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General Vargarra
The storm continued to rage through the night, with the power finally going out completely sometime around midnight. I was in bed by then, watching the lightning flash outside my windows and wondering if Taran was alone by this time or if his parents had stayed with him. I had guards on all of them, just in case, but I didn’t like the idea of Taran being alone and possibly uneasy because of the storm. I didn’t examine the idea of exactly why that bothered me so much.
I still wasn’t convinced that Taran had been any kind of real target. I didn’t think the attack on Larz had been a serious threat on his life either. Though I hadn’t shared my theory with the royal family yet, I believed the real target had probably been Janos.
His position at the table, right next to Larz was not coincidental. I didn’t believe in anything sorandomas a “coincidence.” My late husband Merik used to say I had a need to control everything around me, but it wasn’t that. I believed more that I had a heightened sense of patterns and connections among events. It was just the way my mind worked.
Blake had been right about Larz—he seemed to be very popular among his men. What reason would any of them have to kill him? Opportunity was the most important factor, like Isaid earlier, and truly believed. But once that was established, it was good to think about motive as well. It wasn’t the most important thing, but it did explainwhy. That transformed a random event, a coincidence—there was that word again—into an understandable behavior. It also helped with intent, which was crucial for determining premeditation.
I believed the murder attempt was meant not for Larz or Taran, but for Janos. The storm hadn’t been in the murderer’s control, but they’d been ready to take advantage of the lights going out, because it was supposedly a regular occurrence. Larz had been deliberately taken out by the blow on his head—which wasn’t intended to be lethal and not even meant to seriously harm him. The attack on Taran had only occurred when Taran pushed past Janos to defend Prince Larz and simply got in the way of the knife. Or else someone mistook him for Janos in the dark. It was plain to me that someone—probably one of the Royal Guards—had been trying to murder Janos. And he was still in serious danger.
It was why I had thought it a good idea to accompany him to the infirmary and why I had put guards on the room he was in. I was saving this information to tell Prince Larz if he made too much of a fuss when we took Janos into protective custody. I believed I could convince him that his mate was in real danger, and that it was in his best interests to leave his Royal Guards here on Moravia, or better yet, send them all back home where they belonged. If he refused, then Prince Mikos could exert his authority like he wanted to, and he could take charge of them.
Chapter Nine
The storm began to ease off sometime during the night, and by the time I awoke the next morning, the clouds were still a bruised blue-gray outside my window. The rain had slowed to a drizzle, though, and the winds were dying down.
I got dressed and went down to see about some kind of first meal, though I figured it might only be cold meats and bread, since the power had gone off again during the night. I was pleasantly surprised to find meat pastries made over a wood stove in the kitchen, according to one of the servers. They had laid them out on the serving table, along with plenty of hot Lycan tea and some unfamiliar looking fruit. I also wasn’t familiar with the type of meat inside the pastries, but it smelled good, and I’d never had the luxury of being overly picky about food anyway. It was good enough, and well-seasoned with plenty of peppers and spices, the way I liked it. I ate with several other early risers among my Imperials and then went down to check on Taran.
The guards at the door to the infirmary had been there all night, so as I came in, I told them both to go upstairs and send two other guards down. I didn’t think Taran was in any danger at the moment, and besides, I’d be here until the new guards arrived. I wasn’t sure if the prince and his consort were still here, but the guards reported before they left that Prince Larz and Janos had gone upstairs around midnight. Like the other royals, they had guards stationed outside their door.
Taran was sitting up in bed as I entered the infirmary, moving around a bite of one of the meat pastries on his tray. He’d eaten almost none of it. He smiled as he looked up and saw me, a small flash of something in his pretty eyes. I sat downon his bed, my hip resting against his leg. His skin was so hot I could feel it through the sheet, and I wondered if he had a higher natural temperature than Tygerians or if he was running a fever.
I put the back of my hand against his forehead, and he looked at me oddly. “What are you doing?”
“Checking to see if you have a fever. I had a human omak who used to do this to me when I was small.”
“Did it work?”
I smiled down at him and shrugged, “Not with any real accuracy.”
He grinned. “Hard to believe you were ever a little boy.”
I gave him a look and he smirked at me, but that flash came back in his eyes, and I found myself wishing he really was achibby, like I’d mistaken him for when I first saw him. If he had been, I’d be running my hand under the sheet and up his leg to see if he was hot all over. I had a feeling he might be.
“I didn’t say thank you for helping me yesterday,” he said. “Janos told me how you carried me to one of your medics.”
“You don’t need to thank me for that. I was just doing my job.”
He shrugged, and his face turned pink. “Okay,” he replied, using the Earthan slang word I disliked so much, because it meant just nothing at all, really. Humans seemed to use it for everything, changing only the intonation to match the meaning. I nodded toward his fork, still pushing the food around on his plate.
“You need to eat to regain your strength,” I told him.
“If I had something good to eat, I might do that.”
“I had two of those pies for first meal. They were good. Have you tried them yet?”
“No, I’ll take your word for it. I didn’t like the way those things smelled. And the food here is way too spicy for meanyway. I think Prince Vannos has a lot to do with the menu selection, and the Tygerian food he seems to like is way too hot.”
“Prince Vannos has good taste. Like all Tygerians.”
“Mm hm. Blake told me once that people on some planets like yours eat spices because it kills dangerous bacteria. It can also mask the taste of slightly spoiled foods and help with food poisoning.”
“All the more reason to want it then.”
“Not for me. I don’t want to eat spoiled food. I like to know what I’m getting myself into.” I couldn’t help but smile at him.