Mixed Blood

Chapter 23

The upbeat tone of the online phone call filled the cottage, grating against Rhia's ears and her patience. The smallest things seemed to be pissing her off lately. Thankfully, the call connected quickly, and Atticus and Nova appeared on the screen. Despite it only being ten in the morning for Atticus in California, the bear shifter looked like he hadn't slept in days. On the other side, though it was seven in the evening for her in Paris and Rhia at her mother's cottage, Nova was nursing a fresh cup of tea like she'd just gotten out of bed.

"Jesus," Rhia laughed. "I don't know whether to say good morning or good evening."

Atticus chuckled in a good-natured way, but Nova responded by showing her middle finger to the camera. "I've been working with nightstalkers for the last week," she said with a slight hint of bitterness in her posh accent. "I still haven't adjusted to the new schedule, and whoever decided that caffeine was bad for pregnancy should be hanged, drawn, and quartered."

"Oof," Rhia winced, and nudged her own fully caffeinated mug of coffee out of view of the camera. "That's rough."

"I've never thought I would want to be seventeen again until working with Valentina. I swear she drinks more energy drinks than blood. I don't even know how she sleeps."

"She probably doesn't," Atticus said with a sigh. "I barely slept my first year as a counsellor, and I didn't have to rebuild a kingdom."

"How is Val?" Rhia asked. "She was pretty worked up the last time we talked."

"She's an extraordinary young woman." The corner of Nova's mouth twitched upwards. "I'll be honest, I didn't think much of her at first. I thought she was too young, too sheltered, and so on. But I think there's more of Nolan in her than there is in Cameron and Bastian combined. She's so much smarter than anyone thinks, and she's clever too. She'll be the downfall of those damned advisors, and she's stringing that clueless bodyguard of hers along like I've never seen."

"Nova," Atticus warned. "You're not supposed to be getting involved in interspecies politics. You're just there to help her transition onto the Counsel."

"I am merely an observer," Nova responded innocently. "And my professional observations are that, despite her age, Valentina will bring her people into a golden age that Constantine could only dream of."

"Not to speak ill of the dead," Rhia said slowly. "But is it really that hard to be a better ruler than Constantine?"

"You only got to see Constantine on a personal level," Atticus said with a frustrated sigh. "You have to consider all he has done outside of that. The vampires didn't have millions of years of evolution and development. In terms of a relative time scale, one day there were none, the next there was Constantine, and the day after that he learned he could turn others into vampires. He had to build his kingdom from scratch."

"But the rebellion-"

"Raphaël's rebellion was personal first, and then he tried to apply logic and privilege to attract followers. During the French Revolution, he stormed Constantine's estate, thinking he was just another fat noble and easy target. He was a fly caught in a spider's web. And when Constantine got bored, instead of killing him like Nolan wanted, he turned Raphaël and kicked him to the curb. Was it cruel? Yes. But was it a good representation of kingdom-wide issues. Not even close."

A tense silence hung between the three of them, and Rhia shifted uncomfortably in her seat. She hated to admit that he was right. All her personal conflict with Constantine made it hard to see him as anything but a piece of living trash. "Alright," Rhia cleared her throat. "Well, did you get the images I sent you?"

"We did," Atticus nodded, gracefully moving on from the awkwardness. "You mentioned you found it at the facility in Africa, right?"

"Yeah. It was the only thing I was able to find myself. Lysander organized the dragonkin to protect the area and keep everyone out until Counsel reps are able to get there, but I don't think there will be much to recover. It's in a worse state than the one Nekros was held. Hellfire took the destruction to a whole other level."