I head straight for the headquarters, cutting into the village.

“You didn’t show them the army,” Cyrus states before we head into the building.

“If they try anything, I’m happy to let them pay the price and see what happens when they walk into all of this,” I glower. I go straight for the door, shoving it open to find Dorian, Malachi, and Matthias already gathered.

“What’s going on with Lorenzo?” I demand without pleasantries.

Dorian steps forward, folding his arms over his chest. “We’ve let the rumors go straight to him that some of his children are trying to get into the city. He’s been asking questions.”

“Like?” I encourage. I’m impatient. Anxious.

“Like how anyone was sure they were his children,” Dorian continues. “How many of them were there. Where they are now. Who’s talked to them.”

“Has he said anything else?” I ask. I pace the room, watching Dorian.

“No,” Dorian answers. “Though he does seem very agitated. He’s been pacing in his cell nonstop since.”

I stop, staring at nothing for a long minute.

What does this mean? What’s going on?

“No one else thinks it’s a coincidence that all these children are showing up soon after he thinks Cyrus is dead, do they?” I say, looking around the room.

“There was time,” Malachi says. “There was just over a week between when Cyrus was decapitated to when everyone was brought here for interrogation. He could have told his children anything. They could just see it as an opportunity to integrate into Court without having to get Cyrus’ approval.”

Hmm. “Maybe,” I say, because it’s the first logical thought presented so far. “But Irene didn’t seem to express interest in staying at Court.”

“Lorenzo is most well-known for traveling frequently,” Cyrus speaks up. “He hid this family in Italy. Logan was off in the States. Who is to say he doesn’t have a dozen families scattered around the globe?”

“For what, though?” I question. “They don’t seem to be looking for power, or they easily could have asked for their own House and we probably would have given it to them. Lorenzo has just been laying low here at Court. He hasn’t caused any trouble.”

I shake my head, feeling frustrated beyond words. “What’s his game here?”

My phone buzzes in my back pocket. I pull it out to see a number I don’t recognize, but answer it anyway.

“My Queen,” a familiar voice immediately says. I recognize it as the spy we’d been talking with. “Another vehicle showed up just moments ago. There are six more yellow- eyed Royals inside.”

“That’s as many as Irene said were coming,” I say, looking up at Cyrus.

“We’ll keep an eye on the situation and let you know if anything happens,” he says, and then hangs up.

I slip my phone into my pocket, rubbing my temples. “I want Lorenzo’s four children who live here at Court under constant watch,” I say. “I want them in a secure lock up. And I want Lorenzo to know that we’re cracking down on them.”

“Of course,” Dorian says with a nod.

I don’t trust them.

I don’t trust anyone.

“Tell me how the interrogations are going,” I say. Too much needs to happen too fast. “Please tell me you’ve caught conspirators.”

Matthias actually smiles. “We interrogated a man and a woman this morning. We’d had reason to suspect that they’d let the attacker into the castle. So after leaving them out in the sun for the last six days straight, they were finally ready to talk. They confessed to conspiring with the Born. They were on guard when the man slipped into the castle. They let him right in.”

My eyes grow wide. Finally. Something concrete.

“Where are they now?” I demand.

“Under guard in a house,” Matthias says with an evil grin. “Four doors down from here.”

Without a single word, or without even a breath of his plans, Cyrus turns and stalks out the door, silent and terrifying as the grave.

The rest of us stand frozen, listening, our ears straining.

There’s a shout of surprise, and Cyrus’ calm but terrifying voice requesting to see the prisoners.

A few moments later there are screams of agony.

I can clearly imagine the painful death they’re suffering right now.

“What about the rest of them?” I ask. “Has anyone else confessed to being vampires?”

Malachi looks back to me. “Another seven confessed this morning,” he says with disappointment. “In addition to the three last night.”

I swear under my breath. That’s twenty-five total. More than I feared.

“How close are we to feeling solid?” I ask. “How soon until we will know we can trust everyone else to be on our side? Because I don’t know what is going on with Lorenzo’s family, but it certainly has me on high alert.”

There’s a frantic scream, and then the sound of wet, ripping flesh.

My stomach turns.

Even Malachi blanches. He looks toward the building where we all know a lot of carnage is taking place. He swallows once before looking back to me.

“Give me two more days,” he says. “We’ve made progress. I just need two more days.”

It’s more than I want. More than I feel we have. But shorter than I expected him to say. I nod.

“I need you to send another sixteen Royals to the inn to assist in surveillance,” I say. There has to be some more we know we can trust.”

Malachi nods.

I hear the sound of a door shutting and footsteps crunching over the cobblestones. A moment later, Cyrus steps back into the building.

Blood is streaked over his entire body. Over his face. Coating his clothes. It drips off his hands. Streaks of it are smeared from his mouth, down his chin and neck.

I look at him, and he looks like a nightmare. He looks like a demon.

But I can’t muster even an ounce of horror when I look at him. I don’t feel any pity for the people I know he just eviscerated.

“We will return in a few hours,” I say. “I want to talk to Lorenzo. Make sure that he hears more of his descendants have arrived. I want him good and agitated when I speak to him.”

They all nod in acknowledgement. Cyrus and I walk out of the building, and head back to the castle in the brilliant sunshine, him dripping in blood from head to toe.

We step into our bedroom, and I pace back and forth. Cyrus goes straight for the bathroom. He doesn’t shut the door when he turns the water on in the shower. Or when he strips out of his bloody clothes, throwing them in the garbage. Or when he steps into the shower.

I avert an embarrassed but lustful eye, but I’m so distracted, half of my brain doesn’t even notice.

“What do you think is going on, Cyrus?” I ask, still pacing the space at the end of our bed in front of the bathroom door.

I hear water splash, and look over. All I can see is bloody water hitting the glass walls.

“I think that there is much more to Lorenzo than we ever worried to know,” he says. I see him reach for the soap and begin scrubbing the blood away.

It’s a sight Sevan has seen so many times. Cyrus washing the blood of others from his skin.

But Logan shyly looks away from the fiancé she still hasn’t seen completely naked. Not like this. This isn’t the way she wants it to be for the first time.

“I think this is some kind of power play,” he continues. “He has spread his posterity out, hidden most of them. What he plans to do with them, I don’t know the answer to that yet.”

I nod. Everything he says makes sense. Of course it’s about power. It’s about numbers.

“What would you do with them?” I ask, looking over my shoulder at him. “With everything we are already dealing with, what would you do with these people trying to get into the city?”

Cyrus looks over at me, and I meet his dark green eyes. And there’s that flicker in them, a darkness there that tells me exactly what he’d do with them.

He’d slaughter them. No more questions.

They’re making us feel uneasy. Perhaps unsafe.

He’d kill them all.

“I think you are wise in being cautious,” he answers me, because he knows me.

I nod. “I think we need to force them to leave. Now that the interrogation is wrapping up, I think we take those soldiers and make our own show of power. I think we utilize them, and make Lorenzo’s descendants leave.”

“And what then?” Cyrus asks. “At least with them here, we can watch them. If they leave, they’ll go back out and about in the world and we will have no idea if they begin to conspire against us.”

I swear. He’s right.

I sink onto the bed as Cyrus shuts the water off. I flop onto my back, staring up at the ceiling as wave after wave of pressure crashes down on top of me.

The mattress dips to my right as Cyrus sits on it. He lays beside me, a towel wrapped around his hips, still dripping water everywhere. He brushes hair from my forehead, staring into my eyes.

“You have done incredible things with the resources at hand, and with little to no help, my love,” he says gently. “You have held a kingdom thrown into chaos together and kept the beginning of anarchy from rushing to our doors. We will get through this.”

He dips down, gently kissing my lips.

I bring my hand to his cheek, drawing him closer into me.

I need him right now.

I need his strength.

I need his wrath.

I need his experience.

I need his support.

Letting my hand slide down, I touch him, feeling he is real. My hand slips down to his neck, where I can feel his pulse. It slides further down, resting over his heart, feeling it beat.

Logan is so hungry, so eager. It’s been weeks and months of anticipation. I want this man. I want to be with him. I want him to know every inch of me.

Soon he will. Soon he will be mine.

My Husband.

My partner.

My equal.

The King to my Queen.

“Thank you,” I breathe.

He kisses me deeply, his tongue dipping into my mouth, dancing with my own. He shifts on top of me, grinding his hips into mine. I sigh, his mouth trailing to my jaw and then to my neck.

Let the rest of the world go to hell.

My only plans are to stay in this bed with Cyrus, here in heaven.

But on the bed beside me, my phone starts ringing.

With an annoyed growl, Cyrus presses his lips to the base of my throat one last time before pushing off of me and going to the closet.

“What?” I demand, irritated.

“There are another three vehicles that have just arrived, my Queen,” the spy reports, undeterred by my tone.

“All children of Lorenzo’s?” I demand, sitting straight upright.

“All with the same golden jade eyes,” he confirms.

“How many individuals?” I ask as I climb to my feet. I go to the window, slipping on sunshades as I look out into the day. It’s busy down in the city, as Malachi and Dorian try to hurry and wrap up things.

“Six in one vehicle, five in each of the others,” my spy reports.

Sixteen more descendants.

“Shit,” I breathe. “Have my reinforcements arrived yet?”

“Five showed up a few minutes ago, they said more are on the way,” he says.

I swear again.

I feel like everything is about to unravel.

“Hold tight,” I say. I nod toward Cyrus, who is now fully dressed, and we set off together. “More will be there soon. Please let me know if any others show up.”

He makes an affirmative noise and I hang up.

“Thirty-two,” I seethe. “There are now thirty-two of Lorenzo’s children waiting just outside the city.”

“No one has ever had so many direct children,” Cyrus glowers. “Not our son, not Dorian. Not any other House. I think we know exactly what Lorenzo was doing all that time he was traveling.”

“He was gathering mothers, whoring out every night attempting to make children,” I say. I feel sick. Because I think of Alivia, totally ignorant as an eighteen-year-old girl, having no idea the sick bastard who tricked her into sleeping with him was doing the same thing every night with a different woman.

I feel sick, because I bear the same eyes as him and all his other bastard children.