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Possibly, she admitted.

Maybe that was why she had kept him at arm’s length all this time, despite tossing and turning in her bed some nights. Even most nights. But it was just too perfect of a set up: the lonely widow, the handsome, witty courtier, and his Lady’s shadow looming behind them—a far more intimidating queen than even her own mistress.

If Gillian didn’t like being intimidated, she liked manipulation even less. If she found out that that was what was happening . . . she wouldn’t be pleased. On the other hand, the covens needed all the help they could get these days, which is what she’d been telling her own queen.

Perhaps this one could be of use, too, if Gillian could thread the needle well enough.

“We’re there,” Kit said from behind her, and she felt a touch at the small of her back. It sent a frisson up her spine, but she hadn’t needed the hint. The huge, double doors before her were bronze, with a sun radiating across the width of them, and were guarded by two huge vampires in ancient looking livery.

They reminded her of the statue, with broad golden collars, bare chests, and diaphanous skirts that hugged their bodies so tightly that they made Gillian blush and look back at Kit.

“Ready?” he asked her, with a raised brow.

“As I will ever be.”

The guards pushed open the doors, and they went in.

Chapter Eleven

“It’s not a ring,” Gillian said, regarding the sketch she had been given.

It was very well done. It was merely a black and white drawing, but with such fine shading that the central jewel seemed to glow and she could almost see the many shades of blue and gray in the original. The artist had even captured the small scratches and imperfections on the band.

She had received it from the hand of a handsome, dark-haired vampire who was introduced as Lord Mircea. She had heard of him from Kit, who’d described him as charming, seductive and cunning. But he didn’t look like any of those at the moment.

It was a sober, even somewhat troubled looking man who was watching her intently, but it wasn’t he who spoke.

“Not a ring?” Kit’s Lady asked, calling down from her gilded throne. “Then what is it?”

Gillian shot her a nervous glance. She hated herself for it, because this wasn’t the sort of woman to whom you showed weakness. But she couldn’t help it.

The feeling of power radiating off the Senate’s leader had almost knocked her down when she made her curtsy, and it was eating at the edge of her own, much dimmer radiance even now. She felt like a mouse being stalked by a spider, or maybe a snake, considering the motif that showed up continuously throughout the room. A very small mouse with a very large snake.

She had rarely wished to get out of anywhere more in her life, and she had been imprisoned by the Circle once.

And yet, she couldn’t have said precisely what was wrong.

The chamber they were in was certainly strange, but there was nothing inherently menacing about it. Yet everything seemed to have been designed to rub her the wrong way. Even the flooring, some type of highly polished stone, was a brownish-black color that reflected the lights placed about the room like stars in the night sky, and made her feel like she was about to fall into it at every step.

There were also palms, which Gillian had only seen in illustrations and hadn’t entirely believed were real, in giant bronze tubs. And odd, nose crinkling smells—some sort of incense, she supposed—which she had never encountered before. Even the architecture bothered her, with the room being tall and slender with many columns and diaphanous draperies and oil lamps swinging about on slender bronze chains, like a temple out of the ancient world.

All of it was weird, all of it was alien, and that was before you considered the damned snakes! But they were everywhere, too. Not real ones, thankfully, but carvings twining up the columns like vines, or staring out from murals on the walls, or decorating the base of the golden goblet that the queen held in one bejeweled hand.

Gillian understood something of court politics and the need to overawe. Her own queen had more than two thousand, highly embroidered gowns in her wardrobe, and was said never to wear the same one twice. And despite being in her sixties, she still had a head of hair as red as when she was a girl of twenty, a face full of makeup and enough jewels and lace and ribbons to dazzle anyone into forgetting that it was all a lie.

The queen was old and bald and her coffers were empty; she held everything together by force of personality more than anything else. But this queen . . . Gillian didn’t think that she was bluffing about anything. She didn’t have to. And her surroundings were less about overawing her visitors than amusing herself.

Which made her all the more terrifying.

Kit’s hands came to rest on Gillian’s shoulders, as if he felt some of her inner turmoil, or perhaps it was obvious to them all. She didn’t know. She also didn’t care, about that or anything else besides getting out of here!

Which would best be achieved by speaking quickly.

“I should have said, it is not just a ring,” she amended. “It is a focus. It allows a Mother to harness the magic of all the witches under her control, and direct it toward a common goal.”

“I thought that was what your tattoo was for,” Kit said, referring to the triskelion she wore on one wrist.

“It is, for a single coven. But this can unite the power of many covens. With it, a Mother can command the power of an army.”