The Bloodtruth Series (Box Set: Heiress of Lies, The Queen's Betrayal, Trials of Truth, A Heart's Deceit)

by Cege Smith

  When they finally arrived at the dais, which seemed like an eternity, Malin stayed on the floor as Corrinda carefully made her way up the short steps. She turned and smiled again at the assembled crowd. Malin felt Elvry’s eyes on him, but he refused to look at her. Not yet. He wouldn’t give her the satisfaction.

  “Friends, welcome to the Ascension Ball.” Corrinda’s voice rang out strong and true. “Tonight we feast and dance and celebrate. We honor those who came before us, and rejoice in our present state of bountiful goodness. We celebrate our good fortune and ask for the continued stroke of luck from the gods above. It is time to look forward, and I promise you that I will bring the same peace and prosperity to my reign as all of the Robarts did before me.”

  Thunderous applause and hoots of delight and agreement rose from the people in the hall. Malin was impressed. His sister, who had always preferred the shadows, seemed to be enjoying her time in the limelight. As far as he could tell, she was right on script with what Angeline had instructed her to say.

  Corrinda let the roars and clapping continue for a few more moments before gesturing for everyone to be quiet once again. Her sweet smile took everyone in, and Malin was sure that the entire room was mesmerized.

  “Tradition says that the first dance is between the royal chair and a member of the oldest noble house of Altera. Because Lord Redley is ill, his daughter has graciously agreed to dance in his stead. She will be joined by my betrothed, the future King of Altera, Chief Advisor Malin Baford.” Corrinda nodded to Malin.

  His moment of truth had arrived. Malin turned to Elvry who stood there with a sly grin on her face. He hated to admit how beautiful she was. Her long blond hair hung in slender ringlets that framed her face. Her blue brocade dress was magnificent and hugged her voluptuous curves in all the right places. There was just enough exposed bosom to be almost inappropriate, but that tantalizing bit of skin would surely tempt every male eye in the room. Malin shuddered to think what she would do to anyone that she managed to get alone. The sooner he got her out of the ballroom and away from the rest of the nobles the better.

  Malin stiffly bowed to Elvry. She curtsied and then waited for him to offer his arm. He knew that she was enjoying herself. As his arm came up, the notes of music of the first dance began. As soon as he felt her fingertips on his sleeve, he started to move back to the center of the room. The nobles on all sides formed a large, loose circle around them.

  He turned to Elvry, and her left hand met his right hand as she moved into him. His left hand settled onto the small of her back, and her other hand settled on his shoulder. Then the dance began. Malin was grateful to the years of dance lessons that were a required part of his training. It meant that he was able to move to the music automatically with little to no thought, which was a good thing as he considered the fact that he held a three hundred year old vampire in his arms.

  Her face upturned toward him, he sensed that she was waiting for him to speak. He wasn’t about to though. Although he may be leading her through the dance steps, he was going to make her take the lead on the conversation. He learned at a young age that it was always better to let your enemy speak first.

  “You are a very good dancer, Chief Advisor,” she said.

  Malin almost burst out laughing at the benign comment. “It is part of the job,” he replied. They settled into silence once again, and Malin deliberately looked over her shoulder at the crowd. As he suspected, everyone watched them. It suited her. Elvry liked to be the center of attention.

  He felt her fingers tighten on his shoulder, and he was forced to look back at the lovely, but dangerous creature in his arms. “What do you think these noble people would say if they knew that their precious queen was an even more despicable creature than a vampire?”

  “It is a lie. One that would be easily dismissed,” Malin said.

  “They would turn to you. Crown you king. You would have everything that you ever desired. Power. Prestige. Glory. It will all be yours.”

  Malin tried to figure out what she was aiming for. Was she offering a partnership? Or was she threatening him? It felt like a little bit of both.

  “I have all of those things already,” he said.

  “Your family has always stood in the shadow of the Robarts. That must chafe,” Elvry said with a pout.

  “I obey the traditions and customs of the past,” Malin said.

  “I could offer you a way out,” Elvry said.

  “You could offer me nothing that I would be interested in,” Malin said, looking her straight in the eye. “What you are and what you do are things that I would never condone.”

  Elvry smiled, but it didn’t reach her eyes. “I am going to pretend that you didn’t just try to insult me, Chief Advisor. That would be very stupid on your part.” This time her grasp on his hand tightened and Malin had to keep a wince of pain from crossing his face. “You are quite lucky that this rather unwelcome distraction had pulled my friends’ attention from you, although I am not so pleased with it. I was rather enjoying our exchanges earlier today.”

  During the Ceremony of Allocation, Elvry used magic to charm Malin and turn him into a besotted fool in front of the whole court. Then she proceeded to try to humiliate Angeline in front of the nobles, but Angeline deftly deflected that attempt without any help from Malin. Angeline had been angry with him, and it shamed him that he had been so easily enchanted.

  “It is quite different when you aren’t able to leverage your magic, isn’t it?” Malin said with a sly smile of his own.

  Elvry’s eyes widened. As he suspected, whatever charm she had used earlier she was trying to use again to no avail. “That’s impossible.”

  “You have friends. I have friends too, but you knew that already,” Malin said. “You’re playing a very dangerous game, Lady Redley. If either side finds out what you are up to, I have a feeling that you are going to be in a rather uncomfortable position. So it seems unwise that you continue making any kind of remarks about my Queen that could in any way be construed as threatening. That is good advice, and you should take it.”

  “Or what?” Elvry said with a sneer. “What do you think you could do?”

  Malin smiled and shrugged. His only line of defense was his sister, but he had to do what he could do to make her think that he had the ear of some much bigger guns.

  “Surely you know that Theodora is my mother, right?” he asked innocently.

  The look on Elvry’s face was priceless. She covered it immediately, but it was enough for him to know that she had not known that fact. Of course, very few people knew that Theodora was his mother, but everyone in the coven would recognize the name of the Clan’s leader. Theodora detested him, but Elvry didn’t need to know that. He just needed to give his story enough credence so that she would think twice before trying to do anything else.

  The music of the dance slowed and then a new song started. Malin immediately let go of Elvry and took a step back. He bowed to her. “Thank you for the dance, Lady Redley.”

  “This isn’t over yet, Baford,” she hissed under her breath. She turned around and found Lord Norburn standing behind her.

  “Lady Redley, may I ask for the next dance?”

  Malin kept his smile to himself. Elvry was going to be inundated with dance requests for the foreseeable future. The older, single Lords especially appeared keenly interested in her. That would keep her busy and within his line of sight until he could stage the next part of his plan.

  A tap of his shoulder brought Malin around to find Lady Gallow looking expectantly up at him. He groaned inside. Lady Gallow had been particularly aggressive in her attempts to win his affections over the last year, and made no secret about her interest in him. At one time, he might have considered it a high compliment. She was still lovely despite being several years his senior, and since her husband’s death, she headed the second largest house behind only Lord Norburn. It had not escaped her notice that, since Angeline’s return, he had only had eyes for Angeli
ne.

  “Chief Advisor, it appears you are in need of a partner. May I have this dance?”

  Malin wanted to say no, but to do so would not only reflect poorly on her, but it would bring questions around what he was doing. It was supposed to be a ball after all. Corrinda would be able to avoid a fair amount of the actual celebration, but Malin would not.

  “Of course, Lady Gallow,” he said. He bowed, and then the dance began.

  He immediately tuned her chattering out and took in the scene around the room. Corrinda had settled onto the throne. Her fingers danced on the arm, but that was the only sign that she was paying any attention to the dancing at all. Her eyes kept being drawn to one of the large windows on the side of the room. It led out into the garden. Malin frowned. He needed to make his way to her and find out what she was seeing.

  Then Malin looked for Elvry. He found her still in Lord Norburn’s arms, but both of them were roaring in laughter. Lord Norburn was not the sort of fellow to give into that kind of open display of merriment, so Malin thought that the man was either drunk, or a victim of Elvry’s charm spell. It would be a toss-up.

  Just as Malin was about to excuse himself from Lady Gallow’s grasp and make his way to Corrinda, the doors to the ballroom burst open, and Kraber burst into the room. His face was filled with terror.

  “Lord Redley has been murdered!” the man screamed.

  The room broke out into thunderous chaos.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  “Are you nervous?”

  Thomas’s voice broke into Angeline’s already chaotic thoughts. “Why would I be nervous? This is just a friendly meeting between allies, correct?” She wasn’t about to show any sign of weakness, even though she felt like she was about fly out of her skin at any moment.

  “You are about to enter a roomful of people you have never met before, and ask for the biggest favor that anyone could possibly imagine, and you have no idea what they will say or ask in return. That would make me nervous,” Thomas said with a shrug.

  As much as she wanted to snap the man’s neck, Angeline knew that she had to keep her calm. “Perhaps I would feel more at ease if I could see my travel companion.”

  “I am sure that your friend will appear in due time,” Thomas said. “What I was trying to tell you, apparently badly, was that I offer my services to you in an advisory capacity.”

  “Why would you do that?” Angeline didn’t think there was a single thing that she could trust that would come out of Thomas’s mouth. He clearly knew where Connor was being held and was withholding that information on purpose. Until she saw that Connor was all right with her own eyes, she wasn’t going to believe anything that the Clan said. Manipulation was a coward’s way to try to control the game, and Angeline was no coward.

  “We’re family,” Thomas said with outstretched arms. He pointed at a painting on the wall.

  Angeline’s eyes widened. The man depicted there looked like Alair Robart, but then she noticed subtle differences in the length of his nose and wideness of his face. “Who is he?”

  “That is my great grandfather, Treven Robart. He was Alair’s twin brother.”

  “I don’t understand how that is possible,” Angeline said. “Alair is my great, great, great, grandfather. You don’t appear to be that much older than me. How is it possible that Alair’s twin brother is your great grandfather?”

  “It is a benefit of being Clan,” Thomas said. “Once we reach maturity, our aging is markedly decreased and so our lives span multiple generations.”

  It didn’t make sense. Angeline studied the sciences at length, and there was nothing natural that would account for such a phenomena. “Yet you deny you are a vampire?” She asked the question lightly, waiting to see how he would reply. “My understanding is that the only difference between the Clan and the Master’s coven is the blood thirst.”

  Thomas’s face scrunched up in an ugly twisted frown, and she could see a vein begin to pop out of his forehead. “Clan is nothing like the vampire,” he said through clenched teeth. “Things have changed since the time of Mamette.”

  Angeline deliberately widened her eyes and put on her most innocent face. “Oh, forgive me, Cousin. I didn’t mean to offend, but surely you can understand my confusion. Human life is short in comparison to the vampire, and the legends say that vampires can live forever if sustained by blood. I admit that my knowledge of the Clan is limited, so I think it is natural that I would draw that conclusion.”

  “The creation of that kind of vampire was a necessary evil, but one that the Clan willing accepted at the time, unlike the…” Thomas’s voice trailed off as he caught Angeline’s eye.

  “The what?” she asked. She knew what he was going to say, but she wanted him to say it. The Clan had been willing to deal with Mamette’s bloodlust. Arduro’s transformation into a wraith was something that they had not accounted for.

  “Never mind,” Thomas said. He gestured back to the painting. “Treven led the Clan as First Seat until his passing ten years ago. He was a great man.” Thomas’s chest puffed up as he stared up at his ancestor.

  Angeline was pleased. She had not lied when she said that there was little that she knew about the Clan, but Thomas’s reluctance to speak of the legend of the creation of the wraith confirmed that at least part of the legend of Mamette and her brother, Arduro was true.

  If it was Clan magic that created the wraith, then Clan magic should be able to undo it. The Clan was also afraid of wraiths. The only thing saving her was that everyone told her that she was unlike any other wraith that anyone had ever seen. That bothered her too because she wondered what kinds of conclusions were being drawn about her.

  “So is there another Robart in charge now? Your father?”

  A shadow crossed Thomas’s face. “No. My father did not survive the transition.”

  “What transition?”

  “When a successor is chosen, they must meld with the magic that is the essence of the Clan. That kind of power is unimaginable, and to have access to it whenever you call upon it requires a unique strength. Our bodies, in the end, are more like humans no matter how long we have been able to sustain them. So we are still susceptible to human disease and illness. My father’s heart was not strong, and when the meld was initiated, it killed him.”

  “That’s horrible!” Angeline didn’t have to put any falsehoods in her statement. Melding with anything sounded barbaric and wrong. “So you were your father’s successor?”

  “The rules of succession within the Clan are complicated,” Thomas said evasively. “There are many who do not support a leader for the First Seat that has youth on their side.”

  Angeline blinked. For the first time, she saw something in Thomas that she fully understood. “It is difficult,” she said. “Add in the fact that people prefer a man to sit on their throne and it can be nearly impossible.”

  “The Clan does not prefer one gender over another. The successor chosen is the one that the Council feels is wise enough not to let the magic go to their heads but is strong enough in body and will to survive the melding. They decided rather quickly that was not me.” His jaw set in a way that Angeline knew all too well. She had seen the same expression on her father’s face.

  She looked at Treven’s portrait. “I am sure that your grandfather is proud of you regardless. You carry on his legacy. That is all our ancestors ask of us.”

  When she looked back at Thomas, she found him studying her curiously. “They say that you met Alair.”

  Angeline controlled the shudder than ran down her spine. “Yes. I did.”

  “You conjured him. You have magic in your blood.”

  Given what she was learning about the Clan, Angeline wasn’t sure if it was a good thing or a bad thing that she had the ability to do magic. “Alair said that his descendants were not meant to deal in magic. He was surprised as well.”

  “Well, of course. That ability was supposed to reside with the Robart bloodline that stayed with the
Clan. Alair chose the guarantee of becoming a king. He always was afraid of the magic.”

  “I don’t think Alair was afraid of anything,” Angeline said. “Bigoted. Judgmental. Shortsighted. But never afraid.”

  Thomas’s face broke out in a wide grin. “You could be describing my great grandfather.”

  Angeline couldn’t help but smile back. She had never had the luxury of cousins or family. Her life had been barren of anything resembling a family outside of her father. In the span of less than just a few hours, her family tree had expanded into a whole other branch.

  Then the rest of Alair’s words echoed in her mind. “Needless to say, he was not pleased that I had discovered his secret about the ghosts of the Amaron Forest, or that I had experienced my own set-back that resulted in my current situation.”

  “Oh, yes. The Amaron is not the place for a descendent of Alair Robart. He damned those people to hell.”

  “And the Clan let him,” Angeline said.

  “The Clan doesn’t interfere.”

  “You mean, the Clan doesn’t interfere in matters that have no importance to the Clan. Why would the death of a few hundred humans matter?” Angeline said. Her voice raised just a notch, and that was all it took for the other thing inside of her to awaken. “If it is true that Alair had no magical abilities, then the only logical explanation for those souls being bound there is that the Clan stepped in and cast a spell to keep them there.”

  “You know nothing of that time or decisions made by my ancestor.” Thomas stiffened.

  Angeline saw it all pass before her eyes. Twin brothers. One ruled the Clan and one ruled the humans in Altera. “They worked together. Treven and Alair worked together to bind those spirits there. Why would Treven have made Alair give up his daughter to the Master? Especially with how much you hate them?”

  Thomas’s face turned white. She had stumbled into something that she wasn’t supposed to know. “We need to go. The Council meeting is starting any minute. You will not want to be late. Believe me, Theodora does not look kindly on tardiness.”