The Queen's Crown (Court of Midnight and Deception #3) - K.M. Shea Page 0,1

lethal.

“I wouldn’t have to work on my own stuff if you stopped asking her questions and just approved her recruitment,” I blandly said.

Most people were afraid of Killian, but I walked a fine line with him since my parents lived next to his ginormous mansion, and I was good friends with his wife. Yeah, it’s a small world.

Killian smirked. “But Queen Leila, this recruit happens to be a vampire slayer! I think my detailed concern is understandable.”

I ruffled through my papers. “Yeah, except she says in her resume that she’s been trained as a vampire slayer, but not employed,” I said.

Killian raised his eyebrows. “A slayer is born a slayer—practicing or not—it’s an inherited bloodline.”

Here was the thing about supernaturals, we came in a lot of flavors.

The ones who really ran the show—AKA the ones who sat on the Regional Committees of Magic across the world—were the fae, vampires, wizards, and werewolves.

But in reality there were tons of different shifters—everything from dragons to werecats—and there were lots of different fae—from humanoid nobles like myself all the way down to pixies and trolls.

Wizards were another special case—they were humans with the ability to use magic. Most typically they could use elemental magic, and they swore fealty to a specific wizard House. But there were offshoots of wizards—like werewolf hunters and vampire slayers. Slayers and hunters came from specific family lines, and they inherited specific magic traits that your average wizards didn’t have. Traits that made them ideal killers for their specific targets.

Which was why Killian was putting on a show about this recruit.

I glanced at her, but she didn’t seem rattled.

She stood with an almost military-like precision, her shoulders straight and her hands clasped behind her back.

When Killian glanced at her, she spoke. “I am a slayer—and I come from a slayer family. But given the low demand for our particular set of skills, I have trained to handle all supernaturals.”

“And you applied for the police position because?” Killian asked.

“Because I want to protect,” she said. “I want to defend the humans and supernaturals who can’t fight for themselves.”

Killian narrowed his eyes. “That sounds very noble of you. How disgusting.”

The slayer in question—Jade, according to her resume—didn’t even blink at Killian’s comment.

Rigel would admire her stoicism.

Pain flooded my heart again. Contemplating how I could best ignore the shivering sensation in my chest, I glanced down at my accounting papers.

“If we could retain your attention, Queen Leila, I would feel ever so honored,” Killian drawled.

“Killian,” Hazel growled in warning from where she crouched behind Elite Bellus.

Since the wizard rep sat a few spaces down the table from me, Hazel, as his protegee, sat with him.

Hazel—Adept Hazel of House Medeis—was my friend, and also Killian’s wife. Naturally this made the dynamics on the committee unique, and it had also severely freaked out the werewolves and fae, because now the vampires and wizards were a lot more likely to team up.

To humans, we supernaturals appeared to get along. And I guess we did, sort of. It was more like supernaturals agreed not to fight one another—we had enough problems already since magic was dying out; we didn’t need to add more issues.

But as a rule, supernaturals didn’t work together. We stuck with our own kind and struggled to survive as magic continued to fade, leaving us scrambling as we tried to figure out what was wrong and fix it.

Killian and Hazel had changed all of that when they fell in love.

I’d tried to change it in my own small ways, too.

“As the fae representative it is vital that Queen Leila participate in our meetings so she might accurately represent fae interests. Even in matters as small as hiring officers for the new task force,” Killian said.

I sighed and slapped my fingers on the tabletop. “I wouldn’t have to bring work from home if you were efficient and said what you meant instead of being all vampire-y mysterious and asking a dozen questions you really don’t care about.”

Killian looked at me with interest. “Exactly what are you saying, Queen Leila?”

“That these meetings are dead boring, and they’d be at least an hour shorter if you got to the point faster,” I said.

Pre-Dominant Harka, the werewolf representative on the committee, made a choking noise, her eyes wide as she gaped at me.

Hazel, however, stood up. “Well put! The wizards support this statement by Queen Leila.”

“No, no.” Elite Bellus, her boss, stirred in his chair. “Although Queen Leila is very clever, we do not—in fact—officially condone her