Free Creche (Book II of Paranormal Fallen Angels/Vampires Series) by Karin Cox Page B

one of the other Councilors—Yisena, wearing the brown cloak of Selindor—changed the subject. “The Crux is our burden, but if the prophecy of the Cruor comes true, how shall we survive? What the Cruximus tells us of that is obscure. Without them, shall we all starve?” 
    “How some of us are surviving now.” Jania held her goblet up in salute and drank from it deeply. “On Haemil.”
    Pentros of Hiltenhall’s booming laugh bounced around the chamber. “As cannibals, eh?” He waggled thick black eyebrows at me. “None of us know if we can live like that forever.”
    Cannibals! My threshold for the ridiculous had been crossed. All the while, I had been listening, trying to make sense of their words. Swans and betrayals, pride and survival. Feuds and prophecies and bloodwine, but cannibals ... it was nonsense. The world outside was real, and dark, but here ... Silvenhall was a dream world, a place for thoughts and theories, theologies. Here, their doings and undoings, their petty arguments were all they saw. I shook my head.
    “Speaker,” I addressed Shintaro, leveling my gaze to his. “Such talk of politics and rivalries wearies me. I confess that I neither care for it nor understand it. It does not concern me. If you will not hunt, if you will not fight, then leave me to my mission. If I may have your leave to go, I shall fly far from Silvenhall. Take it as my troth that I will seek out only my own company and the company of Sabine, the Sphinx Skylar speaks of.” My voice caught. “She alone has been true to me in centuries, and my loyalties in this world lie with her. I followed Skylar here for one purpose: that I might find, in your Cruximus, the power to revive Sabine, and that I might love her as she has loved me, whole-heartedly and truly, and that I might avenge her and others the undead have destroyed.”
    Jania crossed her arms over her chest. “Your charge himself does not wish to remain, Skylar.” I heard mockery beneath the even tone. “What a swan it is that would choose a cat over its own kind.”
    Shintaro’s expression remained unmoved. “Amedeo the Exiled, I would that I could give you my leave to flee Silvenhall and never return, but alas, I cannot.” He shifted uncomfortably on his chair. Raising the goblet before him, he turned the stem in his hand, as if measuring the weight of it. With a deep sigh, he set it down.
    “I have heard the accusations in your thoughts and in your voice, and you are right. The Council has failed.” He placed his hand on the book again. “Commitment to our lore has waned.” His head swung to pin Jania with a stare from his watery eyes. When she turned away, scowling, he turned them on Daneo and Jiordano.
    “We have doubted the Cruximus ,” he began, “and the Swan, as we have doubted those who should have kept both true. But perhaps Skylar is right. Neither ever failed us; instead, we have failed them. No good can come of such a transgression. No good can come from the darkness at our backs that we keep at bay with this.” He pushed the goblet away from him.
    At that, Jania once more sprang from her chair. “Speak plainly, Shintaro, for this conversation has been a long time on your lips. Come, you are the Speaker,” she taunted him. “You hold the Speaker’s gavel. So speak! Tell them what we have always known, that you blame Milandor for your cowardice. That you think our way of life an abomination. That you would sooner see war than peace. Tell them that you will cast out our treaty again, forego Haemil, and once more make a war upon your own kind for the simple crime of loving each other.”
    I straightened in the dock. Now here was something interesting! Once more, the sanctuary of Silvenhall was a roil of raw emotion. They spoke of love and swans and peace, but their actions were of rivalry and dissent.
    “It is not the crime of your love that troubles me, Jania,” Shintaro rumbled. “Nor even that the Swan’s wings have become so