The Almighty Dominance novel Chapter 730

The doors hadn't finished swinging before the room started deciding what it had seen.

House Draven's retainers came for Edmund first — four of them, moving fast and low, the way men move when they want to be gone before anyone thinks to stop them.

Nobody stopped them. Nobody wanted to be remembered as the one who'd touched him.

Then the guests left. Not a stampede — worse.

An orderly, quiet emptying. Coats collected. Cars called. Every one of them already rehearsing tomorrow's story: I was standing by the far wall. I didn't really see.

The tigers went out on canvas through the side doors, the white one still trying to stand on the leg that worked. The wolves who could walk had already vanished into the dark. The ones who couldn't were carried out by staff who hadn't signed up for that kind of night.

Someone started sweeping glass.

That was the only sound left in the hall. A broom, scraping stone.

Lord Calder stood in the middle of it and didn't move.

Wren stood where the blade had been, one hand pressed to her own throat. She didn't seem to know it was there.

"They'll say we did it." Lord Calder's voice came out thin. "Not him. Us. A Draven heir crippled under a Calder roof, at a Calder table, in front of hundreds witnesses we invited ourselves."

"He saved my life."

"I know what he did." Quieter now. "That's the problem. He did it here."

Wren looked at him. "You'd rather I'd been married off tonight instead?"

"I would rather—" He stopped. Started again, slower. "It doesn’t matter anymore."

Because that was the truth of it, and they both knew it.

...

By two in the morning, Wren had burned through eleven names.

She started with the houses that owed Calder outright. Then the ones who'd eaten at Calder tables for twenty years. When those ran out, she called the brokers — men who sold protection to people too proud to ask for it plainly.

Every call went the same way. Warm at the start. Careful in the middle. Then she said the name, and the line went cold.

House Draven.

After that it was always the same three or four sentences, rearranged. A prior obligation. A matter already in hand. A deeply sorry nothing.

The eleventh man didn't even bother with that.

He just hung up.

Merrick, the house steward, had been standing by the door for the better part of an hour, a tray of tea going cold in his hands.

"My lady." He chose the words carefully. "I don't think you're going to find anyone."

"There are forty houses in this district."

"There are." He set the tray down. "And not one of them will stand between one man and a house that old. Not for him. Not for us." A pause. "Not for anyone."

Wren looked at the list. Eleven names, crossed out, all in her own hand from that afternoon — when the worst thing she'd expected from tonight was a boring dinner.

Two weeks ago she'd stood in a Warden office and called him a rookie. Laughed in his face when he said he could heal Vesper.

Now she was spending four generations of her family's name on him, one call at a time, and getting nothing back.

"Give me the next one," she said.

...

David came back a little after three.

He'd left with the rest of them — faster, actually — and Wren had figured that was the last she'd see of him tonight. Instead here he was in the small hall, hair still perfect, his face arranged into something he probably thought passed for concern.

"You're still up." A beat. "I thought you might be."

"What do you want, David."

"To help." He let that land, then kept going — he'd clearly written the speech in the car. "I've been thinking since I left. My father has standing with House Draven. Not friendship — nobody has friendship with them — but standing. Contracts going back years. He's owed a courtesy or two."

Wren said nothing.

"I could put in a word." He spread his hands. "Frame it right. A misunderstanding that got out of hand. Edmund had been drinking, he overreached, the outsider panicked — everyone walks away with a story they can live with." A modest shrug. "No promises. These things are delicate. But it's a door. And right now you don't have another one."

He was right about that. It was the only reason it worked.

Because he couldn't do it. His father's "standing" with House Draven was two supply contracts and one invitation David had already been refused. He knew that. He'd known it before he turned the car around.

VERIFYCAPTCHA_LABELVerify