The Kingmakers(75)

Anhalt's voice penetrated the quiet. “Greyfriar is riding an elephant.”

“He's what?” Adele's confused eyes rose over her tower of memoranda to confirm that Greyfriar indeed was not riding an elephant.

The general sat at a table across the room with a stack of paperwork in front of him. He looked up in surprise, seemingly shocked that he had spoken aloud. Anhalt had been flipping through a potboiler novel titled Swords of the Jungle. He held the open book toward Adele sheepishly, displaying artwork of a man with a trailing cloak atop an elephant. “I'm sorry, Majesty. I found this book here. It's about how Greyfriar defeated the vampires in the Mountains of the Moon.”

“He defeated them?” Adele grunted in annoyance. “Ever since I became empress, it's become improper to use me as a character in those cheap books. So now he does everything.”

“I'm very popular.” Greyfriar crossed to Anhalt's desk, where he took the pulp novel and studied the picture with a satisfied hum. “Impressive. However, elephant-riding prowess aside, I do have something serious that needs discussion.”

Adele set down her pen and rubbed her eyes. Here it was. This was the reason for his brooding.

General Anhalt rose from the corner desk where he was supposed to be annotating a pile of reports for the empress's attention. “I'll take my leave.”

“No, General. I'll want your opinion.” Greyfriar perched on the corner of Adele's desk.

The empress appeared calm and engaged, but nervous energy clenched her stomach. She pulled the scarf from Gareth's face and slipped his glasses off, as she did ever more frequently when they were alone. She saw a tense uncertainty in him that she had rarely encountered, and it frightened her.

He looked her directly in the eyes. “Adele, I've been thinking about this for a while now. I am going to kill Cesare and actually become king of Britain. It's no longer a ruse in my mind. It must happen.”

Adele looked bewildered, glancing at the equally surprised Anhalt, and then back to Gareth. “I'm sorry. What did you say?”

“I intend to be king.”

“When did this happen? You said that it was just a story to get Flay to play along.”

“It was. I believed what I told Flay was nonsense. I was merely trying to work myself into her good graces. But she accepted it, so easily. She believed I could become king. And Flay knows as much about clan politics as anyone.”

“Couldn't she be clouded by her feelings for you?”

“Perhaps. But if she thought it was a ludicrous idea, she would've said so. So I have to believe it is indeed possible.”

Adele clasped her fingers together nervously. Gareth reached down and covered her fidgeting hands. When she glanced up, she now saw a passionate clarity in his face. His blue eyes were intense, purposeful, and inspiring.

“Think of it, Adele. Just as we talked about in Edinburgh. Neither of us believes the differences of our kind must be played out in blood. There must be another way, and with me ruling there and you ruling here, it's more likely that way can be found.

“I've fought against the brutality and wastefulness of my kind by pretending to be something I'm not, hiding from my own nature. Dressing as Greyfriar for another year, or a hundred years, won't make me human. I can never be human. And I don't want to be. I'm the eldest son of King Dmitri. I should be his heir.”

Adele shifted in her chair and regarded him sympathetically. “Please don't take what I'm going to say the wrong way. Are you merely thinking this because you're grieving over your father's death?”

“Maybe. I began to consider it after Flay told me about my father, although I didn't realize it at the time. However, there's so much more to it. I won't have my brother soiling Dmitri's legacy.” Gareth's voice grew hard. “He doesn't deserve to be mentioned in the same breath as my father. I used to think I could turn away, but I was wrong.

“The fact is Cesare doesn't even understand what my father stands for,” he continued. “Humans know the name Dmitri as one of the leaders of the Great Killing, and so he was. But that wasn't his true nature. He was pressured into becoming a war king, pressured by fear. We were afraid of the humans. We believed that we had to strike when we did. To wait any longer meant we would be overwhelmed and destroyed.

“Dmitri had spent his long life preaching that vampires should tread light on the Earth. We had our place, as humans had theirs. The Great Killing was against everything he believed. But he was also committed to the survival of his kind. So he joined the growing war movement and turned us into something we never should have been. That act drove him mad.” Gareth sighed sadly and leaned into Adele's hand stroking his hair. “Perhaps it drove me mad too.”