Page 19 of Fortune's Blade

“But—”

“Claire. I’m five foot two—”

“Mages can be five foot two! It makes no difference to their power level!”

“And it doesn’t to mine. If I have to fight, I’ll fight, and they won’t enjoy it.” I hefted my arsenal. “But if they don’t start anything, there won’t be anything. I just want info. That’s it.”

“Just . . . don’t talk politics, all right? Either of you! Just . . . just don’t talk at all!”

“Okay. I’ll let you handle this.”

Claire nodded, although her expression was very much at war with the gesture. She obviously didn’t like this anymore than we did. Which was less than encouraging as we left the little room, walked down the hall, and passed through two of the biggest, tallest wooden doors I’d ever seen.

And into a blast of sound and color and movement that blew my hair back, and after we traversed a short hallway, spilled out into a room that set all others I’d ever seen to shame.

Louis-Cesare looked around for a startled moment, and then laughed, full-throated and throwing his head back, although I couldn’t hear him. I couldn’t hear anything, and didn’t know how anyone else did. But I saw him mouth the words: “Not bored.”

And, no, I had to admit.

Neither was I.

There were a lot of reasons for that, almost too many to count. But for one thing, the dining hall wasn’t in the tower, it was the tower. It encompassed the top fourteen or so levels of the highest section of the castle that Rathen-Den called home. And for another, it wasn’t set up at all like a human banqueting chamber.

There were large niches in the walls on each story, like miniature caves carved out of the stone of the mountain, a large black swath of which made up more than half of the tower. The niches featured low lying tables surrounded by large cushions where people sat in small groups, and ledges out in front that served as landing pads. Servants with trays of food and garrulous diners who wanted to chat with their friends were flitting between the different levels, having manifested smaller, human-sized wings that allowed them to fly about at will.

But as dizzying as that was, it wasn’t what drew the eye. Despite the setting, the diners mostly looked like people in any hall I’d ever seen: seated at tables, eating food off of plates, sloshing wine around in goblets and decanters, and watching children run about excitedly. There was nothing too surprising there.

Unlike the center of the room, where others weren’t dining normally at all.

I stared as some sort of large, ibis-type animal with spots and huge horns was dragged through a doorway by a couple of the burly, lizard-like guards. They managed to manhandle it pretty easily despite it being as big as a bull moose and kicking at them viciously, as if it knew what was coming. One hoof managed to clip one of the guards, leaving a red welt across his chin, but it wasn’t enough.

The next moment, the guards had reached the center of the room where they sent the creature screaming into the air, chucking it perhaps four stories high despite its size, and the second after that—

“Well. Shit,” I said, as a fine mist of blood rained down from on high, where the animal had just become the latest course in a mid-air feast for those who did not want to dine sitting down.

No, they wanted to tear their food limb from limb and fight off other diners while they did it, screeching and clawing and taking up much of the huge space because they hadn’t bothered to partially transform. They were in full-on beast mode, with claws out and tails whipping. Which was why the football-field-sized tower felt small and why a slice of red splattered me across the face before I could dodge out of the way.

“Radu would love this,” Louis-Cesare mouthed, looking up out of a blood-speckled face.

He was probably thinking of Radu’s mage of a chef, who had enchanted some lamb cutlets once to look like miniature versions of their former wooly selves: growing fur, sprouting tiny heads and legs, and running around peoples’ plates before attempting to hide underneath the salad. That had been a one-off, done to honor Radu’s guest of the evening, who had been Caedmon, a king of the light fey. I wondered now whether Caedmon had really enjoyed his meal, or whether he had eaten it merely to be polite to his host, whose chef may have confused the dining habits of the different types of fey.

But they were loving it here, although I didn’t think there was any enchantment going on in this case. Just tartare on the hoof being consumed as rare as it gets, with the same gusto with which a human might have approached a tray of raw oysters. Although at least the oysters wouldn’t bleed all over you, I thought grimly—before noticing something else odd.

I was a mess, with a slash of crimson over my face and splotches dotting my gown. But Louis-Cesare looked perfectly fine, despite having been in the same shape only a moment before. Part of that made sense, with a couple of the remaining bloody freckles on his cheeks being absorbed into the skin as I watched. Fey blood wouldn’t nourish a vampire, just like the fey sun wouldn’t harm them, but he could get rid of it easily enough.

But what was going on with his clothes?

I suddenly realized that there might have been another reason why Claire had wanted me to change. The ochre that was being tossed around as more appetizers hit the air hazed Louis-Cesare’s outfit just as they did mine. Only in his case, they quickly formed themselves into bloody tears that were busily weeping away, running down the velvet nap of his robes to drip onto the golden stones of the floor, which in here were less gold and more brown, having been stained from past feasts.

The result was that he became pristine again in a matter of seconds, whereas I . . .

Did not. And that was before I sprawled against a bloody wall when a raucous squealing came from behind us, loud enough to cut through the din. And warning me to leap aside just in time to avoid a whole herd of wild pigs.

They had been released through the massive doorway, with several of the lizard guys driving them. And I guessed they must have been driving them hard, because they stampeded into the room in a full-out run, before scattering and screeching, loudly enough to wake the dead. Right before taloned feet speared down from above, grabbing them and throwing them into the air, and—

Goddamnit!

A full-on rain of red hit me, leaving me looking like Carrie after the prom and I hadn’t even been here two minutes yet!

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