.

Jered and Isalynn’s dislike for each other was well known. As they smilingly engaged in a quiet spat, Pia poked Dragos in the ribs and said in his head, People are taking note of this. We’d better break them up.

He almost rolled his eyes, but as he glanced around, he saw that Pia was right. Others were watching the two, some covertly but others with quite open, and not particularly friendly, interest.

Moving together with Pia, he took hold of Isalynn’s arm and walked away with her while Pia distracted Jered.

Think of it. The dragon was practicing diplomacy.

He chuckled to himself, even as Isalynn hissed under her breath at him, “Let go of my arm, Dragos!”

“Not until you and Jered are far away from each other,” he said. He switched to telepathy and said bluntly, Pull your shit together, Isalynn, and smile at me like you mean it, because if you don’t think we’re on trial right now, you haven’t been paying attention. And you’re a lot more stupid than I thought.

Damn it. You’re insufferable at the best of times. I hate it when you’re right. She took two short, angry breaths, then turned to show her teeth at him.

His cold gaze ran over her bold, attractive features. He didn’t care that her dark gaze still snapped with anger and dislike. All her facial muscles had moved in a close approximation of a smile, and that was all anyone else would see.

He walked her over to a buffet table where they helped themselves to refreshments. As two congressmen approached, he left her to converse with them and circled back around to find Pia.

Pia did end up dancing twice, once with President Johnson, and a second time with Ferion, while both times Dragos held himself in a clench and managed not to bite anybody’s head off.

Not even Johnson’s relative age helped. Despite being a politician in his sixties, Johnson wasn’t an old, ugly f*cker. He was still a handsome, fit son of a bitch, and as he whirled Pia around the dance floor, she threw back her head and laughed more than once.

And watching her waltz with Ferion felt like someone just out of eyesight was raking talons down a blackboard. His hands tightened into fists as he imagined grinding the handsome Elf into the polished floor.

“Dragos, is that a flame I see coming out of your nostrils?” Niniane asked.

As he had been obsessing over Pia’s dance, the little Queen had maneuvered to stand directly in front of him, her head tilted sideways as she squinted at him.

He sucked in a breath, swallowing down the fire, and growled, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“It was too. That was a tiny little flame.” She pointed an accusing finger at his nose. “What are you trying to do, create a general panic and destroy everything everybody is trying to achieve here?”