Tempt the Stars

time, he called me on it. But he didn’t this time, and he didn’t seem upset. He even smiled slightly, a strange little half smile that I didn’t like at all.
    “What would I miss?”
    “I don’t know. Your father’s court was . . . well, parts of it were beautiful—”
    “Many things are beautiful. Few are also good.” He moved a step closer.
    “Yes, I . . . I guess,” I said, backing up slightly. “But it must have been hard, turning your back on all that wealth and power and . . ”
    “There are only masters and slaves there. I did not wish to be either.” Another step.
    “Well, no. But there must have been other things. I mean, he’s a demon lord—”
    “There is nothing I want that he can give me.”
    “But . . . but you could rule there. You could have anything you want—”
    “Not anything,” Pritkin said softly, and my back bumped Formica.
    I appeared to have run out of room. And he was still looking at me. But I couldn’t read his expression again, only this time, that wasn’t due to the lighting. I just wasn’t familiar with that particular—
    He’s probably thinking how crappy I look, I told myself hurriedly, and that I’m going to have to go back in front of the council like this, and that it isn’t going to help our chances any, and damn, I wish I’d thought to grab one of those purloined Augustine dresses before heading out, not that it would probably have survived everything that happened in between, but you never know, and I wonder if any of these shops sell something that might be—
    A thumb reached out and wiped away something at the corner of my mouth.
    My thoughts froze.
    I should laugh, I thought blankly. Grab a napkin, say what a mess I’d managed to make . . . only I couldn’t. I couldn’t seem to move.
    And that was stupid, because clearly, he was just being nice. He was trying to make sure I didn’t go back in there and embarrass myself more than I was probably already going to. He was just trying—
    The thumb began to move along my lower lip, slowly tracing its fullness. And my breath sped up, even as it tried to catch. Which should have choked me, but somehow got tangled up in my chest instead. To the point that it hurt.
    This wasn’t—we didn’t—not that he—
    “I did have regrets these past six months,” he told me quietly. “I found it a curse as much as a blessing, all that time to think. About the things I could have said, that I should have told you . . ”
    “John!” The voice came from a distance. He ignored it.
    “I thought I was sparing you, but I think I was really trying to spare myself. For a long time, I was almost grateful for my father’s curse. As hard as it was, it made some things simpler. I didn’t have to worry; I didn’t have to
risk
—”
    “John!” the voice came again.
    Pritkin glanced up, grimaced, and then looked back down at me again. And his expression was fiercer than I’d seen it in a while. “But somewhere in the last six months, I realized that, after what happened to my wife, I returned to earth, yes. But I didn’t return to
life
. I was as much a prisoner there as I was at court. Not just because of the curse, but because I wouldn’t allow myself—”
    “John!” The voice was closer now. It was Caleb’s.
    Pritkin said something under his breath and grabbed my arms. “Cassie, I don’t know how this will turn out. With the council, there’s no way to know. But whatever happens, I want you to know, I want you to remember, that I’m
glad
you came back for me. I’m glad I had a chance to know you. I’m glad—”
    “John!” Caleb grabbed his arm. “We have to go— now. They’re calling for you—they have a ruling!”
    “Of course they do,” Pritkin said. “Of course they bloody do!”
    And, apparently, you don’t keep the demon high council waiting. We left the rest of the food and jogged back down the sidewalk, Pritkin and Caleb grim and silent, Casanova bleary-eyed and staggering, and me—I don’t know what I looked like, but my head was spinning like a tornado.
    Not because of what Pritkin had said; I couldn’t think about that now. But because they had to let him go. They
had
to. After everything Mother had said, they couldn’t just . . . could they?
    I didn’t know. They were like a million years old, but that only made it harder to guess. I had enough trouble figuring out how centuries-old vampires thought. I had zero chance of predicting the