Chapter Seven

Upstairs in her bloodred bedroom, Cormia couldn’t shake the conviction that by going outside, she had triggered a chain of events, the culmination of which she couldn’t begin to guess at. She only knew that destiny’s hands were moving things around behind her stage’s velvet curtain, and when the two halves opened again, something new was going to be revealed.

She wasn’t sure she trusted fate to have the next act in the play be one she would enjoy. But she was stuck in the audience with nowhere to go.

Except that wasn’t entirely true, was it.

Going to her door, she cracked it open and looked down the Oriental runner to the head of the grand staircase.

The hall of statues was off to the right.

Every time she came to the second floor, she caught a glimpse of the elegant figures in their windowed corridor and was fascinated. In their formality and their frozen bodies and their white robes, they reminded her of the Sanctuary.

In their nudity and their maleness, they were utterly foreign.

If she could go outside, she could go down and see the statues up close. She absolutely could.

Whispering down the runner in her bare feet, she passed the Primale’s bedroom, then Rhage and Mary’s. The king’s study, which was at the top of the stairway, was closed off, and the foyer far below was empty.

As she rounded the corner, the statues stretched out for what seemed like forever. Positioned to the left, they were illuminated from above by inset lights and separated one from another by arching windows. On the right, opposite every other window, there were doors that she assumed opened into more bedrooms.

Interesting. If she had designed the house, she would have put the bedrooms on the window side so they would have enjoyed the benefit of garden views. As it was now, if she had triangulated the layout of the mansion correctly, the bedrooms overlooked the opposite wing, the one that bracketed the far side of the front courtyard. Attractive, true, but better to have architectural landscapes in hallways and vistas of gardens and mountains in bedrooms. At least, in her opinion.

Cormia frowned. She’d been having odd thoughts like that lately. Thoughts about things and people and even prayers that weren’t always of an approving nature. The random opinions made her uneasy, but she couldn’t stop them.

Trying not to dwell on where they came from or what they meant, she made the corner and faced off at the hallway.

The first statue was of a young male-a human male, going by its size-who was draped in rich folds of robing that ran from his right shoulder to his left hip. His eyes were trained on the middle ground, and his face was composed, neither sad nor happy. His chest was broad, his upper arms strong yet sleek, his belly flat and ribbed.

The next statue was similar, only his limbs were arranged differently. And the next was in yet another position. The fourth as well… except that one was fully nude.

Instinct made her want to rush by. Curiosity demanded that she stop and stare.

He was beautiful in his nakedness.

She looked over her shoulder. No one was around.

Reaching out, she touched the neck of the statue. The marble was warm, which was a shock, but then she realized the spotlight up above was its heat source.

She thought of the Primale.

They had spent one day in the same bed, that first day she was here with him. She had had to ask if she could join him in his room and lie beside him, and as they had stretched out beneath the sheets, awkwardness had been a blanket of thistles over them both.

But then she had fallen asleep… only to wake up to a huge male body pushing into her, a hard, warm length against her hip. She had been too stunned to do anything but acquiesce as, without words, the Primale had stripped her robing from her body and replaced it with his own skin and the weight of his strength.

Indeed, speech was not always necessary.

With a slow caress, she ran her fingertips down the statue ’s warm marble chest, pausing at the nipple on its flat base of muscle. Down farther, the ribs and stomach were a lovely pattern of undulations. Smooth, so smooth.

The Primale’s skin was just as smooth.

Her heart beat hard as she reached to the statue’s hip.

The tingling heat she felt wasn’t about the stone in front of her. In her mind, it was the Primale she was touching. It was his body that was beneath her fingers. It was his sex and not the statue’s that called her.

Her hand drifted down farther until it hovered right on the top of the male’s pubic bone.

The sound of someone bursting into the mansion ricocheted up from the foyer.

Cormia jumped back from the statue so fast she tripped on the hem of her robe.

As heavy footfalls stormed to the stairway and pounded up to the second floor, she took cover in a window’s alcove and peeked around the corner.

The Brother Zsadist appeared at the head of the stairs. He was dressed for fighting, with daggers on his chest and a gun on his hip-and by the hard set of his jaw it looked like he was still in combat.

After the male stalked out of sight, she heard knocking on what had to be the doors of the king’s study.

Moving silently, Cormia went down the hall, pausing at the corner next to where the Brother was.

There was a barking command, and then the door open and shut.

The king’s voice resonated through the wall she leaned against. “Not having fun tonight, Z? You look like someone ’s shit on your front lawn.”

The Brother Zsadist’s words were dark. “Has Phury been home yet?”

“Tonight? Not that I know of.”

“Fucking bastard. He said he was going home.”

“Your twin says a lot of things. Why don’t you four-one-one me on the current drama bomb?”

Flattening herself in hopes of being less visible, she prayed that no one came down the corridor. What had the Primale done?

“I caught him making California rolls out of lessers.”

The king cursed. “I thought he told you he was going to stop.”

“He did.”

There was a groan, as if the king were rubbing his eyes or maybe his temples. “So what exactly did you walk into?”

There was a long pause.

The king’s voice dropped even lower. "Z, my man, talk to me. I gotta know what I’m dealing with if I’m going to do anything about him.”

“Fine. I found him with two lessers. His leg was knocked off, and he had a burn mark around his neck like he’d been strangled with a length of chain. He was leaning over a slayer’s belly with a dagger in his hand. Goddamn it… he wasn’t aware of his surroundings at all. Didn’t look up at me until I said something. I could have been another fucking lesser, and if I had been? He’d either be getting tortured right now or he’d be deader than dead.”

“What the fuck am I going to do with this guy?”

Z’s voice took on a tight tone. “I don’t want him kicked out.”

“Not your call. And don’t look at me like that-I’m still your boss, you hotheaded SOB.” There was a pause. “Shit, I’m beginning to think your twin needs to be airmailed to a goddamned shrink. He’s a danger to himself and others. Did you say anything to him?”

“We’d just gotten jacked by the CPD-”

“There were cops involved in this, too? Christ-”

“So, no, I didn’t gum-flap.”

The voices grew muffled until the Brother Zsadist said more loudly, “You consider what that would do to him? The Brotherhood is his life.”

“You’re the one who brought this to my attention. Use your head. A week off rotation and a little vacay is not going to be enough to fix this.”

There was another silence. “Look, I need to go check on Bella. Just talk to Phury before you burn his house down. He’ll listen to you. And give him this back.”