Page 81 of Blood Mosaic

Oleg didn’t care either way.

Mika strolled over and sat in Kastor’s seat. “That went so well. Ever the diplomat, my lord.”

Ludmila snorted from her perch near the door.

“The man is a peon.” Oleg held his teacup out, and the server began to mix him another glass of tea. “He has no power.”

“But Laskaris does. Do you really want to start a fight with Alitea? Their allies are formidable.”

Oleg looked at Ludmila. She was one of his oldest boyars, and while the sniper enjoyed her silence, when she spoke, it was always perceptive. “What do you think?”

Ludmila looked at Mika, then back at Oleg. “Alitea is weak. And they are ripe for takeover. The council are slow to make decisions, and they rest in victories that are centuries old.”

Oleg turned his eyes back to Mika. “I agree with her.”

“You’re going to do what you want, no matter what I say.” Mika picked up Kastor’s teacup. “He didn’t even finish his tea.”

“Terrible manners.” Oleg snapped his fingers at the server, and the young woman came over. “Thank you, my dear.” He held her hand and flooded her mind with amnis. “What a boring meeting that was. Nothing at all was said, and he spoke about olive oil shipments the entire time.”

The young woman’s eyes swam as she smiled. “Such an odd man.”

“Very odd.” Oleg squeezed her hand and smiled as he released her. “You may go. Please tell Marina we won’t need anything else tonight.”

“Of course, Mr. Sokolov.”

Ludmila opened the door, and the young woman wheeled the samovar and the cart out of the hotel suite, leaving Mika, Ludmila, and Oleg alone.

“Laskaris will keep pressing,” Mika said. “Even with Zara out of the picture, he has no motivation to negotiate when he’s had control for so long.”

Ludmila moved from her sniper’s perch in the corner to sit on the arm of one sofa. “Laskaris isn’t the only power in Alitea.”

“But he is the dominant,” Oleg said.

There were five immortal powers in the Black Sea region. The Poshani exercised a surprising amount of control for an itinerant clan, but that was mostly in coordination with Oleg and Petre, the vampire lord in Bucharest. That left Alina in the East, and the Greeks controlling the southern coast and the straits.

Oleg, Petre, and Alina were all fed up with Laskaris.

“An alliance would not be out of the question.” Mika leaned forward and rested his elbows on his knees. “But in the end, it would still come down to one power controlling the straits.”

The chokepoint of their access to the wider world was the Turkish Straits, two narrow ocean channels that bordered the Sea of Marmara. Whoever controlled those straits controlled the Black Sea.

And for thousands of years, that control had rested in Alitea.

“Tell me…” Mika and Ludmila exchanged a look before Mika turned back to Oleg. “Are you willing to meet with someone much older and more powerful than you are?”

“If you’re talking about Arosh, I want nothing to do with the Fire King.”

Arosh was the oldest fire vampire known to the immortal world, and he was situated far too close to Oleg’s territory for his liking. The ancient fire vampire’s favorite castle was in the Caucasus Mountains, less than five hundred kilometers from Oleg’s eastern compound in Sochi.

Luckily, for the past millennium the Fire King had been content to rule his small territory and collect beautiful human women for his harem. He had little use for any interaction with the outside world.

Which was good for everyone because if Oleg faced Arosh—even for a parlay—the chances that one of them would try to kill the other were high.

“Not Arosh,” Mika said. “But someone who knows him. Someone I think might be able to help.”

The following night,Oleg was standing in front of the sea again, listening to the waves crash on shore as he danced with the fire that burned in a hearth overlooking the ocean.

A tall glass enclosure protected the decorative fireplace from the ocean breeze, but when Oleg was around, the fire had more than enough energy to combat the wind.

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