Chapter 40
ALEXANDER'S POV
I was standing in front of my bathroom mirror at three in the morning, rehearsing how to lie with the determination that most people generally reserved for learning languages or musical instruments.
"Your Highness, what Laura detests most of all is..” I flicked through my notes. "Too sure of her tactical prowess. Yes, that sounds convincing."
In the eyes of my very unconvincing look-alike, I recognized someone who absolutely sucked at lying. I had been supplying Queen Morvana with worthless intelligence for days, mixing it with enough truth to sound convincing - while telling them nothing of use.
There was just this one hitch: I was a dreadful liar. Always had been. My mother used to say I had the worst poker face she’d ever seen, and three years spent straddling the vampire-werewolf worlds hadn’t accomplished much for my game.
“Laura’s emotional weakness is clearly in her maternal nature,” I made one final attempt, reciting this time from my well-developed script. “She would take her one strategic advantage off the table to save Linda.”
Except it wasn’t a weakness—it was something that made her a better leader than many of the ancient vampires who’d forgotten what it felt like to want anything besides power. And Queen Morvana was clever enough to know the difference between me giving her garbage disguised as intelligence.
There was no rest, it appeared as my phone buzzed with the vampire queen’s next summons. For twelve hours, I had been fending her off, telling her I was deep undercover collecting intel. I’d actually been helping Kayla plan escape routes and educating her on the details of vampire palace architecture.
I snatched my notebook of “How to Be Convincingly Deceptive” and browsed through scrappy, more and more desperate tactics. “Make eye contact, but not too much. Add in particular details to make it true. Believe your own lies first."
The most recent note was dated yesterday and written in irritated capitals: “WHY AM I SO BAD AT THIS?”
I had to make the walk through those dismal halls to the queen's throne room, knowing there was little difference between that and my own execution if she'd found out just how double-agent-y my work really was.
“Alexander,” Queen Morvanna sang as I entered, her voice dripping the sugary tone that came with violence. "Your reports have been... interesting."
‘Your Majesty, I have been receiving information on—”
"On Laura’s preferred coffee, the tactical formations she most admires and what time her daughter does bedtime." The queen was staring at me with blood red eyes. “Information that is either utterly useless or intentionally misleading. Which is it?"
Sweat beaded on my brow even though vampires didn't have it. "Strategic intelligence needs a full profile of the target's life and aspirations. Knowing her habits predicts how she’s going to react to —”
"Stop." She held up one pale hand. I have lived 800 years, child. “I know when I'm being played. The issue here is whether you are incompetent or whether you purposely allowed Russia to interfere in our election.”
“I’d like to think of it as diligent,” I offered feebly.
"Comprehensive would be if you reported that Laura's biggest weakness is her daughter, which the rest of us who have eyes can see." She stood from the throne herself, slinking like a bred predator. "Unless you're keeping that from us on purpose because you have feelings for the enemy."
The accusation teetered like a knife in the air. I could lie, stick to my horrible cover story, but when I looked at the queen’s ancient eyes, I knew that she already knew.
“She is not my enemy,” I added, softly. “And neither is Kayla, or Linda… or any of the countless werewolves just trying to survive in a world where both of our kinds treat them like menaces or tools.”
“And that is treason.” Again the queen's voice was almost kind. “You’ve picked them over us, your own kind.”
“I don’t want to take part in a genocide. That's not treason—it's basic morality."
Before she could answer, someone knocked on the throne room doors and my father, Dominic Blackthorne, entered, still every inch the vampire lord he’d been for six centuries. His being here had my stomach turning flips, for never does family drama in vampire politics bode well.
"Father," I said carefully.
"Alexander." His voice was heavy with centuries of disappointment. "I understand you've been sharing the species for werewolf sentiment."
“I’ve been working to neutralize a war that would cost both species everything.”
“It is the way in which superior species are kept in control. It’s how we’ve survived, for Millennia, while lesser creatures slip into extinction.” He stepped to Queen Morvana’s side – both of them forming an impenetrable wall of ancient vampire ruling power. “Your mother is more poisoned than I realised. And she contaminated you with her soft spot for lower life-forms.”
The impertinent disregard for my mother — killed because she'd loved outside her race — made hatred burn in my chest. "Power without compassion, my mother used to say, turns us into monsters. You showed me that it's better to be feared than respected. I knew which lesson had made me a better person.”
"Person." My father's laugh was cold. "You're a vampire, Alexander. We are not men — we’re apex predators who have risen above the common mortal coil. That’s on you and it makes you a liability.”
"Then I'll be a liability. Better the milk-fingered babe than a monster who justifies genocide as species maintenance.”
There was no sound except for Queen Morvana's slow, measured clapping. "How touching. Father met son with mutual chagrin. “But we’re spending too much time on philosophy and we have practical things to do.”
She indicated, and guards hauled in Kayla, bound but unscathed; her hazel eyes locked with mine in a blend of panic and trust that twisted my gut.
"Here is an opportunity for you, Alexander," said the queen. "Take the life of the werewolf who infected you. More importantly, demonstrate your loyalty to vampire domination and I will overlook your recent... compris."
The silver knife that materialized in my father's hand was fancy and definitely made for ceremonial beheadings. He offered it to me like he was my dad teaching me how to ride a bike, not passing off a weapon for me to go kill someone I loved.
“Your decision is easy,” my father told me. "Call her and come back to the family. Or refuse, and be shot at dawn with her. Prince Darius has already offered to come and carry out your punishment by his own hand.”
I looked at Kayla who just looked back at me, no pleading, no begging. She’d been brave in a manner that shamed me, braving disaster with an indomitable sense of humor that made darkness easier to bear.
"You see," I murmured, my voice more even than I felt, "I spent three years believing that I had to decide between being a vampire and being part werewolf. I was just trying to sort out what side I was on, which nature I belonged to. But, seeing you two together, species isn’t the point at all; it’s personality.”
“Save us the philosophical nonsense,” Queen Morvana said. "Kill her or die with her."
I lifted the blade from my father's hand, and held it in my fingers, testing its heft. It was well-constructed, intended for clean cuts that would be swift. In another life, perhaps I could have been an admirer of the workmanship.
“Death,” I stated evenly. “If being loyal to vampire domination involves killing innocents, then I am not enough of a vampire to belong. And I'm proud of that."
My father’s face was a sad, possibly grief-stricken one or a very angry one—it became hard to tell emotions and tactical expressions apart in vampires as old as him.
“Then you’re not my son,” he declared, his words resonating as if it was a formal disownment. “You and the werewolf are to be executed at dawn for treason against the vampire race. But Darius will look out for everything himself.”
As the guards came to take me away to holding cells, I caught Kayla’s eye and saw not fear but something akin to respect, perhaps even fondness. We were to die in the morning, but at least we would be ourselves when we died and not molded by the desires of others.
It wasn’t a lot of comfort, but it was something.