As long as I never, ever have to know about it.

I mean, sure, Kieran’s a good enough guy—but Solange is my only sister. Enough said.

“Quit brooding, Lord Byron.” My brother Quinn smirked at me, shoving me with his shoulder. “There are no girls here to impress with your Prince of Darkness routine.”

“As if.” Quinn was the one who used the whole vampire mystique thing to get the girls. I just happened to like dressing in old frock coats and pirate shirts; that some girls liked it was incidental. Wel , mostly.

“Any word yet on the Hound princess?” Quinn asked.

“Nothing yet.” Dad had invited the reclusive Hound tribe to the table for negotiations now that Mom was the new vampire queen, ruler of al the disparate tribes. Sounds melodramatic and medieval, but that’s a vampire for you.

“Think she’s cute?”

“Aren’t they al ?”

Quinn grinned. “Mostly.”

The royal caves behind us had been left in shambles after the battle that took out Lady Natasha. The dust of staked vampires was swept up and the shards of broken mirrors carted out in boxfuls. There were stil at least a dozen left hanging on the wal .

Lady Natasha had real y liked looking at herself. Some of the ravens carved on her whitethorn throne were chipped, some decapitated. Everyone was busy with some task or another, cleaning, arranging, or just staring at my mother as she sat at the end of the hal scowling at my father, who wouldn’t stop talking about peace treaties.

The tension vibrating the air was harder to clean out than the ashes of our dead.

Everyone was watching their backs: the old royalists loyal to Lady Natasha, the ones loyal to the House of Drake and my mother, and the ones caught in between. Lucy would have been mother, and the ones caught in between. Lucy would have been running around with white sage chanting some Vedic mantra to cleanse our auras if she were here. But she was forbidden to come to the caves until the worst of the politics had been sorted out. She shouldn’t have been staying with us either, but her parents’ drive home was interrupted by their ancient van and some ancient part that fel out on the highway. They were stuck in a smal town and Lucy was stuck with us. Humans were fragile at the best of times, and Solange’s best friend didn’t have the basic self-preservation of a gnat. If there was trouble, she always jumped right in feetfirst. If she hadn’t started it in the first place, of course.

Between her and my sister, we had our hands ful . Vampire politics paled in comparison.

“Now she’s cute,” Quinn murmured appreciatively as one of the courtiers dragged a box of what looked like the remains of a broken table. “I’l just go help her out. It’s the princely thing to do.

”

“You’re an ass,” I told him fondly.

“You’re just jealous because I’m so much prettier,” he tossed out over his shoulder as he left to charm yet another girl.

He never reached her.

She straightened suddenly, stepping onto a footstool that gave her a good view of the length of the hal , and my parents in particular. She pul ed a crossbow loaded with three wickedly pointed stakes out of the bag.

Not a broken table after al .

And no matter how prepared you are, or how careful, there’s always an opening somewhere.

Mom taught us that.

The girl aimed and squeezed the trigger, barely making a sound. We might not even have noticed her at al if we hadn’t been actively watching her. The stakes hissed out of the crossbow, hurtling through the air with deadly accuracy.

Or what would have been deadly accuracy had Quinn not been close enough to grab her leg and yank her off the stool.

The shot went wide, but not quite wide enough. She tumbled to the hand-embroidered rug, Quinn’s fangs extending so fast they caught the lamplight. My own stung my gums, my lips lifting off the rest of my teeth.

I didn’t have time to reach her or my parents.

I only had time enough to whip the dagger at my belt out into the trajectory of the stakes. It caught one and split it into two, the pieces biting into a huge wooden cupboard, the knife into the back of a chair. My nostrils burned.

Poison.

Everyone else seemed to be moving in slow motion. Guards turned, eyes widening, fangs flashing. Swords gleamed, lace ribbons fluttered, and boots clomped onto the wal as the best of them flipped out of the way of the other two stakes. A wire birdcage toppled, spil ing the stubs of half-burned candles.

Beeswax joined the sharp, sweet smel of the poison. One of the stakes caught a thin pale courtier in the shoulder when he failed to lean backward quickly enough. He yel ed and even that sound seemed too slow and stretched out until it distorted. His blood splattered onto the tiles laid into the ground between the blood splattered onto the tiles laid into the ground between the edges of the carpets.

The third stake went unerringly on its way, straight toward my mother’s heart.

The girl smiled once, even as she fought to free herself from Quinn’s grim hold.

Which just went to show how little she knew my mother.

My father whirled to put himself between her and the stake, as two of my other brothers, Marcus and Connor, somersaulted to his side to form a wider barrier.

Even as my mother leaped into the air and tumbled over their heads, refusing to use a shield made of her husband and sons.

She landed a little to the left and stuck out her arm, safely encased in a leather bracer, and knocked the stake right out of the air. It hit a tapestry and fel into a basket, looking innocuous.