Page 66 of Blood Mosaic

“You’re intent on making her your new mistress?”

He shrugged. “Why not?”

“Because I thought we had agreed that she is my bait to catch Zara.”

He delicately placed the smooth glass pieces in a starburst pattern. “She can be both.”

“And if it comes down to it, will you choose to neutralize your daughter or protect the woman?”

Oleg paused and turned slowly to face his second-in-command. “Are you saying you’re incapable of protecting the woman?”

Mika pursed his lips. “I’m not saying that.”

Oleg felt his neck heat. “Then are you incapable of neutralizing Zara?”

“You told me that I’m not allowed to kill her. That she belongs to you.”

“You know what I mean.” His eyes bored into Mika. “Well?”

The water vampire lifted his chin. “I will not fail you, Knyaz.”

“Good.” Oleg turned back to the mural. “If you’re doing your job, I won’t have to make any choices like that.”

“There has been a development.”

Oleg let him stew in the silence for a good ten minutes as finished placing the green tiles into a star, then oriented seed pearls into the space between. “What is the development?”

“Zara has left Istanbul. It has been confirmed.”

Oleg blinked, set his tray of tesserae down on his worktable, and slowly turned, crossing his arms over his chest. “Are you sure?”

“Radu said his informants in the palace confirm she has left. He doesn’t know if Laskaris threw her out or if Zara left on her own.”

“But the timing coincides with your Albanian rumors.” Then he remembered who Mika had been talking to. “Radugaveyou this information?”

“He offered it in exchange for discounted passage for the camvasa when they travel through our territory.”

Oleg smirked. “That’s what I thought.”

The Romanian vampire was one of three leaders of the Poshani, an itinerant clan of humans and vampires who roamed across Eastern Europe and Southern Russia.

Though they had various lucrative businesses in Romania, Bulgaria, Ukraine, and Belarus, the Poshani clan’s main source of income was a moving safe house they ran for immortals called the Dawn Caravan. They guarded vampires by day and by night. They were smart, brutal, and most of all, secretive. If a vampire wanted to thoroughly disappear, the Dawn Caravan was where they would go.

And if Zara had been allowed in, Oleg was going to murder someone.

Possibly Radu.

Oleg gritted his teeth and felt his fangs aching in his jaw. “Is she in the caravan?”

Mika shook his head. “According to Radu, she isn’t.”

“But if she was, he wouldn’t tell us.”

Secrecy was the key to the Poshani.

The Poshani took hospitality to a supernatural level, telling no one who was traveling under their protection, not on threat of death and not for a bribe.

Vampires had tried to manipulate the minds of human Poshani to get information and were found with their heads taken off for daring to violate their honor. Few ever attempted to cross them, knowing that someday they might need that safety themselves.

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