Page 159 of Vampire's Choice
“Yes, my lady.” Borgas set his jaw.
“Take up your position at the door.”
Until the guards complied, Kaela watched them with a sword in her gaze and tight lips on the verge of a snarl. Then she saw Ruth. That sword sliced down with an accusing heat, telling Ruth what the charge was.
Kaela thought Ruth had betrayed them.
Agony bled into Ruth’s heart, a place with no room for more agony.
Ruth.
She grabbed onto Merc’s voice. They were out of the portal, and they weren’t out of range. I’m all right. It’s not related. Where are you?
We’re hiking through the mountains, heading for the Trad compound. Nothing yet to report. You’re very distressed.
I’m okay. The shittiest day in the world has just become the shittiest one in the universe. Something happening at Council, with Kaela and Garron.
She gave it to him in a nutshell and added, Lyssa needs to know. I think she’s always known about Kaela.
The time isn’t appropriate, but as soon as it is, I will inform her. Help them however you can in the meantime.
Yeah, because she could stand against Council.
Yes, you can.
His certainty of it, no matter how misplaced, helped.
Kaela’s lip curled away from a fang, a scornful sneer, before she dismissed Ruth and faced the Council. She drew herself up as if she wore a queen’s robes. Ruth thought of her history as a spy, where she’d known she could end up in front of a tribunal like this and sentenced to hang.
“Lady Kaela, you know the charge brought before you,” Lady Carola said. “You have an unnatural relationship with your servant, where you submit to him as your Master. Proof has been provided to us by a member of your territory who recorded you in the privacy of your rooms. Do I need to play it?”
It was a rhetorical question, because she’d already pressed the button of the small device.
Garron’s voice. “How will your serve your Master tonight, my lady?”
“However you desire. Please…” Kaela’s voice. Trembling with yearning.
“You need me to be strict with you? Use you hard? Bring you peace? Open your mouth, my lady, stretch those beautiful lips around my cock. You know where they’re supposed to be. Put yourself to work for your Master.”
What two people shared in sexual intimacy, aired this way, made it tawdry and humiliating. Especially under the shocked and condemning eyes of the Council members.
Kaela was being subjected to the worst part of Ruth’s nightmares.
The overlord had proven she could control her emotions. However, blood hunger and stress put a crack in her armor. A quiver passed through Kaela, and she became even paler. Garron’s expression was murderous.
“Turn it off,” Helga said, and Carola complied. The Councilwoman who’d brought the accusation stared at Kaela.
“I’m disappointed. The tiresome assumptions that a female vampire’s more ‘emotional’ constitution makes her vulnerable to a male servant will once again be given weight. Your weakness has set us back, Lady Kaela.”
“She is a made vampire,” Lord Stewart pointed out. “Her craving for submission survived her transition.”
“Which makes it a rare birth defect.” Lord Walton dipped his head toward Carola and Helga. He had the slim, muscled body of a dancer and the level gaze of a tactician. “Not a reflection on our vampire females who are exemplary leaders of our race. It does not have to be perceived as a step backward, Lady Carola. We have progressed that much, I think.”
Kaela’s fists had clenched. Garron’s eyes were now lowered, but Ruth was sure it wasn’t an attitude of submission. It was so the killing light in his gaze wasn’t as obvious. She expected there was a great deal of conversation going on between him and Kaela. He would keep his focus there, on what would strengthen and support his lady.
The way Merc had done for her, ever since she walked into her family home only a few hours ago.
“The accused is allowed to speak on her own behalf,” Lady Helga noted. “Lady Kaela?”