Shadow's Bane (Dorina Basarab) by Karen Chance

Author:Karen Chance [Chance, Karen]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2018-07-30T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Thirty-two

Claire banged out of the screen door, leaving the three of us. Or the four, if you counted Stinky, and I didn’t see any reason why you shouldn’t, since he was kicking up the biggest fuss. Which was a problem, because I was going to have a tough time of it if I had to get between the two men again. But Caedmon surprised me.

“I need to talk to Claire,” he told me quickly. “In the meantime, think on this. You’ve been an outsider all your life, part of two worlds, but accepted by neither—”

“She’s accepted,” Louis-Cesare snapped. “She’s on the Senate!”

Caedmon shot him a look. “And we both know how long that will last once things calm down, don’t we?”

“Her family is here!”

“And may be there as well.” Emerald eyes found mine. “I could help you look for them.”

“Caedmon—”

“Think on it,” he told me, kissed my hand, and left. Leaving me with a hissing, furious baby and Louis-Cesare, who didn’t look any happier.

I felt the same, although for different reasons.

Just do it, I told myself. Right now, before you chicken out. You have the perfect excuse. Caedmon just handed it to you. . . .

But, instead, I stood there, feeling miserable and not saying anything.

Neither did Louis-Cesare, for a long moment.

I didn’t know what he was thinking, but I was trying to come up with another solution. Something, anything, that would let me hold on to him, because he was wrong. I didn’t care about being on the Senate, a community that had shunned me for years. That was Mircea’s idea. I’d gone along with it to help him out, not because I wanted prestige I wasn’t going to get anyway.

I only wanted one thing.

But, as always, it was something I couldn’t have.

And the longer I put this off, the more I tried to find a solution that didn’t exist, the more I put him in danger. Dorina was a knife in the dark, a gun in the hand, a brilliant, multifaceted weapon of destruction. I’d lived with her for centuries; I knew what she was. I knew what she could do. Even worse, I knew him.

What happened if she decided to banish me? What happened when he realized that I wasn’t coming back? That my consciousness had been scattered, and all that was left was a shell—one still walking around, because someone else was in there?

Dorina wouldn’t have to provoke an attack. He would do that for her. And then he would die.

It wasn’t even a question. When Louis-Cesare felt something, it was all over his face. When he did something, it was wholehearted, full speed ahead, no stopping to think about his own safety, because why would he?

He thought himself invincible.

It was why he was pulling me against him now, letting me close, not caring that I had a struggling baby fey in my arms who was considerably less than tame. It was why he was letting me there, right there, at his neck, one of a vampire’s most vulnerable spots.

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