Reign Shadowfell's Arc

Chapter 11 of 29

Reign followed the steward through the tall doors, Vixen at his left, Lyla a step behind, the imp trotting at his heel. The foyer opened into a hall of black stone lit by iron sconces. He was already thinking of the study, of papers with his mother's name on them. He did not see the man standing in the center of the floor until the steward stopped short. The man was old in a way the guards outside were not. His skin was thin over the bones of his face. His hair was white and cut close. He wore a long grey coat and no weapon Reign could see. He did not move when they came in. He only watched, and the pressure Reign had learned to feel off other vampires came off him in a slow, cold weight that made the imp flatten its ears and step behind his boot. "My lord," the steward said carefully. "This is Johan. He served your father." Johan did not bow. He looked at Reign the way a man looks at a coin he suspects is false. "Three have come to this door since the house went dark," he said. His voice was quiet and even. "Each wore a face and a story. Each said the blood was his. I put two of them in the ground myself. I will not speak of your father, or your mother, to another liar. Show me why I should kneel." Vixen's hand moved toward the small of her back. Reign lifted one finger and she stopped. Lyla had gone very still at his shoulder. Reign held Johan's eyes and reached into his shirt. He drew the chain out slow. The red stone came free of the linen and caught the sconce light, the silver serpent and the black raven bright across its face. He did not lift it toward the old man. He let it hang at his chest where any vampire in the room could feel what it was. Johan's knees hit the stone. He went down the way an old soldier goes down, one knee then the other, head bent, one hand flat over his heart. For a long moment he did not speak. When he did his voice had cracked open along a seam Reign had not seen. "Forgive me. I knew your father from before he took this house. I knew your mother when no one else would stand near her. I have waited sixteen years to see that stone on a Shadowfell throat again." Reign let the amulet rest against his shirt. "Get up," he said. "You'll come with me to the study tonight. You'll tell me who she was, and you'll tell me who is still hunting for me." Johan rose. The steward turned toward the inner hall. Reign followed, and for the first time since the reeds the road ahead of him had a name in it he could ask questions of.