Viktor stood in the shadows with Rose, and Viktor said it and so did Rose, and Benji shouted it again, throwing up his hands and balling his fists.

“They are beautiful,” said Amel. “These children of me, these parts of me, this tribe of me.”

“Yes, beloved, they have always been that,” I answered. “That has always been true.”

“So beautiful,” he said again. “How can we not love them?”

“Oh, but we do,” I said. “We certainly do.”

Part IV

THE PRINCIPALITY

OF

DARKNESS

28

Lestat

The Prince’s Speech

MY FIRST TRUE DECISION as monarch was that I wanted to go home to France. This monarch was going to rule from his ancestral Château de Lioncourt on one of the most isolated mountain plateaus of the Massif Central where he had been born. And it was also decided that Armand’s luxurious house in Saint-Germaine-de-Prés would hence forward be the Paris headquarters of the court.

Trinity Gate would be the royal residence in New York, and we would have the ceremony for Rose and Viktor tomorrow night at Trinity Gate as planned.

An hour after the transformation—when I was at last ready for it—we took the remains of Mekare from the library, and buried them in the rear garden in a spot surrounded by flowers and open to the sun in the day. We were all to a one gathered for this, including Rhoshamandes and Benedict.

Mekare’s body had turned to something resembling clear plastic, though I detest the crudeness of that word. What blood she’d retained had pooled as she lay on the floor and her remains were largely completely translucent by the time we carried her to her grave. Even her hair was becoming colorless, and breaking apart into myriad silver needlelike fragments. So Sevraine and my mother and the other women laid her out on a bier for the burial, placing the missing eye back into its socket, and covered her over with black velvet.

We stood silent at the site as she was laid to rest in what was a shallow but completely adequate grave. Flower petals were gathered by some of us from throughout the garden and these were sprinkled over the bier. Then others gathered more flowers. I turned back the velvet one last time and bent down to kiss Mekare’s forehead. Rhoshamandes and Benedict did nothing, because they obviously feared the censure of all if they tried to make any gesture. And Everard de Landen, the French-Italian fledgling of Rhoshamandes, was the last to place several roses on the corpse.

Finally, we began to fill the grave with earth, and soon all sight of Mekare’s form was lost.

It was agreed that two of those vampire physicians working for Seth and Fareed would go to the Amazon compound and exhume whatever remained of Khayman and Maharet and bring those relics here to be laid to rest with Mekare sometime in the coming month. And of course I knew full well that Fareed and Seth would harvest samples from those remains. Possibly they had done it with Mekare, but then again perhaps not, as this was a solemn occasion.

David and Jesse would also go there to retrieve whatever had survived of Maharet’s library and archives, of her keepsakes and belongings, and any legal papers that were worth preserving for her mortal family or for Jesse herself.

I found all this unrelievedly grim, but I noticed that the others, to a one, seemed comforted by these arrangements. It took me back to the night long ago when Akasha had died at the hand of Mekare. I realized with shame I had not the slightest idea what had become of her corpse.

Not to care, not to question, not to bother—all this had been part of the old way for me, one of shame and melancholy, an existence in which I assumed completely that we were cursed and the victims of the Blood as surely as mortals thought themselves to be the guilty victims of Original Sin. I had not seen us as worthy of ceremonies. I had not believed in the small coven that Armand had sought to rescue from those ghastly nights when he created the old Night Island for us to gather in the Florida climes.

Well, I saw the sense of all this now. I saw its immense value, for the old and the young.

I had been tired before the momentous change had been worked and, elated as I was—and the word does little justice to what I felt—I was still tired and needing to be alone now, alone with Amel.

But before I retired for the night, back to the French library, I felt we had to meet in the attic ballroom once more around the long rectangular gilded table that was still in place as it had been for our first assembly.

For one thing, every single immortal inhabitant of the household was watching me, trying to figure how Amel was infecting and affecting me, and I knew this, and so I had no hesitation about spending more time with them now.

So we returned to the long golden table and chairs. I stood at the head as before. Rose and Viktor kept to the wall with those retiring blood drinkers brought to Trinity Gate by Notker and Sevraine, whom I was determined to come to know before I left this place.

Whatever it might have been like for Akasha or Mekare to hold the Core, I couldn’t know. But for me, having Amel inside of me multiplied and expanded my senses and my energy beyond measure. I still saw each of them and all of them when I looked at the assembly in a new and remarkably vivid way.

“I think this ballroom should be the place for Rose and Viktor to receive the Dark Gift,” I said. “The table should be broken up and its parts put back on the periphery. I think the place should be filled with all the flowers from the shops of Manhattan that it can hold. Armand’s local mortal agents can surely see to this during the daylight hours.” He at once agreed. “And I suggest that all be present under the roof, but not in this room, leaving this room alone to Rose and to Viktor and Pandora and Marius for the giving of the Gift.”

No one objected.

“Then at such a time as the ceremony is complete, others may be invited up, one by one, to give their ancient blood. Gregory, Sevraine, Seth. Perhaps you will agree to this. Marius, and Pandora, you will approve. Rose and Viktor, you will be willing. And I will give you a measure of my blood then too.”

Agreement all around.

“Marius and Pandora can then take the fledglings down to the garden,” I said, “for the physical death and its pain. And when that’s past, they can be clothed in new garments and come into the house reborn. After that, Marius and Pandora can take our young ones out to experience the hunt for the first time.”

Again there was obvious and enthusiastic agreement.

Rhoshamandes asked for permission to speak.

I gave it.

His arm and his hand had been working perfectly since their reattachment with no problem whatsoever as I knew they’d be, and he was handsomely clothed in a tailored gray leather jacket and a sweater of lighter gray wool.