When I stopped, he said softly, “And I am eternally thankful for Jane Yellowrock in my life. Amen.”

I lifted my eyes to his and was startled to see tears pooled there, mirroring my own. Except I was all salty and snotty and splotched, I was sure, and he was still gorgeous.

“There was a time when I believed that I was nothing in life without the Mithrans, without my position with Leo. That without his blood I’d be useless and lacking in value of any sort. And then I met you, a woman with enough power to stand against him, tall and strong and vibrant. Without being dependent on drinking blood.” He kissed my knuckles, released one hand, and lifted his glass in a toast. “You give me courage to be Onorio. To Jane Yellowrock.”

“And to us,” I toasted back and drank. And said, “Holy crap, this is good!” I sipped again. “I actually like this one. It’s really, really good! It’s—” I had no wine-type words to describe it.

“Buttery,” Bruiser said. “You always like buttery whites. It’s excellent with the soup.”

I sopped my face with the cloth napkin and spooned some soup into my mouth. I wasn’t fond of squash, but this stuff was different. “Apples. It has apples in it. And something green and sweet. And chicken stock.”

“Anise,” Bruiser said. He was trying to share with me his own appreciation of wine and fine food. “It’s from the anise, or fennel, plant.”

I placed the cloth in my lap, slung my loose hair out of the way, and sat like the lady one of the housemothers had tried to make of me. “I like it.”

We ate. And ate. And when the soup was gone and the wine bottle was empty and the salmon was picked down to the bones, Bruiser took a warm towel and wiped my hands clean. The towel smelled of oranges and so did his mouth when he kissed me and led me to the couch. “Sit. We need to talk and work for a bit.”

“Yada yada.”

He sat beside me and pulled a soft fuzzy blanket over us. “Yada,” he agreed. “But I can rub your feet while we chat.”

“You are the best boyfriend ever.”

He took my feet and gently squeezed them. “You first.”

I started with the easy stuff, telling him about Aya and Aggie One Feather, the usual debrief stuff. “But there’s something else. The Kid tracked Julietta Tempeste. She came to the U.S. on a tourist visa two months ago. Alex is trying to track her.”

“Clan Des Citrons. Does Leo know?” he asked.

“I texted him an update.”

His fingers worked the kinks out of my feet as he thought it through. Bruiser frowned, the lines on either side of his nose pulling down. Those lines had become deeper with worry and with the problems that piled up against us.

His frown softened. “My turn.” He told me stuff I didn’t half listen to. “Leo got a letter in the mail from the Carusos.”

“The old funeral home directors, the ones who created revenants and the revenant concoction?”

“Yes. The letter was held by their attorneys here in New Orleans, and mailed when it became clear that Titus Flavius Vespasianus would come ashore. They acted against Leo for decades and left under duress because Laurie’s daughter was being held by Titus. They deliberately left that bottle of Titus’s secret revenant potion in their fridge for Leo to find.”

“Deliberately? Are we supposed to fall for that?”

“The lawyer agreed to be bled and read by Leo. He believes it to be true. Leo wants us to save the entire Caruso family if possible, if he wins the Sangre Duello.”

“Easy peasy. Not.”

Bruiser smiled slightly. “Katie is in Atlanta. She invaded the lairs of a dozen Mithrans and ash-staked them in their sleep, disabling them. Then she dragged them to a room filled with silver-plated scion prisons. She’ll start her own negotiations tonight.”

“Katie did that in the daytime?” I enunciated the last word. “Because, vampires.”

“Katie slept in the blood of eight clans. She will be the strongest Mithran in the Americas for quite some time.”

“Meaning that if she wanted Leo’s position she could have it.”

“Indeed.” He kneaded harder into the arch of my foot.

I might have moaned. “You have very talented fingers.”

“I do. And I’ll take you to bed and prove it soon.” His fingers pressed and rolled and crept and knuckled up my calf to a sensitive spot in the middle of my calf.

“Oh . . . Holy moly.”

“Meanwhile, Lawrence is recuperating.” When I got an eyelid to open and looked blank, he said, “Lawrence Hefner. Leo’s valet? Injured in the were attack, trying to save Leo?”

I nodded, closing my eyes. Lack of sleep was catching up to me. “He hates being called Larry.”

“He has protested being in bed with Gee DiMercy, most vociferously. Leo found it necessary to promise to skin Gee alive if he so much as tried anything of a sexual nature with Lawrence.”

Gee would still try something. Something innocuous. Just to give Larry a hard time. I smiled and stretched to give Bruiser access to the tendon on the outside of my other foot.

“Leo told me about the potential three islands for the duel,” I said, “but what happens if the negotiations with Titus end up with us all in international waters, on a boat, instead of on land? Wouldn’t that leave NOLA open for a coup d’état?”

“Not if Edmund is left onshore.”

My breathing almost stopped at that. Edmund. Leo’s heir. One of the top vamp fighters in the United States. “That’s why Leo made Edmund his official heir. To protect New Orleans,” I said.

“And you the Dark Queen,” Bruiser said quietly, his fingers stopping, to simply hold my feet. “Between the two of you, with your ability to timewalk, you could protect the city and her people.”

“He’s planning to leave me ashore if an island isn’t chosen. Son of a gun. I didn’t know,” I said, just as softly, touching my belly and the faint pain there. Indigestion maybe. “I didn’t understand that move on the chessboard. Making me DQ wasn’t because he’s selfish. It was because he’s . . .” I stopped. No way was I going to say Leo Pellissier was a good man. “A good king.”

“Yes. He is.” There was something soft and sad in his tone, as if he wished Leo had been a better man too.

“But if Titus knows all this about Ed and me, that we could hold the city, then . . .” I opened both eyes and said, “Then what?”

“Then he won’t push to have the fight in the water, but on land, land that Leo owns or at least has some appearance of owning. Titus will want to kill you, Edmund, and Leo at the Duello.”

I closed my eyes again, letting the ramifications run through me.

Long pleasurable minutes later, Bruiser said, “Leo has scrapped your idea of having all his people go naked at the opening ceremonies of the Sangre Duello to shock and dismay the EVs.”

“Thank God.” I grinned evilly. “Too cold?”

“Precisely. Though he did profess sadness at not being able to see you naked in your half-fighting form.”

I opened one eye again and glared. “This is the stink-eye. Keep it up and I’ll give you the stink-eye with both eyes.”

“I consider myself warned.” His brown eyes melted me inside. Along with his very, so very talented hands. “The lab has sent a preliminary report of the contents and DNA from the bottle of mixed blood found in the Caruso Family Funeral Services. They have detected the blood of five major players and perhaps a dozen lesser players, all very old and powerful Mithrans, mixed with traces of chemicals, a long list of them. And unlike the usual putrefaction and decomposition of Mithran blood, these chemicals keep it stable for a long period. Months. Perhaps years.”

I opened my other eye, so I could see him with both, this time in concern. “Is it drinkable? Can humans or vamps drink it to be turned?”

“No. But it stops necrosis of flesh, is bactericidal, and speeds healing dramatically.”

“The U.S. military PTBs would give their accumulated right testicles for that formula. Eli told me so.”