Almost Final Curtain by Tate Hallaway

once it’s in our possession.”
    I supposed that made a kind of sense. But Elias wouldn’t have been waiting in my room in the dark just to tell me they weren’t going to do anything about it. “You disagree?”
    “I think if we have spies, they have spies. If nothing else, their spies watch ours. If they don’t already know, they will soon. I want to move before we all become slaves and no longer have any will of our own.”
    I’d never seen Elias like this. He faced my desk, his feet on the floor. He held his hands between his legs, and the knuckles were white with tension. He seemed ready to burst. “What’s stopping you?”
    His storm gray eyes were ice hard when he turned: “Your father’s orders.”
    Now I understood. Elias had broken my mother’s wards, risked potentially having to face Mom and her full-on magic, and sat in the dark all night while I was singing it up with Thompson, because he wanted me to grant him some kind of royal permission to go against my dad.
    “Uh, I don’t know about this,” I admitted, pulling my legs up to hug them. It was one thing to tell some random vampire chick that it was okay for her to run off with the boy she loved, and another thing to start a rift between my dad and his trusted personal guardian.
    Elias bowed his head like he was utterly defeated. “Inaction is the fool’s strategy. Action is the traitor’s. What am I to do, Princess?”
    I tucked my chin up against my knees. Elias seemed to be searching my face for a clue, but I had none. My room seemed too small for this conversation. Hugging myself tighter, I asked, “If you stole the talisman, could you keep it safe?”
    His head snapped up. “Your father asked me the same thing. Only when he asked, it was no simple question, but an accusation.”
    I didn’t understand. “An accusation?”
    Color dotted the high arches of his cheekbones. He stared at his clenched hands. In a low voice, he said, “Yes. All those years ago, when we rebelled, it was I that stole the talisman. I lost it as well.”
    My mind stumbled over the magnitude of this revelation. “Are you saying that you’re the person responsible for freeing the vampires? Like, some kind of undead Abe Lincoln?”
    Despite the seriousness of our conversation, Elias laughed. “More like Spartacus,” he corrected, and then his smile faded. “Perhaps my freedom too shall be short-lived.”
    I didn’t know how to respond to that. I didn’t know many details about what the vampires called the secret wars, other than it was a bloody rebellion that ended with the talisman no longer in witch possession. I had no idea Elias had played such a key role. “Why aren’t you the prince? I mean, you were the hero of the secret war, right?”
    “Your father was the architect of the plan; I was only the foot soldier who carried out his orders. And ... ultimately, I showed poor judgment. I trusted the wrong person, and the talisman slipped away into the mundane world and was lost to us.”
    That didn’t sound so horrible to me. The vampires had still won their freedom. “Everyone makes mistakes.” I shrugged.
    “Mine could result in enslavement of an entire people.”
    I gave him a reassuring pat on the leg.
    But he seemed to take my sympathy the wrong way. Stiffening, he gazed out the window as if tracking something. “I should go.”
    “But what are you going to do about the talisman?”
    As he pulled open the window, he sounded angry. “My duty is, apparently, to do nothing at all.”
    Halfway out, he paused. He caught my eyes and held them. Should I say something? It didn’t seem right, him shackled like this. What if Dad was wrong? What if the talisman ended up back in the hands of someone willing to use it to bind us again? Then it would be more than duty that bound him; he’d be someone’s slave. I couldn’t cope with that thought.
    “You should do it,” I said, my voice shaking. “Make sure no one gets the talisman.”
    His eyes