He stopped typing and indicated the two wingback chairs, his fingers still taped in place where they were reattaching. Bruiser and I sat, the magical crown on my lap, out in clear view. It felt weird to have it exposed this way, but Leo didn’t even glance at it.

It wasn’t silent in the office. Soft instrumental music, piano and violin, Vivaldi maybe, played on the speakers in each corner, surround sound rising and falling to low ebbs. Leo leaned across the table he used as a desk and rested his chin in his hands, studying us over the short distance. One piece ended and another began before he spoke. “I did not know if you would come,” he said to Bruiser.

“You are no longer my master, but you are the master of this city,” Bruiser said, formally. But then he added, “And you are the best master I could imagine. You always have been. Even in the midst of madness and misery and pain, you have put your people first. I honor that now and always.”

Leo looked down, but I thought I caught a hint of surprise and tenderness in his eyes before they were shuttered. He tilted his head in acknowledgment. His lips curled up slightly. “You may wish otherwise soon. My plans are all for naught,” he admitted. “Two centuries of moves and countermoves, wasted.” He lifted his eyes to me. “You took Adrianna’s head?”

“I did.”

“She was the favorite of Titus Flavius Vespasianus. There were those who said she would be Titus’ queen one day. She was my bargaining chip. My last checkmate move in a match that would clear the board without war and death.”

“Cry me a river,” I said.

Leo burst out laughing and sat upright in his chair, dropping his arms to the desktop.

“This isn’t a game,” I said, over his laughter, leaning in. I placed a palm on his desk and rested my weight on it. “It’s only a game when you play.”

Leo’s laughter slid away, and he sat back, creating distance between us again. “It takes two to play? Perhaps. But a game is better than a war, my Jane.”

“Are we at war?” I asked.

“I do not know. Titus Flavius Vespasianus, the emperor of the European Mithrans, has accepted my offer of Sangre Duello. It is now a new game, with new rules.” Leo held Bruiser with his eyes for a moment, something in the depths I couldn’t read. Then he looked back at me. “Will you stand with me, becoming more than my Enforcer? Will you become my dark queen, to fight beside me?”

Bruiser tensed, the reaction more a scent than a movement.

A queen was a king’s wife, right? Was this some kind of funky proposal? Or was a queen something else in the vampire world? I wasn’t sure what to answer, whether this required a special Mithran-politics reply or something more crude on my part, like blowing raspberries. There was something too thoughtful about Leo tonight, something that felt wrong, something too planned, too devious. It made me edgy. I decided to walk a careful track between the two responses. Being terribly obvious about it, I stood to my full height and set my hand on a silver stake at my side. “I would be a pitiful second in a duel. And no way am I anyone’s queen. So, no. No queen stuff.”

Wisely I didn’t add that I was a War Woman and a skinwalker and Bruiser’s love. I didn’t need anything at all from Leo Pellissier, Master of the City of New Orleans. But there was no reason to rub his face in it.

Leo inclined his head, as if my answer didn’t surprise him. “Grégoire, Le Valois, Le Orleans, is my secundo in the duel against Titus’ primo or his secundo, should the emperor choose to make that move on this new board we play. If you will not be my queen, then will you be my Enforcer in truth? You would be the first Enforcer of such power and position in the long history of Mithrans.” He added, “If you still honor that position.”

Bruiser said, carefully, “Jane, according to Mithran precedent, this negotiation, this proposal and the position of Enforcer, and the primo Leo gifted you with . . .” He stopped, as if turning lots of things over his mind and memory. With a hint of laughter in his voice, he finished with, “In many ways, this makes you a queen in your own right, beneath the heel of no king.”

I hesitated, feeling that something in all this chitchat was still wrong, but the blood challenge with the emperor might be the only thing that would keep Angie Baby and her family from being held in vamp cages, slaves of the EVs, or worse, dead. It might prevent a vamp war, a major vamp war, with the resulting death of hundreds of vamps and other paranormals, maybe thousands of humans. And . . . a queen in your own right, beneath the heel of no king. Ahhh. This wasn’t chess. It was five-card stud. I couldn’t be blood-bound. I was Leo’s wild card. I was between a rock and hard place, flying by the seat of my pants, as always. There was really no choice. “Sure,” I said, putting as much snark as I could into it. “Why not.”

Leo’s smile teased out again before he shifted his eyes to Bruiser. “And you, my Onorio. Will you stand by me?”

“I will. As will the Roberes.”

“Three Onorios,” Leo mused. “Perhaps it will be enough, now that you have come into the first of your powers.”

Bruiser held the eyes of his former master, unblinking. I wondered if Leo had learned that Bruiser had drained a vamp. Leo answered my unspoken question with his own.

“And your Mithran scion?” he asked, his tone silky. “The one you bound?”

Bruiser frowned unhappily. “I have gifted her to Edmund.”

Leo’s eyebrow quirked up in surprise, calculation flashing through his eyes. “Indeed? Ahhh . . . Indeed.”

Bruiser didn’t reply, and I didn’t know what the emphasis on the last word meant. Bruiser did, however, and he glanced at me and away. I was missing something.

“Katherine and Alesha have been restored. Alesha offered much intelligence about the plans and preparations of our enemies. They are being fed as we speak.”

“Completely restored?” Bruiser asked. “In all ways?”

“Katie is no longer my heir. I could not allow her that position without great loss of face.”

“And your heir?” Bruiser asked, his voice going hard. “You will not saddle one of us with that.”

Leo looked at me wryly. “That gift belongs to Edmund Hartley.”

Bruiser sucked in a breath, his eyes going wide.

I started to rear back at the alarm pumping through him. “What—”

Before I could get the word out, Leo moved. Popping to my side faster than I could see. He jerked le breloque out of my hand and placed it on my head.

The sizzle of power shocked through me, the same sensation I had felt when I’d looped the wreath around my arm.

Bruiser dove for Leo, but the Master of the City was faster and popped back behind his desk. They grappled across the expanse, sending the laptop crashing to the floor. A lamp. The music went silent. The sound of blows landed. Grunts and curses. The smell of blood. I sat through it all, feeling what had just happened. I had been crowned. With le breloque. A magical item that controlled the weather. That collected power to be used for magic. That vamps and witches had fought over.

Fear coursed through me as the tingle of magics slid around me, to tangle onto my bones. I dropped deep into my soul home, the cavern dark and chilled, a fire burning in the center, the air tinged with hickory smoke. There was strange light glowing in the cavern, centered in the ceiling overhead. I looked up to the doomed ceiling, seeing the center, above the fire. Light spread out from that center height like the plumage of a bird, like angel wings, feathering down. The light was growing brighter, illuminating my soul home.

From the base of the stone walls, a golden fire rose, cold blaze licking up the damp rock. The flame tips were shaped like the leaves of le breloque. The power of the magical device was trying to take over my soul home. Was trying to take over me. Giving me some new power, some new responsibility. Heavy. Onerous and oppressive. In the vision of my home, my knees buckled. I fell to the ground near the fire.

Leo had asked me to be his queen. I had said no. He had seemed fine with my reply. He hadn’t been. That sneaky little suckhead.

Beast padded close, her golden pelt shining in the odd lights. Leo is good ambush hunter. Crown is making Jane different. Do not like what crown is making Jane.