“It appears I have evolved,” Caine said. “I am reaching the end stages of my metamorphosis.”

“You’re a vampire!” Morioch couldn’t seem to control his revulsion.

“Indeed.” The faintest of smiles played over Caine’s hard mouth. “In the truest sense of the word. I am what blue bloods were always meant to become.”

Why the hell was he here? Most of the time Caine locked himself away in the depths of his house, trying to avoid the sunlight, as it hurt his eyes dreadfully and burned his pale, sensitive skin.

To have come out into the light… Leo’s gaze fell uneasily on the letter that Caine had flicked onto the table, then toward the three guards in the room, noticing their pistols and swords, while Leo had nothing more than his blood-letting pouch on him.

“Explain yourself,” Lynch demanded, his voice cold and hard. “And why we should not consider you a threat.”

Caine held out his hands, his fingernails translucent—and sharp. “I am a vampire,” he explained, “who has managed to retain all his senses. What else do you need to know?”

“He is fully in control,” Leo admitted. After all, he’d known for years, horrified at first, keeping an eye out for the moment when by law he should have been forced to call for an executioner. Caine had vanished for a period of three months, touring the Orient, or so he had said. When he returned, his state had evolved to the point it was clear any chance Leo had of executing him was minute.

Something had stopped him from trying. Caine was lucid in a way most blue bloods weren’t at that stage. His blood-lust was entirely manageable, his needs seen to by Madeline and bottles of blood bought from the draining factories. He slept a great deal of the time, and when he was awake, he seemed sometimes catatonic. Rather catlike in a way. Content to sit by the fire to warm his cold blood, with his lap rug over his knees. Oh, he still liked to play the game and listen to word of court, but his existence had become almost…meditative.

“How did this occur?” the prince consort asked flatly.

Caine flashed his sharpened teeth, revealing canines that had elongated into sharpened points. “The answers are in the Orient. That is all I will say of the matter.”

The Orient. Where the craving virus had originated, kept under the strict control of the White Court that ruled the Forbidden City until an intrepid explorer named Sir Nicodemus Banks had become infected with their precious virus and fled back to Europe, infecting half of the continent’s aristocrats along the way.

Every court, from Spain to England, had paid gold to receive what seemed like a boon—strength, faster reflexes, prime healing rates, a certain sense of indestructibility…even a taste of immortality, if you wished.

Only Italy had held firm, naming the creatures that evolved from the virus demons and monsters.

That position spread throughout the Church, the Spanish Inquisition burning the country’s blue bloods at the stake. The French had been equally as efficient, executing most of their aristocracy. Only the Russians and the English Echelon had held firm, crushing the human classes beneath their heel and creating an automaton army to protect themselves from the mob.

As for the Russians, who yoked their humans as serfs and paid little heed to the care the Echelon took not to kill when they drank their blood…life was cheap on the Russian steppes.

Silence reigned in the room. The prince consort let out his breath, his fingers splayed on the table. “This is…unanticipated.” His eyes cut to Leo. “And should have been reported.”

“I had no intention of making myself the target of some botched execution attempt.” Caine laced his hands over his middle.

The prince consort nodded and Leo tensed. Not the prince consort’s plan today, then. He had something else on his mind. Something important enough to dismiss what should have drawn more scrutiny.

“You seem hale and of sound mind,” the prince consort said. “In this respect, I see no choice but to absolve you of the crime of concealing such a state. All in favor?”

Neither the Duchess of Casavian nor Lynch raised their hands. The rest gave their hesitant approval. After all, if they said nay, then who intended to imprison Caine?

“I would, of course, like to know more about this.” The prince consort’s smile was tight.

Caine bowed his head in deference. It was not entirely without wariness. “We shall speak privately. Now what did you mean by sending me this letter?”

Leo couldn’t take his eyes off it.

“A grave tale, Your Grace.” The prince consort paced, his hands behind him. “One of lies, of treachery…of betrayal.”

“What the hell are you referring to?” Caine snapped.

“The cuckoo in your nest, Your Grace.”

The world went still. Leo froze, every muscle in his body locking tight, not quite daring to look at the prince consort. This couldn’t be happening. Instinct screamed at him to run but he couldn’t move. In all of his nightmares of this moment—and there had been many—he’d shouted down the accusation, fought it, anything other than simply sit here, but it felt as if this were another dream, slightly watered down at the edges.

All he could see was the duchess’s pale face as she stared at him with wide eyes.

You. You were the only one with that information… The betrayal was another knife edge, though he’d handed it to her. He’d dared her to stab him in the back with it the second he turned…and she had. Of all the blows, that was one of the greatest. For he’d thought, for a moment, that something fragile and tentative existed between them.

Caine’s laughter broke the silence, a sharp, rusty sound. Then it cut off as if with a razor. “You dare try and call my son a bastard? Be very careful about what you’re claiming, my prince. I will not be mocked. Not even by you.”

A meaty slap sounded and something slid across the enormous table toward the duke. Finally Leo could move again, his head spinning as he looked at the file and the photographs that spewed out of it as it came to a halt on the polished mahogany. Photographs of Charlie.

Caine looked up. Their eyes met for just the briefest of moments. And Leo knew that Caine was going to cut him loose.

All these fucking years, protecting the bastard from the world, protecting Caine’s own bloody secrets. Don’t you dare do this to me. I supported you. I stood by you for years, no matter what you did to me. You…you were the only father I knew.