Chapter Twenty Two
When I woke it seemed only seconds had passed, but I found myself in my room surrounded by my three lovers.
"Is it too much to hope that was just the worst nightmare I've ever had?"
They were a storm of emotions. Pierre was worried, but I could tell more for me than the situation, and he was wary of his brother. Julian was his usual petulance now that he was perturbed, but there was a tinge of passionate anger there. Andre was cold, remote, yet threatening, an iceberg in the dark of night.
"What were you doing?" He growled out at last.
"The prophecy in my book. It was too much. I- I wanted to know what his prophecies had told him."
Andre leaned closer. "And why do you smell of desire?"
I scrambled away, or tried, but he caught me. "Anna, no! I will never pretend to be able to restrict whom you dally with, but I, nay, all of us, can demand honesty."
"Malachai did some sort of sorcerer trick, took me to a place where I had no power but he did, he said witches can't do it."
Pierre suddenly went deadly still. "He forced you?"
"Pierre!" Andre snapped and at last let me go. "Sorcerers have the power to see into the soul and learn the most hidden of desires. And the trick she describes is merely a chance to experience it."
Pierre looked at me, hurt, and pulled away.
Julian at least seemed to understand. "Anna, I fear sometimes my brothers forget just how young you are."
Normally I would have smiled and called them old men, but my guilt was eating at me and shame was burning. Andre was angry, Pierre too, but beneath that was hurt. They had a thousand years of training to expect betrayal and abuse and just a short time with me. Damn it, love took trust and respect, but why did it seem sometimes that love came easy and trust took forever?
I pushed to my feet and squared off at them.
"Do you understand that these prophecies, this child, all of this is to save magic. To save us! And if I have to betray a promise for one night, I, the queen must do it, but can you understand it's tearing me, Anna, the woman apart!?"
Andre gave me a look that made shame wash over me.
"And can you not understand that for a millennium we have been abused, abandoned, and lied to. Even Sigrid made us promises, and all too soon they were broken," Pierre said.
Andre gave him a sharp look but didn't contradict him.
I was wrung out, too exhausted. For God's sake, the weight of the world was truly on my shoulders. Billions of lives depended ion what I chose to do. "And if I must break a vow made without full knowledge once for duty, will that damn me for eternity in your eyes? Can we move past it?"
Andre stormed out at my words, without the backward glance Pierre spared me as he followed. Julian started to follow but stopped and sighed. "They are two pragmatic men, but you and I...we're creative types. You are young, Anna, and it is indeed part of your charm, but you do tend to think without acting. That is what scares us all."
He left too and I sank to the chair where not long ago I had slept in Andre's arms.
I was trapped. I knew enough of history to know Machiavelli was right: you had to strive to rule through fear and love, but in a crunch if you had to pick one, fear was the way to go. A smart ruler would order the men to shut up and know their place, and go and do what must be done.
Ruler. I laughed out loud, a hollow sound, as I stared at the mountains with the fresh snow. I heard scratches at the door and used magic to open it, and Diego padded in to aggressively snuffle me as if chastising me for forgetting him. I closed the door and spent a few minutes playing with him like we were plain human and canine again, scratching behind his ears and ruffling his furry belly.
"Boy, what do I do?"
He gave me the usual canine look of wonderment, as if everything I said was brilliant. And that was why I was a dog person. If I wanted derision at worst and tolerance at best, well, I had people for that. Werewolves these days.
Diego sat promptly, nudged my hand to make sure I kept petting him, and waited patiently. I had often in the past worked through issues like this, but without creatures with superhuman hearing on the other side of the door.
"At heart I am an anarchist, you know that boy, don't you? I rather hate being in charge. I get no ego trip from power, but the responsibility feels like an anchor tied around my neck. And now, if I do this one thing, not only do I save the damn world, but the child that results would grow up to rule all of magic, and I could step down. That way we would have centuries where I would never have to choose between my duty and my love."
Diego licked my hand and I laughed quietly and sank back into the chair. "I think I already know what I have to do, and Julian is right. Maybe I do act too quickly, but he who hesitates is last."
My familiar's look suggested I win a Nobel prize for that statement so I ordered him to lie down. The ego boost was terrific but I needed to be in the dog house. What I hadn't told them and yet they knew was I was in no way, shape, or form physically adverse to fucking Malachai. No woman with an ounce of sanity would be. The bad boy was a classic for a reason, after all.
But now Kenneth was added to the mix. He hated me. Well, I thought back to our duel, maybe he didn't hate me, but right now I was a great symbol for everything wrong in his life. His mother...she had reason to hate me.
Maybe if I was smart I could pull this off but make some slight changes. No one said Alessandra had to be raped to produce Kenneth. I had time travel, the aid of the sorcerer king, and the ability to conjure up Barry White and an orchestra with a thought.
Oh, there I'd gone again. I had made the decision to go ahead without talking to them. Time to suck it up, mea culpa, and lay it all on the table. I rose and stepped over Diego who'd decided to nap as soon as my inner monologue had taken over.
I opened the doors and found my pack watching a movie, reading the prophecy book, and working on the computer by turns. "All right. Pack meeting. Let's go over everything that has happened, and figure out what we have to do next." I met their eyes settling last on Andre's. "And I do mean
we
as in us all."
***
In perhaps the strangest turn of events I sat in my suite with Malachai on the chair, eyeing me on the couch as we awaited an answer to our summons. Kind of humbling to have to have the king of sorcerers show me a basic magic of summoning a subject. Kenneth may be both Malachai's and mine, but Alessandra was fully a subject of the witch queen, and since I had that role at the moment I had to call her.
It is time
