Immediately, the deafening sounds from the arena dimmed, leaving me with ringing ears and pulsing vision as my eyes tried to adjust to the darker interior. “What are you doing?” I asked as Mircea kept on going, past the buffet table and almost to the elevator doors on the other side of the room.
“Strange, I was about to ask the same of you!”
“You saw—”
“Yes, I saw!” He whirled on me, dark eyes glittering. “I saw you risk your life—again—needlessly, foolishly! I am beginning to believe—”
“It was necessary!”
“—that you have some sort of death wish! What were you thinking?”
“I was thinking that he needed help! I was thinking that someone asked me—”
“Then you tell them no!”
“He was my responsibility—”
“Your responsibility is there!” It was vicious and punctuated by a slash of his arm in the general direction of the buffet.
Where I belatedly noticed Jules standing awkwardly, holding a champagne glass and trying to look like he wasn’t there. It was a little difficult, because he and a no-longer-suspended Marco were the only ones left in the room. Everybody else had cleared out, all the finely dressed men and women now picking their way through the debris outside to clap politely for the victor.
While in here, another battle was brewing, and it wasn’t one I was prepared for.
I had just woken up. I was still in the pink cotton nightie I’d slept in, my hair was everywhere, and my stomach was growling, demanding breakfast. I did not want to do this.
But Mircea obviously did, and he was standing there, visibly angry, which for a master vamp usually meant he was close to wrecking the room. I didn’t even want to know what it meant for the Senate’s chief negotiator, who usually kept his cool even when everyone else was on meltdown. I didn’t want to know.
But I was about to, because I wasn’t going to give him what he wanted.
“I can’t change Jules back,” I began.
“And why not?” It was clipped. “I explained the procedure. All you have to do is age him. I will handle the rest.”
“Okay, ‘can’t’ might not have been the best choice of word—”
“Then do it. We are running out of time.”
“Out of time for what?” I glanced over, but Jules was apparently finding his champagne glass to be fascinating. “Is Jules going somewhere?”
“Our army is going somewhere—into faerie!”
I frowned. “I’m not making you an army, Mircea. I told you that last night.”
“And you have now had time to reconsider.”
“I’m not going to reconsider.”
“Damn it, Cassie!” The explosion made me jump, because Mircea didn’t speak like that. Not to anyone, and especially not to me. But then, he didn’t usually look like that, either. The playful, daring, humorous lover was nowhere to be seen. Instead, I was facing a man who was visibly stressed and angry, like he’d had too little sleep and too much pressure, way too much, maybe over a long period of time. And what the hell had happened last night?
“This is for your good as much as ours,” he told me tightly. “How many times have our enemies tried to kill you? How many assassins have they sent? How many times do you think you are going to get lucky—”
“Why is it,” I cut in, getting a little angry myself, “that when someone else dodges a bullet, it’s down to skill, but whenever I do it, I’m ‘lucky’? I killed a Spartoi; I don’t get credit for that? I just took on that . . . that thing . . . out there and what? It was just its time to go?”
“You have power, yes, something that can help us greatly in this war if it is properly utilized—”
“By you, you mean. Funny, Jonas seems to think the same thing.”
“—but that is useless if misdirected—”