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He released my hair but didn’t look away My heartbeat quickened, and it was so loud heto acknowledge the change

"There are laws Laws even I am bound by Once a warrant is issued, it’s final, and its reasons are for those who issued it to know and for thened into silence once we issue a warrant"

"You can’t tellyou ho a nearrant One with your naht the reality of the situation into sharper focus Left in the hands of Daria and Sig, I suspected er term But Juan Carlos hated me Not in the passive way people hate spiders or little kids hate eating vegetables No, Juan Carlos hated me the way the families of murder victims hate the killers He hated ht theue

He hatedout about a clearance bridal sale at Kleinfeld the day after it happens

Not only did he want my lease on life to expire, he wanted to evict me before the final notice I wasn’t sure if it was because I was alive and Sig had accepted me as one of the fold, or if it was because I never showed the Tribunal the appropriate level of respect, or if it was because I was so willing to execute other va me around

He was also seriously scary He’d been a Spanish Conquistador in life, which wasn’t a fluffy day job Before he’d been turned, he’dend of someone’s sword, and it had butchered up the side of his face His lips had healed together wrong, and the ave him a constant sneer The cos, and the look of absolute hate in his eyes, made him one of the scariest vampires I’d ever encountered

I never, ever wanted to be on the wrong side of a fight with Juan Carlos

"Well gosh" I lay down again and placed my head back on his stouess that’s all the invitation I need" I’d rather not letHe already kneas scared, but there was no reason to flauntwas the only member of the Tribunal who knehat I really was It was in ood side rather than teo back," I said after a long pause

He remained quiet The room was filled with a literal dead silence He didn’t ain Like before, I let rid, his dayti?" I asked, wondering if his silence meant he hadn’t heard me

"Shhh," he replied "Secret, the last time I slept next to someone with a pulse was the year seven" I waited for him to finish, but he didn’t, and it dawned on me he meant the year 7 AD "That someone washas reminded me so much of her So shhh"

I took that in the best way I could and tried to re as possible, but er contain it

"What was her na rid? Because of her nas for more ridiculous reasons before, so it wasn’t out of the question he would base his choice for a daytiaborg was the shadow of athe Middle Ages"

"Did you have any children?"

"Yes"

"How ave birth to eleven children Seven lived past their infancy While at war, I fathered another I know nothing of what becas like they were footnotes in a history text To him, they must have been Could someone still love a child who had died before Western civilization was a reality? Sig’s children ht have killed Jesus

I re was Finnish, and it was pretty unlikely any of his spaould have traveled across Europe to kill a trouble-ht in to this I had to adh, it would be cool if one of his children had played a fa him about this seemed frivolous, so I didn’t

"What happened to your family after you were turned?"

"I do not know"

"Why?"

"I was turned in 9 AD, during the Battle of Teutoburg Forest, in what is now Germany, but was then simply Roman land in need of leadership I had come from the North two years earlier to help preventovertaken by the Roe to hold them off at the time It was a special kind of day to be turned September ninth, in the year nine A lot of nines Of course, thedidn’t exist then I only learned that date later when the history books wrote about our war, and I liked the syht froto be sorry I asked

"The reason I don’t knohat happened to o back to Finland for al time to learn how to control ed froht"

"I’m sorry"