I got out of the car and told Thorne and Cyril to wait for me. I couldn’t go anywhere now without Thorne and Cyril. Those were the orders of Marius and Gregory, and Seth, and Fareed, and Notker, and any “elder” that happened to be hanging about “the Court.” And the elders ran the Court, no doubt about it. I was the Prince, yes, but treated often like a twelve-year-old under the thumb of a committee of regents. They were the ones running things, and the host could not venture out ever anywhere without his bodyguards.

Thorne, the big redheaded and hulking Viking, would have given up his immortal life for me; and for reasons I’d never fathomed, so would the obdurate cynical Egyptian, Cyril, who pledged his loyalty the moment he walked through the door of the Château. “I’ve always wanted to have someone to whom I could pledge my all,” he’d said with a shrug. “And now you’re it. No use arguing.”

“You have the Core now,” said Gregory whenever I protested. “You fail to seek shelter well before sunrise, and the young ones burn!” As if I didn’t know this! Well, in truth, I hadn’t even thought of it once before devouring the Core, had I? But I knew it. I knew it perfectly well. I didn’t need Thorne and Cyril dogging my every step.

Courtly life, endless demands for audiences, and bodyguards who wouldn’t leave my side. It was coming home to me every night just what it meant to be the Prince and to have Amel inside me, in more ways than they knew. And I had built up this secret fantasy that the one person in all the world who would let me moan about it was Louis. Ah, Louis…

As for Amel, his infinitely mobile consciousness came and went, though the ethereal command center remained rooted in my brain. He could talk endlessly for nights on end, or vanish for as long as a week.

Amel was with me now, of course, since he’d nagged me incessantly for weeks to approach “the spirits.”

I could always feel Amel’s presence, or feel his absence, and sometimes I could feel his abrupt desertions, as if my whole body had been shaken. When he was here, it was the sensation of a warm hand on the back of my head, only inside of me, and I wondered if he had full control of how I experienced that telltale sign. I sensed he didn’t.