“You can’t go any farther than that door,” Landon said to Curran.

“Fine,” he said. “I’ll wait in the doorway.”

We passed between the flowers, circled the mechanism, and stopped before the door. I touched it and it swung open. A long room stretched before me, its white marble walls soaring up. I stood on a raised walkway. Twenty feet wide, it spanned the length of the room, running from the door all the way to the opposite wall. A trench bordered both sides of the walkway, filled with vampires. Past the trenches, on the sides, men and women waited, standing quietly. My father’s court.

The walkway ended in a raised dais. In the very center of it, on a throne formed by the bodies of serpents carved from glossy white stone, sat my father. He wore white.

I looked at his face.

He looked back at me.

The instant I saw his eyes, I knew why my mother loved him. His skin was a deep even bronze, saturated with the sun’s warmth. His nose was straight with a sloping tip, his cheekbones carved with careful attention, his jawline strong and masculine. A length of white cloth tossed over his head covered most of his hair. A short beard with a touch of silver traced his jaw, but the eyebrows above it were black, and his eyes were young and full of life. He could’ve been Arabic or Jewish, Hindu or Hispanic. Had he been twenty years younger, he could silence a room full of women simply by walking in. But he chose to appear older. When orphans dreamed of being adopted, this was the kind of father they pictured. His eyes radiated wisdom and kindness, intelligence, and calm surety, born of age and confidence in his own power. He could’ve been an ancient king, a great prophet, or a revered teacher. He had killed my mother. I hated him. Yet when he looked on me now, I wanted to stand taller. It was like being in the light of the morning sun. When the power of those eyes shone on my mother, she had no chance.

What little doubts I had evaporated. He really had meant to kill me in the womb, because nothing short of complete desperation would’ve torn my mother from his side.

Next to me Curran paused, ready, like a lion before a strike. His face iced over. Muscles bulged on his legs, stretching the jeans. His eyes had turned completely gold. He lost all expression and slid into that perfect calm of a predator focused on his prey. He was treating my dad to an alpha stare.

For some dumb reason, nervous laughter bubbled up inside me. My father and Curran were glaring at each other. Maybe if I whistled and waited long enough, a tumbleweed would roll by.