Page 83 of Our Sins in Silver (Coven of Sin 3)

Grigori leaned forward and wrinkled his hooked nose, the beginnings of a sneer at the corners of his mouth. “Did you witness this murder, Prince Sterling? Can you attest to this?”

The priest stiffened in his chair. “I… I cannot.”

“Right. So let’s pretend that the dark fae wasn’t the one to kill Sharpe, Princess Ruby. Say you did. Why?”

Vincent unleashed another growl, this one so loud it shook the paintings on the wall. “I already told you why. He was a Boston Coven plant. A traitor! His true loyalties were to Thomas’ son, Dagon Knight.”

“Indeed,” the woman sniffed. “Come to find, it was never the king’s wish for his daughter to serve as his heir. If what you say about Sharpe is true, then his plan to have the princess select a king for herself was all a part of a larger scheme to clear the path to the throne.”

“Yeah,” Vincent said. “Like I already told you. He wanted to encourage a scenario where the princess, in an effort to find the best match for her, would be touched by all the princes. That way, when the necromancer, Dagon, resurrected his father, the old king would be goaded into killing all the heirs in a jealous rage.”

Elder Magnus directed his gaze at the only royal council member. “Is this true, Prince Sterling?”

“It is.”

“That settles it,” the fourth ancient vampire said, speaking up for the first time. “That renders Elder Sharpe’s instruction for our princess completely null.”

Vincent flexed his fist, and his knuckles cracked so loud that the sound echoed through the room and bounced off the walls.

Sterling cleared his throat, drawing all eyes to him. “Elder Servius. Council. The Knight progeny are to contest the throne. We see it is Princess Ruby’s right.”

A pregnant silence stretched through the room.

“And if we were to support you on this…” Elder Grigori swallowed loudly “decision, how would you suggest we stop him from reclaiming his throne? Assuming your testimony proves correct, and the king is indeed back from true death.”

“We go to war,” Vincent interjected before Sterling could speak. “Now that Thomas Knight has necromancy at his fingertips, he’s more dangerous than ever. Give us an army to fight back. Call on the covens loyal to the Elders.”

The single woman on the council barked out a cruel laugh. “Yes. Violence would be a dark fae’s solution, wouldn’t it? Why do you think we’d listen to you? Due to your disgusting hybrid appetites, you lost control of your beastly nature and nearly destroyed everything. You’re fortunate every human witness was caught and mesmerized. But that in itself leads to complications.”

I didn’t like the way the woman’s lips finally lifted out of that frown into a maleficent smile. “What do you mean, complications?”

Elder Servius raised a hand and made a gesture to a vampire standing guard at the door.

He approached a wall filled with old oil paintings and lifted the smallest one. Underneath was a button. Pressing it revealed a secret door that popped from the wall’s wooden paneling.

Chills snaked up my spine as anguished moans, and distraught voices flooded the room.

The second thing that hit me was the smell. Piss and feces assaulted my nose, and I had to hold my breath to keep from gagging.

The guard took hold of a metal bar, walking it back as it slid from the wall and extended before the throne.

I wanted to vomit.

At least a dozen human prisoners were chained to the bar like cattle. Their bare feet shuffled across the floorboards as they were forced out into the open.

By Sterling’s scowl carving his face, he didn’t know anything about the prisoners kept in the wall. His fists clutched at the arms of his chair so hard, the wood groaned and splintered. “What is the meaning of this?”

“These are the humans who bore witness to the dark fae’s loss of control that night at The Warehouse,” the woman answered. “As you can see, they were mesmerized within an inch of their lives.”

The poor souls chained to the pole stammered, screamed and sobbed. They were all mad, but who wouldn’t be after being chained to a pole like an animal and locked inside the walls of a strange mansion?

“This is disgusting. Let them go!” I demanded, tears burning my eyes like acid.

“That is impossible, Princess,” Grigori said. “When you mesmerize a human to forget core memories, you alter their brain. Their personality changes. That’s fine enough. Human brains are scrambled all the time. They are fragile creatures like that. But when a novice vampire erases a pivotal memory from a human, you risk rendering them insane. Which is what happened here. Releasing them would raise suspicions. Humans are only getting smarter, their technology more advanced. We must be more cautious than ever. Therefore, we cannot risk setting them free.”

The vampire’s salt-and-pepper beard twitched with his stretching smirk. “Do you want to know what made your father a good king? He did what was necessary to protect our people as a whole. He wouldn’t hesitate to kill these humans if it meant keeping our people’s existence in the shadows.”

My stomach knotted. I didn’t like where this was going.

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