The Disappearing Act (Vampire Academy Fan Fiction Book 2)

Chapter 4: The Council Meeting

Chapter 4: The Council Meeting

                If there was one thing I hadn’t missed about Court, it was the Council meetings.

                Even the Royals looked bored in their seats, flipping through our case file and yawning periodically. This should have been an open and close deal but, of course, the Queen had interfered to “ensure the best for a dear friend’s child.” And, of course, we had to accept it.

                We were only here to sign the papers and pick up our kid, not deal with the politics or press that seemed to be screaming outside the building. Apparently, we hadn’t gotten that message out well enough.

                Dimitri and I sat with our lawyer at one of the tables opposite the guy from Moroi Social Services. They’d been holding the baby since Viktoria’s death; they hadn’t deemed the Council Room an appropriate meeting space for us though, so she wasn’t here. I still didn’t know her name.

                Just like always, the Queen was late. My foot tapped impatiently on the tile floor, clicking off the seconds as Dimitri checked his watch again. She should’ve been here 20 minutes ago; not all of us had the entire day to waste away, but that had never mattered to her before.

“If the Queen isn’t going to show up, can we just get this over with?” I said, my voice echoing through the empty room. We’d requested a closed session, which they’d taken seriously for once. I guessed they were sick of the press, too.

“Five more minutes, Guardian Hathaway,” the Ozera prince said, his voice tense with irritation. The Queen seemed to be getting on everyone’s nerves.

“It’s Belikov,” Dimitri corrected. “Guardian Belikov.”

                I hadn’t even noticed.

“Yes,” the Voda princess said. “We just didn’t have time to get used to the name adjustment.”

                Dimitri and I both scowled, along with our lawyer.

“That isn’t what we’re here to discuss,” the woman snapped quietly. She folded her hands neatly on her stack of papers, eyes sharp as they looked up to the Council members. “If Her Majesty is not here soon, I will again request we finish this without her, seeing as she isn’t needed.”

                The other lawyer cleared his throat. “She has special interest in the case.”

“And my clients have plane tickets for the morning,” she retorted as she stood. “May we please get this over with? They’ve already jumped through enough hoops for this case.”

                The Council looked at each other, then at the clock on the wall. The Queen was nearing 30 minutes.

                Dimitri glanced at me, grabbing my fingers under the table as Princess Voda cleared her throat and opened our case file.

                Three hours later, I was standing in a conference room of the Court building, watching as Dimitri leaned against the windows and flipped through a notebook. The lawyer had given it us, but I hadn’t touched it. My husband, however, had been glued to it since we’d gotten dumped here to wait for our baby.

“They should have been here an hour ago,” I said, flopping into a chair at the head of the table.

                Dimitri nodded dismissively. “She’ll be here soon, Roza.” He turned a page. “It says her favorite food is Goldfish. The pizza ones,” he continued, scanning the page again. “And that she likes giraffes."