Lady Maris felt a pang of guilt that the king himself couldn't be present to welcome the elders—the highest echelon of the vampire hierarchy. They had journeyed here in response to King Valentin's own plea for aid, yet he was absent at the moment of their arrival.
She offered her apologies, but Madam Silvia was wise. She dismissed the concern with grace.
"His Majesty is injured," Silvia said calmly. "Given the circumstances, sparing him the strain of greeting us was the right decision. He will need every ounce of strength if we are truly heading toward war."
"War?" Griswold's eyes widened at the word.
Of all things, the thought of war had never crossed his mind. Throughout the years of his life, his greatest worry as an original vampire, centuries old, was the possibility of his many ex-wives crossing paths. That was the kind of chaos he had feared.
But war… it was on another level of madness.
