The Queen's Bargain

ONE

Facing the freestanding mirror in her bedroom, Jillian used Craft to secure the pendant that held her Purple Dusk Jewel to her green tunic so that it wouldn’t swing when she moved or flew. Then she spread her dark, membranous wings to their full length before closing them in a relaxed position.

Was she plain? Was she pretty? Until that brief touch of Tamnar’s lips against hers, Jillian hadn’t considered the question at all, let alone wondered whether such a thing was important. She was Eyrien, one of the long-lived races, and she was strong. That had been important to her for a very long time. Now being strong didn’t give her the same satisfaction, and she wasn’t sure why.

She turned to the side and studied her shape in the mirror. Her breasts had been developing for the past few years, and she had noticeable breasts now and had to wear undergarments that kept the bounce to a minimum, especially when she was training with Eyrien weapons. But . . . Did this tunic make her look fat? Was it the wrong color green for someone who had brown skin and gold eyes? Nurian had said that shade of green was a good color on her, but her elder sister, who was an excellent Healer, wasn’t necessarily the best judge of clothing. There had been too many years before they had come to live in Ebon Rih when any clothing that covered the body and wasn’t worn to rags was good, regardless of color or style.

Then again, there weren’t that many styles that suited a winged race.

Combing out her long, straight black hair, Jillian swiftly worked the hair into a multistranded braid that began high on the back of her head and ended at the base of her neck, leaving the rest of the hair to flow down her back in a loose tail. After securing the braided hair with a decorative clasp, she studied herself in the mirror again and wondered whether a man would find the hairstyle attractive.

Since there was a man spending time in their home again, maybe she didn’t want to look attractive. Not that Lord Rothvar had said or done anything inappropriate, but Prince Falonar had seemed like a good man until he became Nurian’s lover. It wasn’t long after that the Eyriens who were loyal to Prince Yaslana found out Falonar wasn’t a good man at all.

She needed to stop fretting. She didn’t have time for it, not if she wanted to do a morning warm-up with her sparring stick before flying over to the Yaslana eyrie and helping Marian with some of the early chores before escorting Yaslana’s two elder children to the Eyrien school.

She crept out of her bedroom, listening for any sound that would tell her whether Rothvar was still in her sister’s bedroom. Once she passed Nurian’s door, she fled to the kitchen and started the coffee for Nurian and the . . . guest.

There were a vegetable casserole and some muffins left over from yesterday. Enough for two people.

A glance at the kitchen clock told her there wasn’t time to cook anything else.

Looks like I’m skipping breakfast.

“You’re up early.”

Jillian gasped and almost dropped the casserole dish. Seeing only Nurian standing in the kitchen archway, she offered a wobbly smile. “The day starts early in Prince Yaslana’s household.” She put the casserole in the oven. “There’s plenty here, and there are some muffins. Coffee will be ready in a few minutes. Yours always tastes like rubbish, so I—”

“Rothvar didn’t stay over.” Nurian studied her. “He’s not here, Jillian.”

But his psychic scent and physical scent still lingered in their home, reminding her that he’d been spending enough time there for wood and stone to absorb his presence.

Jillian rubbed sweaty hands on her tunic. “I have to get going. Don’t forget to take the casserole out of the oven once it’s warmed up.”

“Jillian . . .”

“I have to go.”

Sadness filled Nurian’s eyes, but she sounded brisk when she said, “I made more tonic for Marian. Can you take it to her?”

“Of course.” Jillian walked over to the archway, then hesitated. “She had the baby months ago. Shouldn’t she be well by now?”

“It was a hard birthing.” Nurian sounded like each word could start a fatal avalanche. “Sometimes it takes an Eyrien woman a long time to recover.”

And some never recover. That was the thing no one said and everyone who lived in and around the valley feared—that Marian Yaslana, wife of the Warlord Prince of Ebon Rih, would be one of those women robbed of vitality by childbirth and would fade away, despite Nurian’s best efforts to heal her.

“Do you know what’s wrong?” Jillian asked.

Nurian shook her head. “I’ll get the tonic.” She went to her workroom and returned a minute later, handing the shielded bottle to Jillian.

Using Craft, Jillian vanished the bottle, then hugged her sister. “It will be all right.”

“Will it?”

Were they talking about Marian’s health or Rothvar’s presence in Nurian’s—and Jillian’s—life?

“Don’t forget to take the casserole out of the oven,” Jillian said again as she stepped back. Nurian’s focus and attention when it came to the precise timing required to make tonics and healing brews didn’t extend to the kitchen.

Stepping out of their eyrie, Jillian studied the Eyrien men who were already flying over the valley. Was one of them Rothvar? Was he watching her? Or was he at the communal eyrie, sparring to keep his fighting skills sharp?

She would do a brief warm-up when she reached Yaslana’s home. There should be enough time for that.

She spread her wings and launched herself skyward. As she flew, she wished she’d put on the belted cape that Eyriens used in colder weather. Autumn mornings were crisp, but today the air held a sharp reminder that winter would be there soon.

Landing on the flagstone courtyard in front of the eyrie, she walked up to the front door and put her left hand on a stone inset next to the door. Eyries were built from the stone of the mountains or were built into the mountains themselves, but this stone didn’t come from this particular mountain and had a specific purpose. The Yaslana eyrie was shielded inside and out—inside so that frisky children couldn’t scamper off before their parents were awake, and outside so that no one who wasn’t keyed into the spells placed in that stone could enter when the doors were locked and the shields were up.

There had been enemies. They were gone now, destroyed years ago, but Lucivar Yaslana didn’t take chances with his family’s safety.

Jillian set her hand on the stone and waited until she felt the shields part around the door. She opened the door and slipped inside. Moments later, the shields were back in place.

Using Craft, she called in the bottle of tonic and left it on the kitchen counter where Marian would see it. Since no one seemed to be up yet—was she really that early?—she left the kitchen, crossed the large front room that held nothing but a coat-tree near the door, and opened the glass doors that led to the yard where the children played. Fortunately the shields that protected the eyrie extended around the yard, so she wouldn’t be stuck out there if she finished her warm-up before the household woke up.

She called in her sparring stick. It wasn’t as thick or as long as the sticks used by the adult males, which meant the wood might snap in a real fight against one of them, but it fit her hands.

She went through the slow, precise movements, warming up muscles in her arms, shoulders, back, and legs. Her body had been going through changes for years, but lately she felt like a stranger in her own skin, and she didn’t know—

A finger ran down her back between her wings, right where Prince Falonar had . . .

She spun around and struck out, her stick hitting another already in position to counter her attack.

Mother Night! Had she been so lost in thought that she hadn’t heard him approach?

Lucivar Yaslana gave her a long look before taking a step back. “Let’s talk.”

She didn’t want to talk, didn’t want to be told she was being selfish and unreasonable because she wasn’t comfortable with Rothvar staying overnight. She didn’t want to be told she was spoiling Nurian’s first relationship in decades because of the memory of a man who had been gone for just as many decades. She knew that already, but she couldn’t explain why it wasn’t easy to accept Lord Rothvar into their lives.

Daemonar and Titian, Yaslana’s two elder children, rushed out of the eyrie, their own sparring sticks in hand, and headed toward them.

“You two stay near the house and go through the sparring warm-up.” Yaslana’s mild tone didn’t make the words any less a command.

“But, Papa . . . ,” Daemonar began. The expression on his father’s face silenced him. “Yes, sir.” He looked at Jillian with concern and asked on a psychic communication thread, ٭Are you in trouble?٭

٭No.٭ At least, she didn’t think so.

“Let’s talk,” Yaslana said again, tipping his head to indicate the far end of the yard, where a mountain stream filled a small pool before spilling over and continuing its journey to the valley below.

She led the way with him a step behind her. She stiffened and jerked to a stop when his hand closed over her tail of hair, turning it into a tether.

He leaned over her shoulder. She tightened her wings.

“Listen to me, witchling,” he said softly. “Are you listening?”

“Yes, sir.”

“If Rothvar ever raises a hand to you in anger, if he ever does anything that isn’t appropriate, I will skin him alive.”

His words thrilled her—and scared her. Lucivar Yaslana didn’t say anything he didn’t mean.

“But he’s your second-in-command,” she protested. Rothvar, wearing the Green Jewel, was the most powerful Eyrien Warlord and the second most powerful Eyrien male living in Ebon Rih.

“Doesn’t matter.”

Jillian’s heart pounded. Prince Falonar had been Yaslana’s second-in-command before he tried to take control of the valley and become the ruling Warlord Prince. When his followers were defeated, he was sent away to a Rihlander Queen’s court and disappeared shortly after that.

“I’m thinking that Rothvar spending time with your sister, spending time in your home, has stirred up memories that are causing you some trouble,” Yaslana said.

“Lord Rothvar hasn’t done anything wrong,” she whispered. “He’s not Prince Falonar.”

“Your head knows the difference, but your skin and your back remember the strapping Falonar gave you, and your heart remembers the pain. It’s going to take time for you to trust Rothvar because things turned sour for you after Falonar became Nurian’s lover and thought he had the right to control you. There’s nothing wrong with you feeling cautious. I just want you to know that if Rothvar hurts you in any way, he’ll deal with me.” Yaslana released her hair and stepped back. “Of course, if you think that gives you leave to act like a bitchy brat in order to make him miserable, you should also know I won’t hesitate to put you over my knee and whack some sense into your ass.”

He meant it. All of it.

“I don’t think that’s where sense is stored,” she said, trying for a lighter tone.

“You’d be surprised how much sense can be acquired when it hurts to sit down,” he replied dryly. Then he gave her a lazy, arrogant smile that had her nerves humming. “Let’s review the rules.”

She would have rolled her eyes if it had been anyone else saying that, but he was the Warlord Prince of Ebon Rih and he wore Ebon-gray Jewels, which made him the most powerful male in the Territory of Askavi—and the second most powerful male in the entire Realm of Kaeleer. No one rolled their eyes at him.

“I know the rules,” she said.

“Then you won’t have any trouble repeating them.” His smile had an edge now, warning her that he would ignore all his duties and they would stand out there all day if that was what it took for her to answer him.

She sighed. “Look equals tell. Touch equals tell. Permission before action.” That last rule made her very uneasy, because she’d broken it—but just a little. And not intentionally. Not really.

If she said anything now, after the fact, Tamnar would get into trouble, and he didn’t deserve Yaslana’s anger. Not for something that had barely broken the rule.

She eyed him and wondered if he already knew about the barely broken rule.

“Something else you want to tell me?” Yaslana asked.

“No, sir,” she said quickly. Too quickly?

He studied her until she wanted to squirm, then said, “If someone tries to hurt you, what are you going to do?”

He’d asked that same question decades ago when he found out Falonar had strapped her, so she gave him the same answer. “Kick him in the balls.”

Yaslana huffed out a breath that might have been a laugh. “Before that.”

She pretended to ponder the question. “Put a defensive shield around myself and holler for you?”

“That is correct. And then, witchling, you fight with everything in you until I can get to you. You understand me?”

“Yes, sir.”

Yaslana looked toward the eyrie. “Did you get any breakfast?”

“No, sir.”

“Then go eat.” He lifted his chin to indicate Daemonar and Titian, who were heading into the eyrie. “You can do some sparring after school.”

Jillian turned toward the eyrie, then hesitated. “I brought another bottle of tonic for Lady Marian.”

“It’s appreciated.”

She took a step away from him and felt something wash over her—a heat that made her nipples tighten, that made her feel warm and tingly between her legs. That heat was almost a scent in the air. Sheer intoxication, like catnip for human females.

She knew what it was—not because she’d felt it before, but because Nurian had told her about it when she had wondered why some women acted . . . odd . . . when Yaslana and Marian attended a play or some other public event.

“Jillian?” Yaslana sounded puzzled and—maybe?—wary.

She gave him a distracted smile and bolted for the eyrie.

Sexual heat. It was part of a Warlord Prince’s nature, something he could keep leashed to some degree, but it was always there, a lure designed to attract females, because Warlord Princes were dangerous, volatile, extremely aggressive men who were born to stand on killing fields. A Queen’s living weapon. A man like that was feared, but a man like that also needed a way to keep a woman with him in order to sire children and continue his bloodline.

Nurian said Warlord Princes usually kept the heat leashed as much as possible when they weren’t with their chosen lovers, but it still pumped out of them, washing over everyone, producing a kind of scent that made women feel womanly—and desirable. But that leashed heat was no more an invitation to sex or an indication of carnal interest than the scent of moon’s blood was an invitation to attack a woman during the days when she was vulnerable and couldn’t use the reservoir of power in her Jewels to defend herself.

When she reached the eyrie, Jillian looked back. Yaslana was going through the movements of the warm-up—and he looked wonderful. He looked like a man.

She blinked, felt her face burn with shame for thinking such a thing. He was Yaslana, the Warlord Prince of Ebon Rih. She worked for his wife. And until today, she had never thought such a thing about him.

Until today, when she felt the sexual heat for the first time. He wasn’t any different than he’d been yesterday. She was the one who had changed. Warlord Princes didn’t pick up the scent of moon’s blood until they reached a level of maturity during adolescence, so it stood to reason that a level of physical maturity was also required before a girl—a woman—reacted to a Warlord Prince’s sexual heat.

Woman.

Jillian smiled.

Swelling breasts and moon’s blood were signposts that a girl was becoming a woman. She had a feeling that today she had just reached another significant signpost.

Then she was in the kitchen and in the middle of the noise and chaos that made up mornings in the Yaslana household and didn’t give the man another thought for the rest of the day.

Lucivar went through the warm-up a second time, increasing the speed of the moves. Normally he’d be in the kitchen helping Marian feed the children and get them ready for school. But he’d seen something in Jillian a few minutes ago that kept him outside.

The girl had been running tame in his house ever since Nurian signed a service contract with him decades ago and came to Ebon Rih, claiming her younger sister, Jillian, as her dependent. He’d been busy getting the Eyrien adults settled and couldn’t say exactly when Jillian became Marian’s “helper” in looking after Daemonar. His boy had been a toddler then—an ever-moving bundle of arrogance and energy—and having Jillian around to keep hold of the little beast had allowed Marian to get some of her own work done.

Didn’t take long for him to stop seeing the girl as someone else’s dependent. Sure, she’d gone home most nights, but she was in his home so much she became his to protect—an honorary daughter in the same way his father had been an honorary uncle to most of the Territory Queens in Kaeleer.

Now he wondered if that was going to be a problem.

The potency of sexual heat was linked to the power that flowed in the veins and made the Blood who and what they were. The darker a Warlord Prince’s power, the more potent the heat. It made a kind of sense for preserving the darker bloodlines and keeping a woman in thrall long enough to make a baby and carry through all the years after until paternal rights to that child were formally granted. But it could be damned inconvenient the rest of the time, since a man let the heat slip the leash in order to seduce a lover and give her a very good ride, but even leashed, it could create too much unwanted interest from other women.

Unlike his brother, Daemon, who could seduce anyone and everyone just by walking through a room, he hadn’t had to deal with much unwanted interest for one very simple reason: he had a reputation for being violent and vicious in bed—a reputation he had earned when he’d been a slave in so many courts in Terreille. The stories of how he’d savaged the Queens who had tried to use him had found their way to Kaeleer with the people who had emigrated to the Shadow Realm. Because of that, he was feared more than other Warlord Princes. Women might enjoy the feel of the heat as he passed by, but they were also grateful that he had a wife and wouldn’t look in their direction.

Jillian wasn’t afraid of him, and that could be a problem. He hoped she would be able to accept the sexual heat as something that had always been there but was only now being noticed, and shrug it off the same way all the Queens who had been part of Jaenelle Angelline’s coven had shrugged it off. If the girl couldn’t ignore it, he’d have to bar her from his home to keep her from making a lethal mistake.

He watched Jillian, Daemonar, and Titian fly toward the eyrie where Lord Endar taught the Eyrien children.

Vanishing the sparring stick, Lucivar crossed the yard and went inside.

Marian—his wife, friend, and partner, and the love of his life—smiled when he walked into the kitchen. She poured a cup of coffee and handed it to him. “You missed breakfast. And you missed the chaos.”

“Did you notice how much quieter it was last week when Daemonar was visiting his uncle?” Lucivar asked.

“Oh, I think everyone in Riada noticed how much quieter it was,” Marian replied. “But he is your son, after all.”

“You had something to do with him being here,” Lucivar protested.

“Not that part of him. That all came from you.”

Hard to argue the truth of it. His son was growing into a formidable—meaning a pain-in-the-ass—Warlord Prince whose Birthright Green Jewel almost matched Rothvar’s Green Jewel of rank in strength.

“I saved you a plate of food,” Marian said. Then she frowned. “Lucivar?”

She insisted she was fine, but she hadn’t regained her strength or energy since baby Andulvar’s birth. He knew she wasn’t happy about his lack of enthusiasm for sex and had started wondering if he no longer found her attractive, which was so far from the truth it was laughable. He wanted her desperately some nights, but even when he was gentle and careful, their lovemaking seemed to devour her strength.

He’d insisted that she go to the Healer who served the Queen of Amdarh, Dhemlan’s capital city. Lady Zhara’s Healer couldn’t find a cause for the slower-than-normal recovery from the birthing. Like Nurian, Zhara’s Healer tacitly agreed that something wasn’t right, but neither of them could find anything wrong. And Marian insisted she was getting better, so there wasn’t much he could do—and the only person whose opinion could have made a difference had died years ago.

Still, with Marian feeling sensitive about their restrained lovemaking, he needed to tell her about Jillian.

“Jillian felt the sexual heat when we were outside talking.” The words felt like splinters of glass ripping up his throat.

Marian set the plate of food on the table and gave him a puzzled look. “She’s growing up, Lucivar. It was going to happen sooner or later.” She paused. “Is that why she was here so early?”

Lucivar shook his head. “That was because of Rothvar. His being in Nurian’s bed has stirred up memories of Falonar.”

“Him.”

His darling hearth witch didn’t usually put that much venom in her voice. Then again, Falonar had arranged for him to stand on a killing field alone against all the Warlords who had wanted Falonar to rule Ebon Rih. He hadn’t thought about what he’d looked like after that fight, hadn’t considered how a wife would react to seeing her husband drenched in his enemies’ blood.

Just as well the man had disappeared after being sent to Lady Perzha’s court.

“Yeah, well, Falonar didn’t hurt Jillian until he became Nurian’s lover, so it’s going to take her some time to accept that Rothvar filling that spot isn’t going to mean he’ll change and try to control either of them,” he said.

“Rothvar will just have to be patient with her—and so will you.”

The words were a small slap, but still a slap that shouldn’t go unanswered.

Lucivar gave his wife a lazy, arrogant smile. “I’ll remind you of the need for patience the first time Daemonar catches the scent of moon’s blood and gets bossy.”

She looked like a bunny that had run straight into a pack of wolves.

“Well, you’ll just have to explain things.”

She sounded so flustered—and appalled at the thought of two Warlord Princes fussing over her—he set the coffee on the table in order to take her in his arms and give her a long, sweet kiss.

“Don’t worry,” he said, grinning at her. “I promise to explain everything.”

TWO

Sitting on the side of his daughter’s bed, Daemon Sadi, the Black-Jeweled Warlord Prince of Dhemlan, turned the last page of the book and said, “And they all lived happily ever after.”

٭Because they had steak,٭ Khary said.

Daemon eyed the furry companions who had joined his girl for storytime—the young Sceltie Warlord who had spoken and the younger Sceltie witch, who just wagged her tail at him. “Yes,” he replied dryly. “They all lived happily ever after because they had steak.”

“And cake.”

Now he eyed his daughter, who entertained his mind and delighted his heart. Jaenelle Saetien had the black hair and gold eyes typical of the long-lived races, but her skin was closer to her mother’s light sun-kissed brown than his own golden brown tone, and she had the delicately pointed ears of the Dea al Mon race. In fact, except for the eyes—Surreal’s eyes were gold-green and slightly oversized—Jaenelle Saetien strongly resembled Surreal at the same age.

“And cake,” he agreed. Recognizing her intent, he vanished the book and pounced first, tickling Jaenelle Saetien, causing her to squeal in delight as the Scelties barked and bounced on the bed. “They had cake with buttercream icing that was decorated with mounds of pink and blue flowers.” Which was his girl’s favorite kind of cake.

He eased up to let her catch her breath—and she jumped him, as he’d known she would. Being an obliging father, he fell back so that she could have her turn to tickle. Of course, him being prone also seemed to be an invitation for the Scelties to pile on. Thankfully it was Morghann, the smaller of the two dogs, who planted a paw on his balls before he thought to put a shield over that part of himself.

“I give up,” he said, laughing. “I give up.”

Jaenelle Saetien sprawled over him so they were almost nose to nose. Morghann had a piece of his jacket sleeve between her teeth as her small claim to him, and Khary, who had recently had his Birthright Ceremony and now wore a dark Opal Jewel, stood behind his head staring down at him.

“Papa?”

“Witch-child?”

“Wouldn’t you like to have cake?”

Ah. So that was where they were going with this. “Decorated cakes are made for special occasions.”

“But I have a special Jewel now.”

And she did. A Jewel that was like no other. A Jewel that had been created especially for her by the Queen who had been, and always would be, the love of his life. But there were responsibilities that came with guiding a young witch who wore a Jewel like Twilight’s Dawn—responsibilities not just as a father but as a Warlord Prince. Lines could be gently drawn, but they had to be drawn.

“You do have a special Jewel, and we celebrated when you received it. As I recall, there was a very big cake with mounds of buttercream frosting that Mrs. Beale made for that celebration.” Just thinking about that frosting made his teeth hurt.

Of course, that cake might have been partially responsible for him and Lucivar having to deal with overexcited children during that party. Not that he would ever say that to the large Yellow-Jeweled witch who was his cook here at the Hall.

“But that was forever ago,” Jaenelle Saetien protested.

A few weeks. But even a child from the long-lived races measured time differently from the adults.

“I take it you asked Mrs. Beale to make a cake.”

“She said she’d already made out the menus for the next fortnight and cake wasn’t one of the sweets.”

“Well, then . . .”

“But she’d make a cake if you told her to make one.”

Every time Mrs. Beale felt she had something to discuss with him, she brought her well-sharpened meat cleaver to the meeting—and even though she wore Yellow and he wore Black, he would admit to himself, if to no one else, that he felt a tiny kernel of fear when he had to deal with her directly. He much preferred going through Beale, the Red-Jeweled Warlord who was the Hall’s butler as well as Mrs. Beale’s husband, whenever he requested a particular dish or special treat.

“She might,” he agreed, “but as I just pointed out and as you already knew, those cakes are made for special occasions.”

“But, Papa . . .”

“No.” Daemon kissed her cheek to take the sting out of the word, then sat up, bringing her up with him—and dragging Morghann as well, since the Sceltie didn’t let go of his sleeve.

After convincing the dogs to settle into their baskets and tucking in his girl for the night, Daemon walked down the corridor to his bedroom to get undressed before he tapped on the door that connected his suite of rooms to Surreal’s. Whether they had sex, made love, or just cuddled a bit before going to sleep, he spent most of his nights in her bed. Her bed, her rules—and he the lover who had the privilege of pleasing her.

As a Warlord Prince, he needed his own room, his own bed for sleep, for rest, for solitude. He slept in this room when Surreal stayed at their town house in Amdarh or visited one of the family’s other estates as his second-in-command. He didn’t feel the need or the desire to stay away from her when she was in residence. Besides, withholding his body from her would have been a breach of the promise he’d made to be her husband in every way.

Her pregnancy had been unplanned and unexpected—the result of them comforting each other on the night his father died. Their marriage had had more to do with him not allowing her to leave with his child than with heated passion. But they had loved each other in their own way for decades, as friends and family, and Surreal had understood—and accepted—that he never could love anyone else with the depth and passion that he had loved, and still loved, Jaenelle Angelline, the living myth, dreams made flesh. Witch. His Queen.

Surreal had known Jaenelle, had been friend and sister to the woman and a sword and shield to the Queen. She had been there throughout his first marriage, taking the position of second-in-command to give him as much time as possible with Jaenelle since Witch’s life span had been measured in decades, not centuries. And she’d been there during the year of mourning and the years after.

But even after he and Surreal had married, there had been a distance between them, a wariness. They had been friends, lovers, partners, parents. But until the Birthright Ceremony, until she had formally acknowledged paternity and given him irrevocable rights to his daughter, there had been that distance, that wariness. Now . . .

The door opened. Surreal walked into the room. His room.

“Did you get them settled for the night?” she asked.

As he turned to face her, something inside him relaxed, swelled. Bloomed into a heady, dark desire.

Mine. He looked at her, standing there in his room, wearing a long green nightgown shot with gold threads—a gown that was every kind of invitation—and felt that one word fill him until there was nothing else. Mine.

“Sadi?”

He wanted to play. Oh, how he wanted to play. And so did she. Why else was she in this room? His room, where he wasn’t a guest. Where there were no boundaries to what he could or couldn’t do.

But there had to be choice. Always a choice.

“Daemon?”

Using Craft, he closed the door behind her. But not all the way. Not yet.

“Do you want to play?” he purred, approaching her slowly. Stalking her.

“Well, you’re in a mood.”

She couldn’t hold on to the sassy smile as his sexual heat, freed of all restraint, wrapped around her, as he leaned toward her, his mouth so close to the corner of hers she probably believed he was touching her. But he wasn’t touching, wouldn’t touch until she made her choice.

“Do you want to stay here tonight and play? Or do you want to go to your own room and sleep alone?”

If she didn’t stay with him here tonight, he couldn’t be with her, couldn’t be the considerate guest in her bed. Not tonight. Not when he wasn’t holding anything back. Not when he felt—truly felt—that the woman, like the child, was his, and with the woman he wasn’t interested in lovemaking or even sex. Not tonight. Tonight was about possession, about making her body sing in a way that told her there were no barriers between them anymore, that he would finally give her everything he was.

But only if she made that choice.

“Do you want to play?” he purred again.

Nerves. Excitement. Arousal spiced with a little fear of what he intended to do.

Delicious.

“Stay or go?” he whispered.

Her hard nipples strained against the delicate gown. He smelled the wet heat of need between her legs.

“S-stay.”

The door closed. The lock clicked. She trembled when his fingertips lightly brushed her skin.

His mouth touched hers in a kiss so delightfully, viciously gentle, he had to lick the tears from her face before doing anything more.

When he finally laid her on his bed, she whimpered with the need for his touch—and he focused everything he was on pleasuring her body before pleasing his own.

Mine.

Surreal’s eyes snapped open. Her heart pounded so hard she feared the sound would wake the man sleeping beside her.

She did not want to rouse—or arouse—the man sleeping beside her.

What she wanted right now, more than anything, was to get out of that room.

She rolled on her side, bringing herself closer to the edge of the bed, and waited. No hand suddenly anchoring her hip. No arm reaching out to pull her close again. No head lifting off the pillow to look at her. No deep, sleepy voice asking where she was going.

She eased her feet out from under the covers, then her lower legs to the knees. She rolled a little more and slid out of the bed, crouched beside it, waiting.

Daemon still slept.

Staying crouched because she was sure an upright figure in his bedroom would bring him instantly awake and riding the killing edge, she made her way to the door.

Please. Sweet Darkness, please let this door open. Let whatever locks he put on the door and around the room be released now.

She turned the handle. The door opened, bringing a whiff of fresher air compared with the sex-saturated smell of his room.

She slipped into her bedroom and closed the door. It was tempting to put a Gray lock on the door, tempting to put shields around the room. But a Gray lock wouldn’t stop him. It might make him curious or concerned—or enraged—but it wouldn’t stop him.

She hurried into her bathroom, put an aural shield around the room to cover the sound of water, then took a long hot shower. She shook as she washed her hair, as she thoroughly washed her body, as she stood and let the hot water ease tight, sore muscles.

A Warlord Prince’s bedroom is his private place, and he tends to be more possessive when he’s there.

Jaenelle Angelline’s words, spoken decades ago as both instruction and warning.

Surreal knew about possession. The first night she’d had sex with him, the night they made Jaenelle Saetien, they had ended up in his room, in his bed, and he’d been . . . more than Daemon but not quite the Sadist. He’d been riding a side of his nature that had been somewhere between the two—and the way he’d ridden her that night had been breathlessly exciting.

The sex since that night was staggering and wonderful and better than anything else she’d experienced, but it didn’t always have the edge that made it breathlessly exciting.

But last night . . .

What had she done to provoke him into doing what he’d done last night? Into being what he’d been last night? She’d recognized the glazed look in his gold eyes. She knew who had controlled her body and played with her until she was drowning in terrible pleasure that made a woman deliciously satisfied one moment and craving the next touch, the next permitted climax with a sharp, desperate need.

She had been in bed with the Sadist—and it terrified her. It terrified her, who had been the highest-paid whore in Terreille’s Red Moon houses as well as one of the best assassins in that Realm. She hadn’t been a whore for decades, since she emigrated to Kaeleer, but she still kept all her knives sharp—and she had, on occasion and with great discretion, used them.

All her skills counted for nothing against a Black-Jeweled Warlord Prince. All those skills counted for nothing against the Sadist.

They’d been getting along so well since the Birthright Ceremony. Something in Daemon had relaxed, a common response when a man was granted legal rights to his child. She suspected that relaxation also had its roots in Daemon’s brief meeting with some aspect of Witch, who had gifted their daughter with an extraordinary Jewel.

A few days after the Ceremony, he’d said “I love you” for the first time, words that warmed her, that assured her that he wanted to stay married to her.

Now . . .

She shut off the water, wrapped her hair in one large towel, and dried off with another.

She couldn’t take Jaenelle Saetien away from school and the daily lessons in Craft and Protocol the girl had begun with Daemon, but she could leave for a few days, could use the excuse of checking on the family’s other estates as a reason to be away. Nothing unusual about that. Nothing that would raise suspicions or have Daemon asking questions.

Daemon.

She gripped the sink while she remembered the feel of his hands, the feel of his mouth, the feel of his cock filling her, moving inside her. . . .

She climaxed. It wasn’t enough. That greedy, desperate need was back.

Not Daemon. The Sadist had done this to her.

She needed to get away in order to figure out why.

Half-awake, Daemon reached across the bed. When his hand found cold sheets instead of a warm body, he rolled onto his back and rubbed his hands over his face.

Mother Night.

He hadn’t had sex like that, hadn’t offered to give sex like that, since . . . Well, he hadn’t had sex like that since the last time Jaenelle Angelline had accepted his invitation to play. He hadn’t thought that anyone else, even Surreal, would agree to play those games of possession with him, knowing she was safe. He hadn’t thought he would love anyone else deeply enough to want to play those games again.

The first time he had seen Witch in his bedroom and reacted to her in this way, his father had explained some things about the nature of Warlord Princes that he hadn’t known.

“This is emotional—and it’s darker, more dangerous when it happens. It’s the thrill of being feared while you seduce your lover to the point where she doesn’t want to refuse. And at the same time it’s the comfort of being able to reveal that side of your nature to a lover and know you’re still trusted. . . . It’s a potential for violence that is transformed into a kind of ruthless gentleness. . . . It’s part of your nature. It’s part of your caste. It’s in every one of us. . . . You’ve twisted a part of yourself into a powerful weapon, honed it to the point people have given it a different name.”

What had played in his bedroom last night was the Sadist in his mildest form. The Sadist as lover. That didn’t come close to what he was when he let that dark, lethal aspect of himself slip the leash. But all that particular knowledge and skill, wrapped in the velvet of love, could give a woman piquant pleasure in ways nothing else could.

He shouldn’t have been surprised that Surreal would accept his invitation. After she made her choice, because playing this game with him had to be her choice, he’d shown her what he was without the barriers he’d kept between them—barriers he’d held in place to protect her, thinking they were necessary. She’d shown him last night that he’d been wrong about that.

A brief psychic probe located the Gray, so he slipped out of bed, put on a robe, and opened the window to let the room air out a bit before his valet or anyone else came in.

Belting the robe, he walked into Surreal’s bedroom, then stopped, shocked, when her psychic scent hit him.

Surreal SaDiablo, Gray-Jeweled witch and assassin, his wife for the past fifteen years, was afraid of him. Truly afraid of him. Because of last night.

But . . . She’d made the choice. She’d accepted his invitation to play. And if she’d been uncomfortable at any time, she could have stopped the play with one word. Just one word.

“Surreal.”

She gave him a brittle smile. “It’s time to check the other estates. I wanted to get an early start and didn’t want to wake you.”

He could read her body, knew her heart was pounding, her breathing too shallow.

Last night, he’d felt that dark possession, had known the woman was his and, equally important, that he was hers. And he’d shown her who he was—a truth he’d shown to one other woman.

But unlike Jaenelle Angelline, who had accepted everything he was, Surreal had seen the truth and now feared him. Oh, she had been afraid of him at other times, and had reason to be. But not here. Not in their home. Not in her bed.

Except they hadn’t been in her bed. They had been in his, and for a Warlord Prince, that made a difference. Oh, yes, it made a difference.

He kept his voice gentle, made no move toward her. “Will you have breakfast with me before you go?”

She hesitated a moment too long. “Sure, sugar. Just give me a few minutes to finish packing and I’ll meet you downstairs.”

Daemon retreated to his room and closed the door. He took a quick but thorough shower, recognizing that any scent of sex would trouble her right now.

Maybe going away would help her, give her time to realize it had been a game, that he would have stopped the instant she asked him to stop. But she hadn’t asked. He knew she hadn’t asked. Just as he knew that the Sadist as lover had known exactly where her line was between sharp pleasure and real pain and hadn’t, even for a heartbeat, crossed that line.

Even so, he’d scared her instead of pleasing her. Her going away for a few days might be a good thing. If her fear didn’t dissipate, it would become a wall between them.

As he dressed, Daemon worked to restore the leashes on his temper, on his power, on the Sadist, and on the sexual heat. But something inside him had swelled last night, had bloomed, and when he tried to snug the leash on the sexual heat, it felt like a shirt that should have fit but was a little too tight.

Today was not the day to ease up on control of the heat, so he ruthlessly snugged the leash to where it had been the day before, ignoring the nip of pain that came from choking back a part of himself too much.

Having leashed every part of himself as tightly as possible, Daemon went downstairs to do what he could to reassure his wife before she fled from their home.

THREE

Lord Dillon found a dimly lit nook behind a curtain near the main ballroom. He opened the window a crack to breathe in some cool fresh air and give himself a quiet moment before throwing himself back into the bright and sometimes brittle sounds of instruments and voices, the flash of jewels and Jewels and women’s gowns. A typical aristo party in a Rihland city. He’d never been outside the Territory of Askavi—not yet, anyway—but he imagined that aristo parties were pretty much the same in every Blood city in the Realm of Kaeleer.

Maybe he should find out. There was no reason for him to stay in Askavi and plenty of reasons to go.

If you loved me . . .

He’d been nineteen years old when he made the Offering to the Darkness and came away with the Opal as his Jewel of rank. He’d been in his second year of training to be an escort who could serve in a Queen’s court, and had one more year to go. Many young men received their education in District courts while they served in the Third or Fourth Circle. Youngsters weren’t paid for their service, but they were given room and board, which was regarded as sufficient compensation. His father, however, had wanted him to study at a school, claiming that the escorts who served in a court and were responsible for training the young men sometimes undermined those potential rivals for the Queen’s attention. Much better to be trained at a school and have the polish necessary to be offered a place in a Second Circle and rise to an important position that much faster.

He hadn’t cared about a fast rise through the levels of a court. He had wanted the adventure of going away. His father had wanted him to go to the school, so he went, and at one of the dances that gave escorts-in-training a chance to gain some experience, he’d met Lady Blyte. She’d been a couple of years older than he, the daughter of a Warlord and a witch whose bloodlines were far more aristo than his family’s modest claim to that label, and he’d been flattered that she had singled him out for a second dance.

He hadn’t realized at the time that she’d chosen him because she hadn’t expected him to give her any trouble when she tired of him and tossed him aside.

He’d been dazzled the first time she kissed him—although, at the time, he’d believed he’d initiated that first kiss. He’d believed he’d initiated quite a few things—until she started wanting things that wouldn’t do any harm to her reputation but would sully his. He’d balked the first time she tried to get him into bed, not because he didn’t want sex but because he wanted to serve in a Queen’s First Circle someday, a position that required the ultimate trust not only of the Queen but of her Steward, Master of the Guard, and Consort.

A man who damaged his honor and respectability by having sex outside the marriage bed would never receive that trust anywhere but in the meanest kind of court, where trust and honor could be bought and sold.

But most young men from good families received some formal sex instruction, since learning to be a good lover was considered essential for any man who wanted to serve as a consort in a Queen’s court or wanted to please a wife. The men sat through frank discussions and some demonstrations of how to please a lover. That instruction was usually followed by one or two lessons with a woman who was qualified to train young men in the skills required in and out of bed. Despite the marks he’d been spending on Blyte, he’d saved enough from his quarterly allowance to pay for the formal instruction.

When he told Blyte that he had signed up for sex training at a reputable establishment, she had led him to a shadowed spot on the terrace just outside the ballroom and had said the fatal words for the first time. If you loved me . . .

If he loved her, he would forget about the training and use the money to take her to . . .

He couldn’t remember what she’d wanted that first time, but it had sounded reasonable, and he had loved her, so he’d canceled the instruction and taken her to some expensive event.

Then, if he loved her, he would let her instruct him in the art of sex and lovemaking. After all, she’d had her Virgin Night, so taking an inexperienced lover wouldn’t be a risk to her power or her Jewels. And she couldn’t stand the idea of him being with another woman, even for instruction, and if he loved her, he wouldn’t ask her to endure that.

When he still balked about having sex—after all, it wasn’t her reputation that would be harmed if anyone found out—she asked him to handfast with her, to be her husband for a year. If he loved her, he would do this for her, to please them both.

If you loved me. If you loved me. If you . . .

She taught him a great deal about sex while she stalled about making the handfast official. After all, they were married in their hearts, weren’t they?

And then, finally uneasy enough about the delays and Blyte’s desire to keep their arrangement secret—for his sake—he told his family that Blyte had asked him to handfast and he wanted to proceed with the ceremony.

When his father met with Blyte’s father to negotiate the terms of the handfast, Blyte hysterically denied making such a commitment to Lord Dillon. She tearfully confessed she’d been having sex with Dillon, but she was entitled to a lover, while he . . .

Scandal. Accusations and counteraccusations. When his father threatened to take the matter to the Province Queen, who, unlike the District Queen who ruled their city, was not related to Blyte’s family, Dillon had received “compensation” for the “misunderstanding”—enough gold and silver marks to buy his silence and end the accusations.

His family didn’t quite disown him—that would have negated the claim of Dillon being the wronged party—but his parents made it clear that it was in everyone’s best interest for him to settle in another city and start fresh. After all, he was twenty now and old enough to stand on his own, and there were his two younger brothers to think about. If he stayed at home, the smear on his reputation might stain his brothers, and he wouldn’t want that, would he?

Of course not. But leaving home to serve in a court or to accept a position in another city to do one’s chosen work wasn’t the same as being asked to leave because he’d made the mistake of believing a bitch’s lies.

Deeply wounded when his father, pressured by his mother, had given him a week to find another place to live well beyond their home ground, Dillon hadn’t been able to think, hadn’t known where to go. He blindly chose a Rihlander city on the coast of Askavi—a place where his family often took a “cottage” for a month in the summer as a way to show they were affluent even if they were a minor branch of an aristo family tree.

The summer visitors had left weeks ago, but the aristos who lived here were easy enough to find, and it hadn’t taken more than a couple of days for him to make the acquaintance of a few young Warlords around his age. They’d been sufficiently impressed by his Opal Jewel to show him around, introduce him to other aristos. He was getting a feel for who was who and thought he might be able to wangle an introduction with the Steward of the District Queen who ruled this city. Thankfully, she wasn’t the same Queen as the one who ruled the city where his family lived. If he could get an introduction, maybe he could get a court contract to serve in the Second or Third Circle—a position that would allow him to finish his training as an escort while using the skills he’d already learned.

After a year or two to gain some seasoning and polish, maybe he could head out to one of the other Territories. Someplace like Dharo or even Scelt, which was on the other side of the Realm. Or maybe even someplace more exotic like Tigrelan, a Territory that had two kinds of Blood. Both had claws and striped skin, but one race was human and the other feline. Both were dangerous. But wouldn’t it be exciting to—

“There you are.”

A bright, brittle female voice.

Dillon turned and smiled—a carefully calculated smile that was warm enough to be courteous but not warm enough to be mistaken for an invitation. He’d learned that much before he left the school.

Either the light wasn’t sufficient or Lady Carron didn’t choose to acknowledge the meaning of the smile. She walked toward him in a way that should have made his body hum, and wrapped her arms around his neck. He kept his teeth clenched to stop her from giving him an open-mouthed, tongue-tangling kiss.

“What’s the matter?” she asked, pouting.

“Nothing’s the matter,” he replied.

“Then why are you being like that?”

“Like what?” Dillon tried to disengage, but her arms tightened around his neck, pushing her body more firmly against his. “Lady Carron, this isn’t appropriate.”

“I heard that you’re not a stickler for what’s appropriate. That you enjoy a good ride. Plenty of enthusiasm, if lacking the experience to be really good in bed. That’s what I heard.”

His stomach rolled. “You’re mistaken.”

Her smile had a knife-edge. “That’s not what my good friend Blyte told me. I know all about you, Lord Dillon.” She rubbed against him. “And if you don’t want everyone to know what Blyte told me about you, you’re going to be very nice—and very accommodating—to me.”

He went hot, then cold. Wasn’t it enough that Blyte’s betrayal had smeared his honor and caused a rift between him and his family? If Carron told other aristos whatever Blyte had said about him, he would never be granted an audience with a Queen’s Steward, would never be allowed to serve in a court, because a Queen wouldn’t consider an escort with a stained reputation, not when there were so many unsullied young men for her to choose from.

He had to do something—fast.

“Not here,” he said. “Not tonight.”

“Make it soon.”

He heard the threat behind the words.

Well, he would do something soon. Immediately, in fact.

Burning with a corrosive, careless anger, Dillon walked out of the nook, one hand mussing his russet hair in what looked like some attempt to tame it, while his other hand ran down the front of his evening jacket. His green eyes scanned the edges of the ballroom until he spotted Lord Foley, the acquaintance who might have become a friend. Folly, as he was sometimes called by those who insisted they had sharp wit, loved gossip and couldn’t keep a secret to save his life—something everyone in the aristo social circles knew about the young man. And that made Folly the perfect choice.

Dillon rushed up to Folly and pulled him aside. Not too far, not out of earshot of a sharp-eyed Warlord who looked at Dillon, then looked toward the nook where Carron had disappeared.

“Folly, you won’t believe this, but I’m going to handfast with Lady Carron!” Dillon kept his voice low, conspiratorial, but just loud enough for the other Warlord to also hear what he had to say.

“What?” Folly yelped. “You’re what?”

“I know! We’ve barely known each other a week, but she said she needs me to be her lover. So we’re going to handfast so that I can be her husband for a year. And she’ll be my wife. Isn’t that wonderful? But you can’t say anything yet, because she just asked me and I still need to place the notice into the weekly paper that prints these announcements.”

“B-but . . . ,” Folly stammered. “I heard Lady Carron’s father was negotiating a marriage contract with a Warlord from another aristo family.”

Bitterness welled up in Dillon. His eyes glittered. “Maybe she’s already tried horizontal dancing with the man and decided he wasn’t up to her standards since he was willing to oblige her before the contracts were signed.”

A flash of anger nearby told him his verbal knife had found its mark, and he wondered whether Lady Carron—had anyone else noticed her name sounded so much like “carrion”?—would have to find another potential husband or if the marriage contract currently on the table would become much more expensive.

“I have to go.” Dillon clapped a hand on Folly’s shoulder. “I want to write to my parents and send the news by special messenger first thing in the morning.” He raised his hand and held up a finger. “Remember. Not a word to anyone yet.”

Dillon moved swiftly, hoping the Warlord who might have been the intended husband didn’t follow him. He’d had some basic training in how to fight and defend—every escort knew that much—but he didn’t want to find himself cornered by a man who had more training and skill.

No one followed him. He slipped away and was heading back to his hotel room before Folly shook off the shock enough to start spreading the news—in confidence.

The summons from Lady Carron’s father arrived before breakfast, but the meeting was set for midmorning, a time carefully calculated. The balance of urgency and courtesy made Dillon wonder what Carron’s father had said to her last night—or what her intended husband had said to her father. Was a marriage still being negotiated? If her father offered him a contract to handfast with Carron . . .

Did he really want to spend a year of his life with her? No, he didn’t. Any girl who could be friends with Blyte would be a torment for him.

Nothing was said at first when Dillon was shown into the man’s study, but he knew the Warlord took in Dillon’s Opal Jewel, weighing that power against his own Summer-sky and making some adjustments in how this meeting would go.

“There was a misunderstanding last night,” the Warlord said, watching Dillon.

“Sir?” he replied politely.

“My daughter couldn’t have offered you a handfast. The man she’s chosen to be her husband and I have been negotiating the marriage contracts for the past two weeks, so she wouldn’t have offered you a handfast.”

“But . . .” Dillon looked painfully confused—an expression he’d practiced for an hour last night in anticipation of this meeting. “She asked me to have sex with her. Insisted that I oblige her.”

The Warlord’s face flushed. “Yes. Well. A young woman who has gone through her Virgin Night has . . . needs, and there is nothing wrong with her enjoying a lover.”

“You are, of course, correct, sir,” Dillon said. “But a young man doesn’t have the same freedom, and a young man who obliges before a formal contract is signed can be . . . misunderstood. That’s why, when Lady Carron insisted that I provide her with sex, I confirmed that she was asking me to enter into a formal contract, because I know she wouldn’t want a man to do anything dishonorable. After all, if she thought it was all right to use a man that way, then that would be like giving other girls permission to pressure her brother into providing them with sex. Wouldn’t it, sir?”

The older man’s face turned white and his eyes filled with fear at the mention of that potential danger to his son’s reputation.

Seeing that, Dillon thought that maybe, in time, he could forgive his father for caring more about his brothers’ reputations than about him.

“My daughter deeply regrets giving you the wrong impression.”

I’m sure of that, Dillon thought.

“I’m told you’ve recently come to town.”

“Yes, sir.”

The Warlord called in a thick envelope and held it out. “You’re a handsome young man, Lord Dillon, and temptation is easier to resist when a girl doesn’t see it every day. I’m hoping you will oblige me by . . . relocating. This should cover your expenses and be some compensation for the inconvenience my daughter caused.”

Dillon took the envelope, opened it, and riffled the notes inside. Three thousand gold marks. Three thousand. Even more than the compensation he’d received from Blyte’s father.

“Yes, sir.” His voice sounded brave, sad, and understanding. Sounded perfect. “I wish Lady Carron all the best.” He paused. “If you will excuse me, sir, I think the sooner I’m gone, the easier it will be for all of us.”

As soon as he left the man’s study, Dillon vanished the envelope. He walked a block before hailing a horse-drawn cab and returning to his hotel. Anticipating the need to get out of this city quickly—there was always the possibility that Carron’s intended husband would challenge him to a fight—he vanished his already-packed trunks, settled his bill, and went to the Coaching station to buy a seat on a Coach heading for a town he was sure his family hadn’t visited before. With any luck, no one in that town would have heard of Carron—or Blyte.

FOUR

Jillian stood outside the front door, taking another minute to breathe in fresh air before she entered the Yaslana eyrie. No school today, so she had planned her arrival for after breakfast—and hoped Prince Yaslana was already out and about.

After a week of discomfort, she was getting used to the feel of the sexual heat washing over her when she was near him, was getting used to the punch of it when she first walked into his home. It was like an odor permeating the eyrie’s stone walls, but more intense when he was physically present. No, the diaper pail was an odor. Yaslana’s sexual heat was a spicy, potent, alluring scent. Not all that different from his physical and psychic scents, actually, but sexual. Definitely sexual.

But not for her. He couldn’t help being who and what he was—and who and what he was had gotten her and Nurian out of the service fair and had made it possible for them to live in Ebon Rih, had made it possible for her to go to school and also receive training in the use of Eyrien weapons. If she thought of the sexual heat as being similar to a cologne some men wore to be more appealing to women, then it wasn’t any different from the scent Nurian sometimes wore when she wanted to feel more feminine. Wasn’t any different from a bowl of potpourri that Marian used to freshen rooms in the winter.

Jillian grinned. Sex potpourri. Something to be enjoyed for a moment and then forgotten as a background scent.

She walked in, hung her cape on the coat-tree, and went to the kitchen. The table had been cleared, but the dishes weren’t done.

٭Marian?٭ she called on a distaff thread.

٭I’m changing the baby. Again.٭

Poopy diapers. How fun.

٭The children are picking up their rooms,٭ Marian continued, ٭and Lucivar is in his study.٭

٭I’ll do the dishes.٭

٭There should be a couple of meat pastries in the cold box for you if the men in the house didn’t stuff them into their faces the moment I left the kitchen.٭

Daemonar might have grabbed for another one before they were put away—the boy had a staggering ability to eat—but Yaslana would have stopped him. And to be fair, if told the pastries had been saved for her, Daemonar probably would have left them alone, because taking care of the women in the family was a man’s privilege. Of course, not eating something that had been saved was seen as an insult and resulted in hurt feelings.

Boys could be so peculiar.

After filling one side of the double sink with soap and water, she washed the breakfast dishes and was rinsing the bowl that had been used to make the pastry when she heard the eyrie’s front door open. Curious, because the family was accounted for and anyone else should have knocked, she grabbed a dish towel to dry the bowl as she walked to the archway between the kitchen and the big front room—and then forgot what she was doing.

She’d seen him plenty of times before, but, Mother Night, he was beautiful! That almost painfully exquisite face and mouthwatering body. The thick black hair was a little long and artfully disheveled, and the gold eyes . . .

Those eyes looked at her, recognized something in her, and started to glaze as the room began to chill in warning.

“Witchling?” Yaslana’s voice, coming from the corridor that led to the rest of the eyrie. “Jillian?” Sharper now. Commanding.

She blinked and turned her head to look at Yaslana as he entered the front room. For a moment, for just long enough, the sexual heat that was becoming familiar created a barrier between her and Prince Sadi’s darkly seductive sexual heat.

“I . . . I have to do something.” Jillian hurried to the pantry, leaned against a shelf, and hugged the bowl she’d been drying. Prince Daemon Sadi was . . . Mother Night! She was pretty sure the bones in her legs had just melted from his heat curling around her.

Potency and power. The darker the Jewel worn by a Warlord Prince, the more potent the sexual heat. Sweet Darkness, he was potent!

She frowned. It was more than that. If you put aside the sexual heat, because only Warlord Princes had that as part of their nature, Prince Sadi was still exciting because he was sophisticated and educated and . . . other stuff that Eyrien males didn’t care about at all but that seemed desperately important all of a sudden.

Even if he wasn’t married and unavailable, it would take a strong, sophisticated, educated woman to be his lover. And she was too young to be anyone’s lover. But . . .

Wouldn’t it be wonderful to be courted by a Warlord who was like Prince Sadi in most ways?

Lucivar led the way back to his study. “What brings you to Ebon Rih so early?”

Daemon’s psychic scent felt jagged, and that was a worry. Sadi’s mind had been shattered, and repaired, twice, and any sign that he might be slipping toward the border of the Twisted Kingdom was cause for concern. Daemon was Saetan’s true heir and, as Saetan had before him, ruled the Dark Realm as the High Lord of Hell—and he was more dangerous and lethal than their father had ever dreamed of being. Since Saetan had once committed genocide, destroying a place called Zuulaman and everyone from that race, anything that threatened Daemon’s control of his temper or power needed to be stopped before it went too far.

“I wanted to check the supplies at the cabin,” Daemon replied easily. “I’ll spend a day or two there once Surreal is back at the Hall and available to be the parent on duty.”

Lucivar settled in one of the visitor’s chairs instead of the chair behind his desk. “Where is she now?”

Daemon took the other seat. “Checking up on the other estates.”

Lucivar studied his brother. Daemon had been different since Jaenelle Saetien’s Birthright Ceremony. Happier. Warmer. Closer to the way he’d been when he’d been married to Jaenelle Angelline. Now Daemon felt jagged—and there were shadows in the depths of those gold eyes.

“You okay?” he asked.

Daemon shrugged, a dismissive move. “Have a bit of a headache.”

“What’s the witchling done now?”

Daemon laughed. “She has been pestering to have a special-occasion cake made. She made a sufficient nuisance of herself that Mrs. Beale came to my study to discuss it.”

“Did Mrs. Beale bring her meat cleaver?”

“Of course she did.” Daemon crossed his legs at the knees. “Since I have my own kitchen in the family wing, which is still a sore spot as far as Mrs. Beale is concerned, I offered to help Jaenelle Saetien make the cake if she wanted one so badly.”

“Sounds fair.” His children often made the biscuits while he prepared another part of the meal on Marian’s resting nights. The biscuits were edible most of the time.

“I thought so. Despite my explaining how much of each ingredient had to be added, she was a bit . . . slapdash . . . about it, because measuring took time and stirring took time.” Daemon smiled. “Then she announced that there was something she had to do and that she would be back in a few minutes.”

“Yeah, I’ve heard that excuse. It’s your own fault—and mine—for having bright, clever children.”

“Hmmm. Well, my clever child bounced into the kitchen about thirty minutes later to find her papa reading a book and the cake ingredients looking exactly the way she’d left them. When she started to express her disappointment, I reminded her that I had offered to help her make it, not do the work, and since she didn’t want the cake enough to put any effort into making it, there would be no further pestering of Mrs. Beale or me or anyone else, because further pestering would result in a loss of privileges.”

“Would the cake have been edible?”

“Not likely. But that, too, would have been a lesson.” Daemon seemed to weigh something before finally asking, “Did your two behave differently after receiving their Birthright Jewel? I don’t remember them being different, but I didn’t see them every day.”

“Titian shied away from doing any kind of Craft for about a month because, once she had her Summer-sky Jewel, doing even basic Craft was important and maybe she’d been doing it wrong. So Marian and I ended up teaching her the same things she’d been doing, because she wasn’t a child anymore; she was a girl. She was certain she would be held to a higher standard because she wore a Jewel.”

“She wasn’t wrong,” Daemon said.

“No, she wasn’t wrong.” Lucivar huffed out a laugh. “The boy, on the other hand, acted like he’d finally learned some manners when he received his Green Jewel. That lasted less than a week. In the years since then, he seems committed to being more and more of a pain in my ass. He’s on the cusp of leaving boyhood behind and embracing the changes that come from being a youth. I figure the pissing contests will start in earnest when he’s fully into adolescence.” He considered Daemon’s question and his mood. “You worried about the witchling?”

Daemon didn’t reply. Then, “I’m starting to appreciate how much thought and care Saetan took when he began training a young witch who wore extraordinary Jewels, how firmly he had to draw the lines. Being special is its own kind of burden.”

“Maybe it’s like the sexual heat,” Lucivar said. “The people around you have to adjust to its presence. And then the people who mean the most to you get used to it and you’re accepted for who you are.”

“What if you’re not accepted for who you are?” Daemon asked softly.

Why did Surreal really leave to check on the estates? Being Eyrien and wearing the Ebon-gray, he didn’t think twice about making blunt observations or asking questions no one else would dare ask. But the jagged feel of Daemon’s psychic scent warned him not to push for answers. Not yet. Instead, he said, “Well, old son, if you ever need reminding of how much you’re accepted, just come here and I’ll knock you on your ass a couple of times. That should help you remember.”

Daemon laughed, as Lucivar hoped he would.

No sign of Jillian when he walked Daemon to the front door. No sign of Marian or Titian either, but Daemonar rushed out to say good-bye to his uncle and convey the news.

“Baby Andulvar made a big fart and sprayed poop all over before Mother got a clean diaper on him,” Daemonar announced.

“Don’t sound so excited, boyo,” Lucivar said. “You and I are going to help clean up the room.”

“But, Papa. It stinks in there.”

Lucivar gave Daemon a lazy, arrogant smile. “Sure you need to go?”

“I’m certain,” Daemon replied dryly.

Lucivar watched his brother’s gliding walk across the flagstone courtyard in front of the eyrie. Daemon never looked like he was moving fast, but he covered a lot of ground.

“He could have stayed and helped.”

Lucivar looked at his son’s sour expression. “Oh, I expect he has enough shit of his own to deal with. Come on—we need to help your mother.”

A boy had rushed out to make the poop announcement, but it was a young Warlord Prince who was another step closer to adolescence—and the sharper temper that went with maturing—who helped him clean that room so that Marian could deal with the baby.

FIVE

Dillon hunched in his seat on the Rose-Wind Coach, hoping he wouldn’t be recognized by any of the other passengers. Then he sat up and called in a book. Better to look unconcerned. Just a young Warlord traveling for business or pleasure, but certainly not involved in anything sordid.

Not many of the Blood were taking this Coach. Its destination wasn’t one of the places where the aristos played and courted and pressured the rest of the people in Askavi—Blood and landen—into believing they were too important to follow the Blood’s code of honor.

He should have thought it through, should have realized a city where aristos flocked wouldn’t be a safe place for someone like him. Carron must have been furious when she learned her father had paid him to leave town. She must have contacted Blyte and the two of them written their vindictive letters to all the aristo girls of their acquaintance as soon as he’d left town. The bitches here had been looking for him, waiting for him. He’d barely settled into the hotel and walked down the street for a meal before they spotted him and the whispers started.

“That one can’t keep his trousers zipped. He’ll give anyone a ride.”

“Amusing enough, but he’s from some insignificant branch of some minor aristo family tree.”

“Are the knees of your trousers shiny, Lord Dillon? Must be from all the time you spend on them.”

They circled around him like a pack of savage dogs until he had no choice but to pack his trunk and flee to another town. Hopefully the aristos in the next town would be from minor branches of a family, more like his own parents. A place like that wouldn’t be of interest to Blyte’s or Carron’s family. Maybe the aristo bitches would leave him alone for a while.

Dillon turned the pages of the book, but he wasn’t reading the words. He spent the journey thinking about what he’d been told by the one Warlord who had dared to talk to him after the girls began their vicious whispers about who he was and what he’d already done in girls’ beds.

“You think you’re being mistreated—and you are,” the Warlord had said. “But at least you’re still alive. My cousin got caught by Lady Blyte’s ‘if you loved me’ spell and couldn’t get free of her until he didn’t have a copper left to buy her presents. Then she destroyed his reputation and his honor, making him sound like a street whore who went with any woman who snapped her fingers.

“My cousin barely lasted a month after Blyte and her cronies went after him. The young men who had been his friends avoided him, afraid to have their reputations stained by association. His family didn’t know how to counter the verbal attacks. The boy had made a mistake with one girl, the wrong girl, but the girl and her friends kept twisting the story, turning Blyte into the victim of an unscrupulous boy. I offered to report Blyte’s conduct to the Province Queen, but before I was granted an audience, my cousin took a bath in his own blood.

“He didn’t think it through, though. Didn’t drain the power from his Jewels before he opened his veins. He made the transition to demon-dead and most likely is in Hell now, still trying to make sense of why loving a girl had destroyed his life.”

Dillon vanished the book and closed his eyes.

Was that all it had been? A bit of Craft that had made Blyte’s suggestions sound reasonable? A spell that had him believing that he loved her? Was that all?

If you loved me.

A spell like that would be expensive—maybe not for the spell itself, but sometimes discretion was the most expensive part of a transaction. It would probably take most of the payoff he’d received from Carron’s father. And he couldn’t go back to the same witch who had taught the spell to Blyte, even if he found out who she was. The Lady was probably a favored customer who paid very well for deceitful spells and unsavory brews. However, if one witch knew how to make that kind of spell, it stood to reason that there were others who were as well trained in the Craft and would know that spell or something similar—and would be willing to teach the spell to a young Warlord for the right price.

If you loved me . . .

He could play that game as well as Blyte. If the aristo girls were going to plague him because of things she had said, he should get some compensation for the association—without having to get into a bed.

SIX

Standing behind a table in her sitting room, Surreal sorted her notes and reports for the SaDiablo estates and slipped the pages into heavy paper folders, along with the correspondence she carried from District and Province Queens who wanted to convey information to the Warlord Prince of Dhemlan but didn’t want him to think his personal attention—and presence—was required. She didn’t have a study like Sadi or an office like his secretary, Lord Holt. She didn’t want one. She wrote reports whenever she deemed it necessary and handed them to one man or the other, letting them figure out what to do with the requests, the complaints, and the paperwork.

The arrangement suited her, and the men, wisely, had never asked her to make any adjustments that might have accommodated them better and certainly would have annoyed her.

She’d spent a couple of days at each estate and a couple more talking to residents of the neighboring villages, the District Queens who ruled those villages, and even a Province Queen who must have heard she was in the area and made an “informal” visit to that village. That had left the District Queen’s court in a state of controlled panic as her First Circle organized a formal dinner for the Queen who ruled over theirs as well as for the Warlord Prince of Dhemlan’s second-in-command.

After spending days doing the work she’d been doing for decades—and still enjoyed—she admitted to herself that she had missed Sadi’s company, had missed sleeping with him. Missed having sex with him.

Admitting that much allowed her to consider what had happened with Daemon that last night before she’d fled from the family seat.

Truth wasn’t always a comfortable beast to ride.

A Warlord Prince’s bedroom is his private place, and he tends to be more possessive when he’s there.

She should have heeded Jaenelle Angelline’s warning and instruction.

Truth, then, before Sadi and Jaenelle Saetien returned from visiting Manny and Tersa in the village.

She had loved Daemon Sadi for a long time. She still loved him. Had chosen to marry him because he needed to stay connected to the living, and he’d trusted her enough to make the commitment to be her husband. All right, if she hadn’t become pregnant, he wouldn’t have married again after losing Jaenelle Angelline, but once they’d made a child, she became his wife.

Except she hadn’t become his wife. Not the same way Marian was Lucivar’s wife. She and Sadi had a partnership—a mutual commitment to raise their daughter, to take care of the family estates and the vast SaDiablo wealth, and to rule Dhemlan. There had been a comfortable distance between them. A safe distance between them. Even when they had sex, she had been separate, independent—and always in control of how much she surrendered.

That night in his bedroom, he’d erased that distance, that safety, had drowned her sense of independence and her ability to choose what she surrendered. He’d made her need with a desperation that was almost a sickness.

But that had been in his room, in his bed. That seemed to be the key that turned that particular lock, so she would take care to stay out of his personal territory from now on.

Surreal knew the moment that the Black returned to the Hall. Minutes later, she felt Sadi approach her sitting room. Moving the folders to the sides of the table, she called in her crossbow, already primed to fire, and set it in the center of the table.

Daemon rapped on the door and took one step into her personal domain before he stopped. He looked at the crossbow, then at her, his lips twitching in what might have been amusement. Or relief?

“Is that on the table because you found out something at one of the estates that you think I won’t like?” he asked.

He just stood there. Beautiful. Tempting. His sexual heat flowed into the room, a stealthy coiling around her skin, between her legs. She’d shaken off this damn need while she’d been away, and here it was again, just as fierce, within a minute of her being in the same room with him.

“The estates are fine.” Her voice held an edge that should have warned him to back off.

“Surreal . . .” Daemon took another step into the room.

Surreal placed a hand on the crossbow. He stopped. But the heat . . . In another minute, she’d be on him, tearing at his clothes and trying to arouse him in order to get some relief.

No. She was not going to surrender to the point of being helpless. Not again. “I accept some of the blame for what happened that night—”

“Blame? Surreal . . .”

“—but I am telling you, here and now, that what happened that night will not happen again. You will not do that to me again. Are we clear on that, Sadi?”

A flash of something in his eyes—pain? regret?—before that beautiful face became a mask that revealed nothing.

“You have made your wishes very clear, Lady. I will, of course, respect them.” His voice, like his face, told her nothing. “Now that you’re home, I need to be away for a day or two. If Jaenelle Saetien pesters you about having a special cake made, the answer is no. I’ve already had this discussion with her.”

She’d been gone for days, and now he was leaving without . . . Well, Hell’s fire, she couldn’t exactly say that she needed sex, could she? Wanted, not needed.

“When are you leaving?” she asked.

“In the morning. I have some things to finish up here before I go.”

His psychic scent had an unfamiliar edge, and his physical scent . . .

As he turned away, she snapped, “Leash the damn heat!”

Daemon turned his head but not enough to look at her. “The sexual heat is leashed.” He walked out of the room.

Surreal vanished the crossbow before she did something that couldn’t be undone. She knew what Sadi felt like when the heat was leashed, and he didn’t feel like this. This was more—with something jagged and dangerous mixed in with the heat.

The man who had walked out of the room wasn’t quite Daemon Sadi and wasn’t quite the Sadist. She wasn’t sure what was happening between them, or why, and she didn’t know who would come to her bed tonight. But she was sure that if she wasn’t careful, the man who came to her bed would be something a woman might not survive.

“That’s all the immediate concerns,” Holt said as he took the signed letters.

“Good,” Daemon replied. “I won’t be gone for more than a day or two.”

“If someone needs to contact you?”

Daemon stared at his secretary. Holt had been a young footman when Daemon had first come to the Hall, but his service to the family had been invaluable. When Prince Rainier retired from the position of being Daemon’s secretary, Holt had stepped in. Intelligent and discreet, the Opal-Jeweled Warlord had never betrayed a trust.

“I’ll be in Riada,” he finally said. “Unless there is an emergency, I would prefer not to be disturbed.”

“I’ll convey that message if required.”

Daemon waited until Holt left the room before he sagged in his chair and braced his forehead against his fisted hands.

“. . . I am telling you, here and now, that what happened that night will not happen again. You will not do that to me again.”

The time away hadn’t done anything to ease Surreal’s distress about what they had done that night or her fear of him the morning after. So. The barriers between them would be reinforced to keep her safe from the full truth of what he was. Doing anything less would be cruel now that she’d made her feelings so clear.

“Leash the damn heat!”

He couldn’t contain the sexual heat more than he was doing now. Surreal should know that after living with him for so many years.

Didn’t matter what she should know. He’d made a mistake, and she was still feeling raw because of it. He wouldn’t make that mistake again, but he had to give her time to let her feelings settle one way or the other.

Daemon rubbed his temples, trying to ease the pain. Maybe Surreal was right and he wasn’t keeping the heat as tightly leashed as he should. It was hard for him to tell when the pain felt like jagged edges of a broken glass being shoved into his brain.

If the pain persisted, he would see a Healer about these headaches when he returned from Riada.

That evening, after he and Surreal had played a board game with Jaenelle Saetien and the bedtime story had been read, Daemon had been surprised when Surreal made it clear she expected her husband to join her in her bed. His headache had subsided, but the echo of pain had lingered, and he would have been content just to cuddle with her.

Surreal needed more. Aggressive and demanding, she took control, riding him hard as he helped her reach a climax that should have satisfied her.

It may have satisfied her body, but sex that night did nothing to soothe her heart or her temper.

Daemon slipped out of her bed at first light and left the Hall before anyone but the earliest-rising servants was awake. Until last night, he had enjoyed being Surreal’s lover. Now he felt relief that he wouldn’t be required to perform that particular duty for a couple of days.

SEVEN

Weakness washed through Marian Yaslana as she put a pot of beef stew, a bowl of sweet cheese, and a stick of butter into the cabin’s cold box. Daemon was perfectly capable of cooking his own meals or picking up food at The Tavern, but when he stayed at the cabin, she liked providing him with one meal as a welcome.

After she closed the cold box, her hand trembled as she pulled out a chair at the kitchen table and sank into it. She stared at one of the loaves of spinach-and-herb bread she’d made that morning because she liked that bread with the stew, and the bakery in Riada didn’t make it.

Foolish to think she could do as much as she’d done before baby Andulvar’s birth. Foolish to keep trying. But she didn’t want to be a semi-invalid who couldn’t play with her children or spend time with her husband—or bake bread. She didn’t want to watch someone else tend her garden because she didn’t have the strength to care for it.

Nurian had told her rest was the only cure, and she did feel a little stronger on the days when she did nothing more than sleep, read, and tend the baby. That had been fine for the first week or two, but she didn’t want that to be her life. Unfortunately, Nurian’s tonics didn’t seem to do anything to restore her vitality. Nothing seemed to do that.

Was it time to use Jaenelle Angelline’s last gift? It was a healing spell unlike any other—and impossible to duplicate.

“Use it when you need it most.”

What if Jaenelle had seen something else in her future? Something that a little more rest couldn’t cure?

She knew what Lucivar would say if he was aware of the healing spell, which was why she had tucked it away since the day she’d been given that last, special gift and had said nothing about its existence.

The cabin’s front door opened. Marian felt the dark power of a Black Jewel fill the cabin. Daemon was sensitive to any intrusion inside the cabin that Saetan had built for Jaenelle Angelline decades ago. The cabin had been Jaenelle’s private place, and then it had been hers and Daemon’s, and now it was his sanctuary from all the responsibilities he shouldered.

“I’m in the kitchen,” she called.

He appeared in the kitchen doorway, his gold eyes glazed and sleepy—a sign and warning of a Warlord Prince who was a heartbeat away from the killing edge. Then his eyes cleared and warmed. And then he frowned.

“Marian? Darling . . . ?” He moved swiftly, bending over her, one hand on her forehead as if checking for fever.

“I’m fine,” she said. “Don’t you start fussing too.”

He eased back and his lips curved in a hint of a smile as his deep voice—that voice that always held a sexual purr—caressed her. “You know saying things like that is pointless, don’t you?”

“It doesn’t mean I can’t say them.”

“I won’t fuss.” Daemon looked pointedly at the loaf of bread. “And neither should you. I can take care of myself, especially when I don’t plan to do or be anything but lazy.”

Marian looked at his hand resting lightly on the table. Looked at the slender fingers and the long, black-tinted nails. And remembered why he, like his father, wore his nails that way.

Black Widow. Saetan had been the first male Black Widow, the first to be taught the Hourglass’s Craft. Daemon was not only the second male to be trained in that particular Craft; he was the only natural male Black Widow in the history of the Blood.

“Daemon?” She moved a hand to indicate her body. “Could this be caused by something Nurian wouldn’t be able to recognize?”

“Wouldn’t recognize because . . . ?”

She rested the fingertips of her left hand on the black-tinted nails of his right. “Because the cause began outside my body.” She didn’t want to accuse anyone. She didn’t have any enemies that she knew of, didn’t think any of the Black Widows living in Ebon Rih had a reason to harm her. But now that the thought was there . . .

“May I?” Daemon asked.

Marian nodded.

His left hand rested against her neck. His right hand pressed lightly against her chest as he used Craft to undo the buttons of her tunic all the way to her waist. His eyes no longer saw her or the room, because he was focused on something else. She felt the feathery touch of psychic probes exploring her in ways healing Craft didn’t do. This wasn’t the touch of a Healer looking for illness. This was the touch of a hunter searching for an enemy.

His right hand moved lower, fingers spreading so that thumb and little finger touched her breasts. The hand moved lower to her belly. Then to her womb.

Raising his hands from her body, Daemon took her left hand and used the edge of his fingernail to nick the pad of her first finger. When a bead of blood formed, he licked the skin clean—and waited.

Releasing her, he rested one hip on the table. “I’m not sensing any kind of spell wrapped around you. Definitely no death spell designed to mimic a wasting disease. And there’s no taste of poison in your blood.”

She blinked. She hadn’t considered a slow-acting poison. Or death spells. “Have you ever created a spell like that?”

She watched his eyes change. The man looking at her now wasn’t the man who loved her like a sister and flirted with her gently. The man looking at her now was the man who once had walked into an enemy camp where she and Daemonar had been held captive and who had tortured his own brother in order to provide a distraction so that he could get her and her son out of harm’s way.

“Yes,” he said too softly. “I have.”

“A Warlord Prince is true to his nature. You can’t expect him to use what he is to protect you and yours and then treat him like an outcast when you’re safe.”

Jaenelle Angelline had understood the nature of Warlord Princes better than anyone else in Kaeleer—and she had understood the nature of the men in the family. All the men.

“Then you would know,” Marian said in her no-nonsense mother voice.

There were shadows in his eyes, but the terrifying side of Daemon’s nature withdrew in response to that voice, leaving the man she knew well.

“Darling, what you need is time and rest.” He leaned toward her. “But if you ever feel concerned that someone might be using a spell to harm you, you send word to me.”

Marian nodded and pushed to her feet. “I’m a hearth witch. I don’t like being idle.” She sounded petulant, which was foolish.

Daemon smiled, called in a book, held it so she could read the title, then raised an eyebrow.

A new book by one of her favorite authors.

“There is idle,” Daemon purred, “and then there is enjoying a self-indulgent—”

“Gimme.” She reached for the book.

Laughing, he gave it to her. “A fair exchange for the bread and whatever else you put in the cold box.” He kissed her cheek. “Go home, put your feet up, and enjoy a good story.”

Her smile faded almost before it formed. Something off about him. She hadn’t sensed it while he’d been focused on her, but now, thinking about the shadows in his eyes, she wondered if he, too, was fighting some kind of illness.

“I think I’m not the only one who could use a lazy day,” she said.

“Which is why I’m here.”

A breezy reply—and a lie. Whatever need had brought Daemon to the cabin this time was more than wanting a reprieve from responsibilities. He would tell her or, more likely, Lucivar when he was ready to talk about whatever was troubling him.

“Thank you for the book.” She let him escort her out of the cabin and had the uneasy feeling that he needed her to be gone. That feeling was confirmed the moment she stepped off the porch and Black shields went up around the cabin. No one could reach him now, not even Lucivar.

She flew home and wasn’t surprised to find Lucivar standing at the edge of the flagstone courtyard, waiting for her. Or waiting for something, since his focus remained on Riada even as he held out a hand to her.

“Did you see him?” Lucivar asked.

Marian tucked herself against his side. “I don’t think your brother is well.”

“Yeah. I know. The question is why.”

“He put Black shields around the cabin.”

Lucivar exhaled slowly. “I’ll give him a day. Then I’ll see what I can do.”

“He brought me a book.”

A laugh. “Does that mean you’re going to tuck in and enjoy a quiet day?”

Marian smiled. “Yes, that’s what it means.”

Lucivar turned them toward the eyrie. “In that case, I’ll look after our littlest beast for a while and give you a chance to settle in.”

Time and rest. She hoped those would be enough to make her healthy again. If they didn’t, if they couldn’t, there would be one last thing to try.

That afternoon, Lucivar and Rothvar paused for a moment to watch Jillian and Daemonar sparring in the yard before going into the kitchen.

“Coffee is fairly fresh, if you want some,” Lucivar said.

“I don’t need anything, thanks,” Rothvar replied. He leaned against the kitchen’s archway and looked toward the big front room. “The girl hasn’t come for any sparring these past few days.”

Lucivar poured a mug of coffee for himself. He didn’t really want it, but it served as a prop. “She’s been sparring with Daemonar before she helps Marian with some chores.”

“Tamnar has his brains in his pants lately,” Rothvar observed, not looking at Lucivar.

“He’s at that age.”

“You think the boy crossed a line and that’s why the girl has stayed away?”

Someone crossed a line. Or broke a rule. He had a bigger concern right now, so he’d give Jillian a little more time to find her backbone and tell him what was going on with Tamnar. And then he would put an end to whatever was going on.

“You think there’s something we need to do about it?” Rothvar asked.

“Not us. Not yet.” Lucivar studied his second-in-command. “Did you know Hallevar when he was an arms master in the hunting camps in Askavi Terreille?”

Rothvar shook his head. “I was trained by another arms master.”

“I had firsthand experience with Hallevar.” Lucivar smiled. “Let him deal with Tamnar. He’ll get the boy’s brains back above the shoulders.”

Rothvar chuckled, then tipped his chin in the direction of the yard. “And the rest?”

“I’ll wait.” Lucivar joined Rothvar, leaning against the other side of the archway. “Patience is an important part of a hunt.”

“For this hunt, better you than me.”

Lucivar huffed. “Seems like one day they’re cute and cuddly little witchlings, and the next they have female . . . opinions.”

“Like I said. Better you than me. I’ll make a final sweep around this part of the valley and check in with the camps at the northern end.” Rothvar hesitated. “The Black is in the valley.”

“My brother is staying at the cabin for a day or two.”

After Rothvar left, Lucivar poured the coffee down the sink and rinsed out the mug. If he reached out now, who would answer? Daemon? The High Lord? Or the Sadist?

٭Bastard?٭ he called on an Ebon-gray spear thread.

٭Prick?٭

Thank the Darkness, he felt warmth, not ice, running through the thread between them.

٭Thanks for giving Marian the book. She’s been tucked away in her private room since she got home.٭

٭Good.٭

٭You want to come to the eyrie for dinner?٭

٭Not tonight.٭ Daemon retreated from the link.

Yes, there had been warmth, but there had been something else, too, leaving Lucivar to wonder whether it was physical fatigue or weariness of the heart he’d heard in his brother’s voice.

EIGHT

Daemon clenched his teeth and gripped the edge of the examination table as Nyssa, the newly qualified Healer, ran her hand down his bare back—a possessive, inviting touch rather than a professional one. At least, that’s what it felt like, but the headaches had become severe enough in the past week for him to seek help, so he could be mistaking her intentions.

He hoped so, for her sake.

“There’s nothing wrong with you, Prince,” Nyssa said as she caressed his back again. “You’re in prime condition.”

Too much emphasis on the word prime?

Wishing he had waited to see the older Healer who had been taking care of the residents of the village as well as SaDiablo Hall, he wondered why Nyssa had chosen to relocate to a small village like Halaway. She’d been introduced to him upon her arrival in the village, and he’d gotten the impression that Nyssa wasn’t a woman who enjoyed village life, that she craved the excitement of the larger towns and cities in Dhemlan.

He could think of one reason why Nyssa would relocate to Halaway, and he hoped again, for her sake, that he was mistaken about that too.

“The headaches?” He tightened the leash on a temper turning cold—and reminded himself that he could be hearing something that wasn’t there.

Her hands rested on his shoulders. Her thumbs pressed into muscles that were painfully tight. “Perhaps you’re not getting enough nocturnal exercise.”

Daemon exploded off the table. Grabbing his shirt off the chair in the room, he put it on with a grace that didn’t betray—or give any warning of—his growing rage.

“Thank you for that . . . illuminating . . . diagnosis.” A flash of his temper slipped the leash and turned the air in the room so frigid he could see his breath.

“I didn’t mean . . .” Nyssa stumbled away from him until her back hit the wall.

The room reeked of fear. Good. The bitch finally realized she’d gone too far.

“I can put together a mixture of herbs that should help your headache,” she stammered. “It will only take a few minutes.”

“You do that,” he said too softly.

As soon as he gave her enough space to reach the door, Nyssa fled from the examination room.

Daemon finished dressing, giving the bitch enough time to put together the ingredients for a healing brew. Not that he’d trust it—or her—enough to drink any brew made from those herbs, but he wanted to test it. If he couldn’t trust the witch who was taking over the Healer’s House in Halaway, he would have to make other arrangements whenever anyone in his family—or in his employ—became ill.

As he finger combed his thick black hair into the disheveled style he now preferred, he wondered if Surreal had seen the young Healer recently. Had his wife said something that might lead another woman to think he was open to such an invitation? As for nocturnal exercise, lately he was getting more than he wanted.

He kept the sexual heat leashed as tightly as he could, but Surreal met him in bed with a blend of hunger and anger, as if she blamed him for making her want him. Keeping his distance didn’t please her, and being a considerate lover didn’t please her. And the headaches had become severe enough that it was hard to give a damn about making things right between them.

Judging he’d given Nyssa enough time to make up the mixture so that he could take it and leave with limited interaction with her, Daemon walked out of the examination room.

“Here you are, Prince.” Nyssa held out a glass jar filled with an herbal mix. “This should help.” She held on to the jar moments too long, her fingers brushing against his as he took it from her. “I apologize if there was some misunderstanding during my examination.”

There was no misunderstanding, Daemon thought. And her apology was as false as her attempt to sound contrite.

He walked out of the Healer’s House before he gave in to the desire to wrap a death spell around the bitch and explode her heart in the middle of the night. The main reason he resisted was that if she made the transition to demon-dead, he’d still have to deal with her. Of course, she wouldn’t like dealing with him when he stood as the High Lord of Hell. She wouldn’t like it at all.

He’d make sure of it.

Shaking off those thoughts, at least for the moment, Daemon vanished the jar and headed for his next stop, letting the crisp afternoon air battle with his cold anger.

Might not be the Healer’s fault. Might not. Which was why he intended to get a second opinion.

His gliding walk covered ground with deceptive swiftness, and a few minutes later, he reached the walkway of a tidy cottage. Manny’s home. Since he was expected, he knocked on the front door once, walked in—then jerked to a stop as he crossed the threshold.

Manny stood in front of him, her hands on her ample hips, giving him the stare that had warned the boy he had been that he was in trouble. And damn it, that stare could still make him wary, despite the fact that he was the most powerful male in the entire Realm of Kaeleer.

“Where’s your overcoat?” she demanded. “How am I supposed to get it into that boy’s head that winter is almost here and he needs to wear a coat if you don’t set a good example? And don’t just stand there looking like a fish on a line. Come in and close the door. You’re letting the cold in.”

Some things didn’t change regardless of age and rank, Daemon thought as he obediently closed the door and followed Manny to the kitchen at the back of the cottage.

Two children sat at the pinewood table—his ward, Mikal, and his daughter, Jaenelle Saetien. Morghann sat next to Jaenelle’s chair, wagging her tail in enthusiastic greeting.

Manny bustled about the kitchen, pouring glasses of milk for the children and making coffee for him. And the other adult in the room . . .

“Hello, darling.” Daemon held out a hand to his mother. A broken Black Widow whose mind wandered the borders of the Twisted Kingdom, Tersa was unable to grasp what most people called sanity, but she was still gifted in the Hourglass’s Craft—and she was still powerful in her own way.

“It’s the boy. It’s my boy.” Smiling, she clasped her hands around his. Then she frowned. “You’re cold.” Reaching up, she cupped his face in her hands and studied him. “Not well,” she whispered. “Not well.”

He stepped back, wondering what she had sensed—or seen. “I’m fine,” he lied. “I was sufficiently annoyed when I walked out of a meeting that I forgot to put on my coat. That’s why I’m cold.”

For a moment, he thought Tersa would argue with him. Then her gold eyes filled with the vague look that meant her mind had wandered down another path in the Twisted Kingdom.

“We have nutcakes,” she said. “Manny says the children can each have one.” She looked at him.

Apparently he’d been demoted back to childhood—at least where nutcakes were concerned. “One is sufficient for a treat.” He pulled out a chair opposite Mikal and Jaenelle Saetien and sat, noticing the cautious way Tersa eased into the chair next to him.

When Sylvia, a former Queen of Halaway, had been killed at a house party that was meant as a lethal trap for her sons, Daemon used his positions as patriarch of the SaDiablo family and Warlord Prince of Dhemlan to become Mikal and Beron’s legal guardian in order to carry out Sylvia’s wishes for her sons. Jaenelle Angelline had worked out the details, and even a century later, the arrangement still followed the intentions of both Queens.

“Since I’m special, I should have two nutcakes,” Jaenelle Saetien said, putting one on her plate as she reached for another with her other hand.

“Aaaaaahhhhh, no,” Daemon replied, using Craft to move the plate of treats out of his daughter’s reach. He murmured his thanks to Manny when she placed a large mug of coffee in front of him, and watched his girl pout—and then study him to see if pouting would bring about the desired response of him giving in and letting her have the second nutcake.

Her negotiating to convince him to change his answer when she wanted something wasn’t new, but previously she’d argued with logic and provided reasons that were sometimes fascinatingly skewed, coming as they were from a child’s perspective, and she usually accepted his final answer with a minimum of fuss. This effort to manipulate his feelings had begun right after he hadn’t let her have a special cake—and was an unwelcome ploy. Especially today.

“Something wrong with your lip, witch-child?” he asked mildly.

“I’m special,” she said, still working the pout. “I should get two nutcakes.”

“You’re not that special,” Mikal said, rolling his eyes in a way that was designed to annoy adults—a reminder that the young Warlord had reached the messy years when he was no longer a boy but hadn’t quite settled into the long, fraught decades of being a youth.

Pouting forgotten, Jaenelle Saetien turned on the older boy, who was usually considered a friend as well as family. “I am so. Everyone knows I’m special because I wear Twilight’s Dawn, and no one else can wear that Jewel.”

“Lady Angelline was the first witch to wear a Jewel like that, and her Twilight’s Dawn was a lot more powerful than yours,” Mikal said. “But ever since the Birthright Ceremony, you’ve been acting like a brat and fanning about like you’re better than the rest of us and almost daring the teachers to scold you when you decide you don’t have to do your schoolwork because you’re special.” He slipped out of his chair, stuck his butt out, and wiggled it to demonstrate fanning.

“Enough,” Daemon said.

Ignoring him, Jaenelle Saetien jumped up, knocking against the table hard enough to slosh milk over the rim of her glass. “You take that back, Mikal!”

“No, I won’t!” Mikal wiggled his butt again. “Brat, brat, brat!”

Daemon felt the rise of power driven by his daughter’s anger, watched Mikal’s eyes widen before the boy wrapped himself in a Rose defensive shield.

The power in Jaenelle Saetien’s Jewel ranged from Rose to Green. If she struck Mikal with anything but the lightest end of her Birthright power, she would break the boy’s shield at the very least. At the worst, she might break a great deal more than a shield.

That he had to consider the possibility that his girl would do such a thing because of a childish squabble disturbed him. That he might have missed the signs that she felt entitled to use her power against anyone, let alone a member of their family, disturbed him in other ways.

“Enough.” Daemon’s deep voice, laced with the power of his Birthright Red Jewel, rolled through the cottage like soft thunder—a warning of a storm gathering on the horizon.

Instantly subdued, the children sat and stared at their plates while Manny wiped up the milk and Tersa . . . He didn’t know what his mother was seeing or hearing.

Daemon reached for a nutcake and met Manny’s eyes. She had been his caretaker when he was a child, before and after Tersa had been driven away by Dorothea SaDiablo, the High Priestess of Hayll in the Realm of Terreille. Manny had looked after him during the years when Dorothea had used him and trained him to be a pleasure slave. She had been the one good constant in his childhood, and she had never taken any sass from him, even after he’d begun wearing the Black.

That she was looking at his daughter with an expression close to dislike told him he needed to find out what was going on when he wasn’t present and make some adjustments.

And at least one adjustment would be made on the way home.

“Are you coming up to ride with us tomorrow, Mikal?” he asked to break the silence.

“Yes, sir, if it’s still all right with you,” Mikal replied, dropping the Rose shield.

“It is.”

“I got a letter from Beron yesterday,” Mikal said, the spat apparently forgotten—at least by the boy. “He’s auditioning for a new play, but he’s planning to come home and visit for a couple of days.” The boy’s excitement over his elder brother’s acting career brightened the room—and calmed Daemon’s temper.

“I’ll have my guest room made up for him,” Manny said. “Make sure he gets a couple of home-cooked meals in him.” She glanced at Daemon. “I imagine Mrs. Beale will be expecting to tuck a couple of meals into him as well.”

“I imagine she will.” He’d check with Holt to find out if he and Surreal were hosting any particular guests while Beron was in Halaway. If not, Manny and Mrs. Beale could arrange between themselves when and where the young actor showed up for meals.

They discussed the theater and what little Mikal knew about the part Beron hoped to win. Daemon didn’t comment about Jaenelle Saetien’s big sighs or continued sulking. And he didn’t say anything when a nutcake vanished from the serving dish.

٭I’ll handle it,٭ he told Manny on a psychic thread before the woman could make a fuss. ٭How long has this behavior been going on? There’s been little sign of this at home.٭ No sign of this outside of the cake incident, and no one had approached him about his girl’s behavior when she wasn’t with him.

٭Not that long. Like Mikal said, the young Lady has been full of herself since the Birthright Ceremony,٭ Manny replied. ٭Happens to some youngsters. I expect she’ll grow out of it once her Jewel stops attracting so much attention.٭

٭The sooner she grows out of it, the better.٭

A flash of annoyance from Manny—directed at him for his harsh tone. A flicker of something else from Tersa. That was more of a worry.

٭I agree,٭ Manny finally said. ٭Course, I remember what you and your brother were like when you were around her age, even before you had a reason to feel so full of yourselves.٭

Daemon looked at Manny. ٭May the Darkness spare all of us from a child like that.٭

٭Too late.٭

His lips twitched. Dealing with Daemonar’s energy whenever the boy came to visit left him exhausted and wondering how anyone survived Eyrien children. And left him wondering what Lucivar had been thinking to have three of them. Although Titian really was a darling witchling, and baby Andulvar was still too young to cause too much trouble.

A few minutes later, Daemon—now wearing an overcoat—escorted Jaenelle Saetien and Morghann out of the village, heading toward SaDiablo Hall. Home. His girl’s mood had changed from sulky to cheerful, but that wouldn’t last long.

He watched girl and Sceltie, not as a doting father but as the Warlord Prince responsible for the well-being of all the Dhemlan people.

Jaenelle Saetien skipped ahead of him, the small brown and white dog trotting beside her. His girl’s delicately pointed ears were the visible proof of the Dea al Mon side of her heritage. The other things that were part of the Dea al Mon weren’t as obvious.

Surreal had been twelve years old the first time she killed a man with a knife. She’d been justified, but it was whispered by the other races in Kaeleer that the Children of the Wood were born knowing what to do with a knife. Surreal’s skill as an assassin was testimony to the truth of the saying.

Her skill had never bothered him. Hell’s fire, he’d taught her some of the nastier death spells. But the temperament and power they both had brought to the making of this child . . .

Everything had a price, including privilege. Perhaps, especially privilege.

He waited until they had crossed the wooden bridge that was the boundary that divided Halaway from the SaDiablo estate, and changed the public road into the Hall’s private drive. Then he snapped his fingers twice and held out his hand. “I’ll take that nutcake, Lady Morghann.”

٭But I am supposed to give it to Jaenelle Saetien when we get back to her room,٭ Morghann said.

Daemon stopped walking and looked at his daughter, who poked her lip out in another pout.

“You were told you could have one nutcake,” he said.

“But I wanted two!” she protested.

“Because you’re special,” he said too softly.

She started to agree, then must have realized the words were a warning. “Don’t you think I’m special?” she asked in a small voice.

“Yes, I do, but that has nothing to do with the Jewel you wear. I think you’re special because you’re my daughter and I love you. I imagine every father feels that way about a daughter. I know your uncle Lucivar feels that way about Titian. But being special, regardless of the reason, doesn’t give you the right to misbehave or ignore your schoolwork—or convince a witch who is younger than you to do something that you know is wrong.”

٭I did a wrong thing?٭ Morghann asked, alarmed.

Daemon ignored the Sceltie and focused on the girl. “I’m disappointed in you, Jaenelle Saetien. You let Morghann believe it was all right to take a nutcake for you. You tried to cheat by letting someone else take something that you wanted—and take the blame if caught.”

٭Blame?٭ Morghann whined. ٭There is blame?٭

“Is that what you want your little Sister to learn from you? That it’s all right to cheat, to take without permission? As long as your hands don’t get dirty, it’s not your fault and you’ll stand back and let someone else take the blame—and the punishment?” The headache, which he’d managed to ignore while he was at Manny’s cottage, surged into sickening pain. He had to leave while he could still ride the Winds.

“It was just a stupid nutcake!” Jaenelle Saetien protested.

“Today it was a nutcake,” he snapped. “What will you ask Morghann to steal tomorrow?”

٭Steal? Scelties do not steal.٭ Morghann stared at Jaenelle Saetien and growled.

“Come on,” Daemon said. “I have an appointment, and you need to get home.”

He started walking, aware that his girl hadn’t moved, was in the throes of some mood that was dangerous for both of them right now.

“If that Lady in the Mist had wanted a second nutcake, I bet you would have given it to her,” Jaenelle Saetien said, her voice rising in a whiny challenge.

Rage whispered through him, savagely cold, burning him right to the marrow. He turned and walked back to his daughter—and whatever she saw in his face had her taking two steps back.

“If you ever again try to use the Lady as a hammer against me, there will be consequences—and they will hurt. She is my Queen, and no one uses her as a weapon. Especially you. Are we clear about that, Lady SaDiablo?”

“Papa . . .”

“Are. We. Clear?”

“Y-yes.”

He walked away. Had to walk away.

“Papa!” Jaenelle Saetien wailed as she ran to catch up to him. “I’m sorry, Papa.”

The tears were probably real, but the headache was a storm pounding his temples and consuming his control, so all he could do was hand her a handkerchief and keep moving until he got her to the Hall and could place her in Surreal’s care before he . . .

٭Surreal,٭ he called on a Gray psychic thread. ٭Surreal, you’re needed.٭

He knew she was at the Hall. He always knew where she and Jaenelle Saetien were, not only because he was so attuned to their psychic scents, but because Surreal was the only individual in the surrounding area who wore the Gray, and Jaenelle Saetien’s Jewel was unmistakable.

٭Sadi?٭ Surreal sounded wary. ٭Where are you?٭

٭We’ll be at the Hall in a few minutes.٭ He broke the link between them before she picked up on the pain. He wasn’t the only one who was attuned to his partner, and he didn’t want her asking questions that might give her cause to worry before he could provide reassuring answers—or at least some kind of answer.

Assuming she still felt enough for him beyond sex to worry.

Surreal wasn’t in the great hall when he walked in, but Beale was there. The Red-Jeweled Warlord who served as the Hall’s butler looked attentive, as if merely there to follow an order, but Daemon sensed the tight Red shield around the man. Red couldn’t survive a strike from the Black, but Beale being prepared for a strike told him his flash of cold anger hadn’t been as contained as he’d thought.

He wasn’t so steeped in pain that he couldn’t appreciate that Beale’s response to him was the same as Mikal’s had been to Jaenelle Saetien—and for much the same reason—but it made him wonder why Surreal wasn’t there, armed and waiting for him. Unless she thought, for whatever reason, that she, and not Jaenelle Saetien, was the reason for the anger?

“Look after Jaenelle Saetien until Lady Surreal is available,” Daemon told Beale. “And please convey my apologies to Mrs. Beale for not giving her more notice, but I have a meeting that won’t wait and I will not be back in time for dinner.”

Beale allowed himself a tiny frown of concern. “A meeting, Prince? Lord Holt didn’t mention anything on your calendar this evening.”

“It wasn’t on my calendar, but it can’t be delayed.” Daemon backed away from his butler, from his daughter, from the wife who hadn’t made an appearance yet. “I will be back tonight.”

“I’ll convey the message to Lady Surreal.”

٭Convey one other thing to my wife,٭ he said on a Red spear thread, and gave Beale instructions that, even if not understood, would be followed by everyone who worked at the Hall.

As Daemon walked to the stone landing web in front of the house, he noticed Morghann trotting in the direction of the stables.

٭Morghann,٭ he called as gently as he could.

٭I did a wrong thing,٭ the Sceltie whined. ٭There is blame.٭

٭Jaenelle Saetien did a wrong thing. You made a small mistake. We can talk about the correct thing to do when I get back.٭

She didn’t reply, just kept trotting toward the stables.

He’d been too harsh. Being a few months away from her Birthright Ceremony, Morghann was still considered a puppy, which meant she depended on what humans told her was correct behavior, and Jaenelle Saetien telling her to do a “wrong thing” had shaken the Sceltie’s confidence—at least for a little while. Morghann would forgive the girl—Scelties were forgiving of human mistakes, as he had reason to know—but she wouldn’t forget. And she might never fully trust again. He wouldn’t know how deep that break in trust went until he tried to fix it.

But right now something else needed to be fixed.

Tersa returned to the cottage next to Manny’s, where she and the Mikal boy lived. The Mikal boy had stayed with Manny to do his schoolwork and help with some of the chores he did around both cottages. No one would wonder about her for a while.

For long enough.

She climbed the attic stairs, then fumbled with the keys she kept on a chain she usually left in a drawer in her dresser. But today she had tucked the chain in a pocket, had felt she’d needed to have the keys handy. She unlocked the door, entered the attic, then locked the door behind her.

Tangled webs were the webs of dreams and visions that were used by Black Widows to see what couldn’t be seen in other ways.

Using the second key, she opened the trunk where she stored the tools of the Hourglass Coven—wooden frames and spools of spider silk of various weights, among other less benign tools.

Selecting a frame, Tersa brought it and the box of spools to her worktable. Then she sat on a stool, chose one of the spools of spider silk, and thought about the reason she needed to weave this tangled web.

Her boy was not well. He knew it, but not the cause or how to fix it. Felt the pain that was the body’s way of revealing what heart and mind tried to hide. The source of the pain. That was what she needed to find. Not just for him. Not just for him, but for . . .

Her hands stopped moving as she anchored the last strand of the web. Then she took that mental step to the side—a dangerous step for a witch whose power had been broken long ago and whose mind had shattered when she made the choice to regain some of that power. She needed to take that step to help the boy. Her boy. Daemon. Now she opened herself to the dreams and visions—and when she saw what the pain was trying to reveal, she huffed out a sigh of annoyance.

Growing pains. Her boy was trying to hold back a part of himself that had matured so recently he hadn’t figured out yet how to deal with it. He’d be more successful trying to hold back the sea at high tide. He could do it for a while, just like he could hold back his own nature for a while. But eventually he would have to yield to what he was. If he didn’t, he might damage himself in ways that couldn’t be repaired.

Tersa stared at the tangled web. She wasn’t seeing everything yet. She’d seen the simple answer, the easy answer. But there was more. Did she want to know about the more?

She followed the threads beyond the simple answer and saw the larger vision, saw what it might cost later if she gave her boy the easy answer now.

If her boy’s pain went away, the one person he would need the most wouldn’t be there. The one the winged boy would need wouldn’t be there.

Daemon’s pain was the only key. Could she let her boy suffer now in order to spare him from greater pain later?

“Everything has a price,” she whispered as she retreated from the visions.

Using a thin stick of wood, she destroyed the web, carefully wrapping the spider silk around the wood until the frame was clean. Then she used Craft to snap the web-shrouded wood from the rest of the stick and dropped the used portion into a shallow stone bowl. Another bit of Craft created a tongue of witchfire, which she dropped into the bowl.

Tersa watched wood and spider silk burn until there was nothing left, until even the witchfire was extinguished, having used up the tiny bit of power that had created it.

She returned her tools to the trunk and locked it before she picked up the stone bowl and went downstairs. Witchfire burned anything and everything in its path, so even though it looked extinguished, she would keep watch on the bowl for a while longer before burying the ash in the garden.

Once the Mikal boy was asleep, she would ride the Winds to the Keep and hope the one who could save her boy would answer her call for help.

٭Surreal, you’re needed.٭

٭Sadi? Where are you?٭ He was supposed to be picking up Jaenelle Saetien after school. Had that much time passed since he’d left the Hall on some unspecified errand in the village?

٭We’ll be at the Hall in a few minutes.٭

You’re needed. Not Your presence is requested. Not Your presence is required. Those were the phrases of Protocol that were usually used. But this? This sounded like a Warlord Prince summoning his second-in-command.

Which meant she should be heading up to the residential part of the Hall, weapons drawn and ready to meet trouble.

And yet she hesitated as she studied the Black-locked door that she’d discovered at the end of a corridor deep beneath the Hall. She didn’t know what was behind that door, but she was sure that few who walked through that door walked out again.

Better not to know. Especially now.

But these walls on either side of the door were also protected by Black shields, and those shields now served a purpose for her. She didn’t think Sadi came down here often, and she was sure these shields weren’t part of the defensive shields around the Hall. Those Sadi checked every fortnight. But these . . .

Everything had a price. Including power. Especially power. And during a witch’s moontime, she needed to channel her power into the reservoir of her Jewels to lessen the pain. Problem was, when everything was peaceful, daily life didn’t use much Gray power.

She could ask Daemon to drain her Gray Jewel. He’d done it every month during her pregnancy and several months after that to keep her and the baby safe from her own power. But she didn’t want to ask him. She didn’t want to be dependent on anyone right now. Especially him. She could take care of this on her own, as she’d done most of her life.

More than anything, she didn’t want to be vulnerable around the Black more than could be helped.

٭Lady Surreal?٭ Beale called.

Did Beale know what was contained behind that door? Did he know about these corridors? Would he think to look for her here? And would he tell Daemon if he did find her here?

She’d lived in and around the Hall for decades, but she hadn’t discovered this part of the structure until Daemon had gone to the cabin for a couple of days. She’d been restless and had picked up the feel of the Black beneath the cellars. Curious, she had traced the power to that door and the shielded walls. Still curious, and sufficiently cautious, she had carefully coated her Gray power over the Black—and then pushed just enough for the Black to respond to the “attack” and absorb the Gray. She’d moved to another section of the wall and done the same thing, not pushing too hard in case there was an aggressive shield beneath the passive one. Her Gray Jewel had been drained of some of its power, while the Black shield, though thinned, was still intact. She’d hoped the thinning would be put down to a shield naturally fading over time.

Now there wasn’t time for careful draining, not if she didn’t want people to start looking for her—and there was one person in particular she didn’t want finding her down here.

“Shit shit shit.” Surreal unleashed a wash of Gray power along the wall, hitting the Black shield with enough force that she could feel the difference in the shield. If she kept slamming power at that one area until she completely drained the Gray, she might weaken the Black, but the power she needed to release prior to her moontime wasn’t going to make that much difference to the shield.

Couldn’t make that much difference. But if Sadi noticed, if he asked why she was trying to break one of his shields . . .

Which side of Daemon Sadi’s temper would ask? Her husband? The Warlord Prince of Dhemlan? The High Lord of Hell? Or would it be the Sadist who wrapped his arms around her and played a game of pleasure and pain while he asked questions and waited for answers she didn’t want to give?

With any luck, it would take him a while to notice the weakened shield.

He’d notice plenty if she didn’t get her ass moving and find out why she was needed.

By the time she reached the entrance hall, the only person waiting for her was Beale. She opened her first inner barrier, then quickly shut it against the stew of emotions filling the great hall.

“Prince Sadi?” she asked.

“He left for a meeting that was not on his calendar,” Beale replied. “He will not be home for dinner but will be back sometime tonight.”

“Jaenelle Saetien?”

“The young Lady has gone to her room.” Beale hesitated. “Nothing was said, but I had the impression that an infraction of the rules has caused some unhappiness between the Prince and the young Lady. Before he left, he gave the order that the young Lady was not allowed any dessert or treats for the rest of today and all of tomorrow.”

But he left me to carry out that order, Surreal thought sourly.

“I have informed Mrs. Beale.” Another pause. “And Holt.”

“Did you inform the Scelties?” she asked.

“I think they already know.”

Shit shit shit. That didn’t sound good. “They’re upstairs with Jaenelle Saetien?”

“No. They’ve gone to the stables to play with the horses.”

The girl was upset and the Scelties were not offering company. And Sadi had left for some mysterious meeting. Great. Wonderful. “I’ll sort out what I can.”

As she turned toward the informal sitting room, which held the staircase that led to the family wing of the Hall, Beale said, “Lady Surreal? It’s not my place to say, but the Prince looked . . . unwell.”

“He seemed fine this morning.” And more than fine last night.

“Ah. A passing indisposition.” Beale sounded relieved.

“I’m sure it’s nothing more than that.”

Hurrying toward the family wing, she stopped at Daemon’s suite of rooms first, relieved when she found Jazen, his valet, hanging up freshly laundered silk shirts in the dressing room.

“Prince Sadi,” she said before Jazen could greet her. “If he was ill, would you know?”

Jazen hesitated, and Surreal wondered if it was because the man was considering the question or trying to balance loyalties.

“Some mornings he seems indisposed, but I’ve thought it was due to stiff muscles, since he seems to shake it off after a hot shower. Should I be watching for something?”

“No. Never mind.”

A fully shaved man—mutilated for the entertainment of Dorothea SaDiablo and her cronies—who had had no future until Daemon hired him as a valet, Jazen would be loyal to the Warlord Prince of Dhemlan. While he might not say anything to her, if Daemon really was ill, Jazen would say something to someone.

And what she’d told Beale was true: the man had been in fine form last night when he’d come to her bed.

Not finding Jaenelle Saetien in the playroom, she knocked on the girl’s bedroom door and went in without waiting for a response. Her daughter sat cross-legged in the middle of the bed, looking sulky.

Surreal sat on the edge of the bed. “I hear you butted heads with your papa and lost.” No response. “And the penalty for whatever you butted heads about is no dessert or treats for the rest of today and all of tomorrow.”

That got a response. “That’s not fair!”

“Why isn’t it fair?”

The story poured out. Nutcakes. Mikal. Papa being mean about her wanting a second nutcake even though Manny did say just one each. But she was special.

Surreal suspected that the real conflict was buried in the things Jaenelle Saetien didn’t say, but she’d work with this. “You’re lucky it was your papa and not your grandfather who decided the penalty for this nutcakes-and-sass drama. Your grandfather, like your papa, was indulgent about some things and very strict about other things. Very strict. If you’d tried this with him, you’d be lucky if the no-desserts-and-treats order was for less than a week.”

She couldn’t have shocked the girl more if she’d dumped a bucket of ice water over her head.

“Do you want to know what ‘special’ really means, my darling? It means more training, more work, more study, more discipline, more rules. Part of the power you wield is at the level of the Green, and that means you wear a dark Jewel. No one can afford to look away from bad behavior and allow you to become a bitch. Too many people died in wars that were started by bitches who thought they were above the laws, above the rules we live by.”

“It was just a nutcake,” Jaenelle Saetien whispered.

“Was it? Then why aren’t the Scelties here with you?”

The girl didn’t answer.

Surreal nodded, guessing a bit more of what must have happened. “I used to say your papa had a firm no and a soft no when it came to something you wanted to do or have. After today, I think you’re going to find him drawing a harder line, and no matter how pleasantly he says it, from now on, no will mean no, and disobeying him will have consequences.”

She gave her daughter a kiss on the forehead and headed for the door to let the girl sulk for a while. Then she went to her own suite and locked the doors so that no one would walk in on her while she paced and wondered if the life she’d built around being Daemon’s wife and the mother of his child was breaking apart around her.

٭Prick.٭

The pained whisper on a Red spear thread had Lucivar calling in his Eyrien war blade as he strode out of his home and tried to pinpoint his brother’s location. ٭Bastard?٭

٭Here.٭

He spotted Daemon coming up the stone stairs from the landing area below the eyrie—saw his brother sway.

Vanishing the war blade, Lucivar rushed down the remaining stairs and grabbed Daemon before the man could lose his balance and take a hard fall down the stairs—or even fall off the damn mountain. Securing one of Daemon’s arms around his shoulders, he wrapped his arm around his brother’s waist, closed his fingers around the thin leather belt, and half carried Sadi up to the eyrie.

٭Nurian!٭ The command, sent out on a general psychic thread, thundered over the valley. ٭To my eyrie, now!٭

“What in the name of Hell is wrong with you?” he muttered as they reached the flagstone courtyard in front of his home. Marian stood in the doorway. She met his eyes, nodded, and disappeared into the eyrie.

“Headache,” Daemon whispered.

“Try again, old son.”

“Fine,” Daemon snapped, sounding a bit more like himself. “It’s a wicked bitch of a headache.”

Sadi hadn’t been anywhere in Ebon Rih until he arrived a minute ago, so that begged the question of why he’d made the journey here instead of staying put until the headache had eased.

And the answer was he’d been someplace where he couldn’t afford to be vulnerable.

One thing at a time.

٭Stay out, boyo,٭ Lucivar said when he hauled Daemon into the eyrie and saw his elder son standing in the doorway leading to the shielded yard. If Daemon was suffering from something more than a headache, he wanted the boy out of the way of any . . . unpleasantness.

Marian had the covers of the bed in the primary guest room pulled down. She also had a basin full of water and a cloth on the wide window ledge, and an empty basin floating on air near the bed.

٭Papa? Nurian is here,٭ Daemonar said.

٭Tell her to come back to the guest room. And you stay in the front of the eyrie and keep your sister with you.٭

٭What’s wrong with Uncle Daemon?٭

٭Don’t know yet.٭

Ignoring his brother’s grumbling, Lucivar stripped off Daemon’s black jacket and white silk shirt, then pushed him down on the bed so that Marian could remove the shoes and socks.

“What . . . ?” Nurian stopped on the threshold, her dark, membranous wings folding tight to her body.

“Prince Sadi says he has a headache,” Lucivar said.

“I do have a headache,” Daemon growled.

“Well, let’s take a look.” After a moment’s hesitation, Nurian entered the room, all brisk efficiency—as if being in the same room with the two most powerful men in Kaeleer when one of them was in pain wasn’t the least bit dangerous. “Let’s sit him on that padded bench. It’ll be easier for me to get a good look at everything.”

Nurian and Marian moved the bench from under the window to a spot in the room that allowed Nurian full access to her patient.

“Come on.” Lucivar wrapped a hand around Daemon’s arm and hauled him to his feet.

“You son of a—,” Daemon began.

“I love you too, Bastard. Now sit on the bench before I knock you down.”

What he saw in Daemon’s pain-glazed gold eyes scared him to the bone—which was why he gave his brother the lazy, arrogant smile that always promised trouble.

After settling Daemon on the bench, he and Marian left the room and walked to the end of the corridor.

“Was he in a fight?” Marian whispered.

“Don’t think so,” Lucivar replied, keeping his voice low. “But something is wrong.” Had been wrong for a while now.

“I have some soup I made the other day for tender tummies. I’ll heat some up. Nurian might want him to have some nourishment to help fuel her healing brew.”

After Marian headed for the kitchen, Lucivar walked back to the guest room and stood in the corridor, out of sight.

His brother was damaged. Lucivar had known that on some instinctive level from the first time they had met again as youths, neither remembering the childhood years before they’d been taken from their father. Whatever pain and torment he’d endured being a half-breed bastard in the Eyrien hunting camps where he had been trained to fight, it was nothing compared with what Dorothea SaDiablo must have done to Daemon, taking him into her bed while he was still a boy and training him to be a pleasure slave whose service she had sold to the Queens who curried her favor.

Whatever had been done to Daemon during those early decades of his life had shaped and twisted the side of him that became known as the Sadist. Using the sexual heat as an inescapable lure that could seduce anyone, regardless of preference, the Sadist wove pain and pleasure together in a way that broke down his enemies piece by piece. Broke down the mind. Broke down the body. Merciless. Relentless. A raging, brilliant cruelty that lived inside a beautiful face and well-toned body.

He had danced with the Sadist, had been used by the Sadist. Had hated his brother because of those games. But he’d known—on some level he had always known—that the Sadist had shown restraint, had retained a sliver of mercy when they had danced, had tortured him in order to protect him. Had, in fact, loved him.

Surreal thought she had dealt with the Sadist during the times when Daemon’s temper turned cold, but she’d seen only a glimpse, had only brushed against that side of Daemon’s nature. No one who truly danced with the Sadist in all his raging glory survived.

With one exception.

The Sadist had been in love with Witch, and she had looked at the truth of all that Daemon Sadi was without fear. On the rare occasions when the Sadist had played the lover with Witch, Daemon and Jaenelle Angelline had looked exhausted and dazed for a day or so afterward—and content to just be together, quietly cuddling.

The Sadist had looked at him out of pain-glazed eyes, but the headaches could be a sign of something else. There had been no sign of trouble after Witch had repaired the shattered chalice a second time, no sign that something that had been healed might be breaking again.

Until now.

Sweet Darkness, please let this be something a Healer like Nurian can fix.

Lucivar listened to Nurian asking questions and Daemon answering.

“Did the headaches start after the Birthright Ceremony?” Nurian asked.

“Before,” Daemon replied. “More of an annoyance than anything. And not as persistent.”

“But a few bad ones since then?”

“Yes.”

“Bad as this one?”

“Yes. Several bad ones this past week, but this is the worst.”

Not good, Lucivar thought. Daemon had mentioned having headaches, but he hadn’t given any indication they were this bad.

“Drink this,” Nurian said. “Healing brew with a sedative to help you sleep for a couple of hours. While you’re drinking that, I’m going to rub some warm liniment into your neck and shoulders. That should help relieve some of the pain. You have a choice of this liniment . . .” She called in a bottle and held it close enough for Sadi to take a sniff.

“Smells like a Lady’s boudoir,” Daemon complained.

“Or this one.” Nurian called in another bottle and held it out.

“Hell’s fire! Who would want to smell like that?”

“Eyrien warriors,” Nurian said dryly.

“Figures.” Daemon huffed out a breath. “I’ll take the boudoir.”

“Good choice. The stink of the other one would probably keep you awake.”

Daemon’s reluctant laugh had Lucivar’s shoulders relaxing enough for him to appreciate how tense he’d been since seeing Daemon on the stairs leading up to his home.

Murmurs. Movement. The sound of someone settling into bed. Then Nurian came out of the room, shutting the door partway.

Lucivar followed her to the end of the corridor, where he could keep an eye on the guest room. Just in case.

“Well?” he asked quietly.

“There is nothing physically wrong with Prince Sadi,” Nurian said just as quietly. “There is enough tension in the shoulders, neck, and jaw to make someone’s head hurt, but there is nothing wrong. Not that I can detect. No signs of damage to the brain or bleeding or anything else. No signs of trouble with his heart or lungs or any other organ. Your brother is a vigorous, healthy man in his prime.”

“Who is suddenly suffering from debilitating headaches.”

“Yes.” Nurian looked troubled. “Whatever is causing the headaches, it isn’t physical. Yet. But I’m concerned that if something isn’t done, what’s bothering him could manifest as more than headaches.” She hesitated. “Is there a Black Widow he would trust enough to allow her to look for a cause that isn’t physical?”

Lucivar hesitated. “Maybe. But it might not be easy to find her.”

“Talk to him when he’s feeling better.” Nurian held up a jar. “I have to go back to my eyrie for a bit.”

“Is that a healing brew for him?”

She shook her head. “This is the mixture the Healer in Halaway gave him. He asked me to test it.”

“For . . . ?”

“Anything that shouldn’t be in the mixture.”

That explained why Daemon was here instead of at home. “Let me know what you find. Marian’s in the kitchen, warming up some soup.”

“I doubt he’ll stay awake long enough to eat it, but he’ll need something once he wakes up.”

Returning to the guest room, Lucivar used Craft to move the padded bench closer to the bed before sitting down and studying Daemon, who lay on his back with his hands resting on his belly.

“What did she say?” Daemon asked, the words slurred enough that Lucivar wondered just how much of a sedative Nurian had added to the healing brew.

“You have tight muscles and a bad headache.”

Daemon snorted. “Already knew that.”

“Yeah.” Lucivar hesitated. “Will you let me help you?”

The gold eyes that looked at him still held pain, but behind the pain . . . Cold. Brittle. Predatory. “How?” the Sadist asked too softly.

“I could drain some of the reservoir in the Black, give the power a place to go so that your body can rest.” Lucivar waited. His Ebon-gray was as dark and deep as that Jewel could get, but Daemon stood deep enough into the Black that there was no chance of surviving an attack by that Black strength.

“You can’t spare that much Ebon-gray,” Daemon finally said.

Lucivar gave his brother that lazy, arrogant smile. “I can spare enough.”

Daemon moved his hands, resting his arms at his sides—unspoken permission. The pendant holding the Black lay on his chest.

Watching Daemon’s eyes, Lucivar laid his right hand on his brother’s chest, his fingers resting next to the Black as the power in his Ebon-gray ring gently brushed against the power inside the Black. Brushed against it—and was absorbed by it, using up both. An easy draining. Nothing that challenged. Nothing that might provoke an aggressive response.

When he’d drained most of the Ebon-gray reservoir in the ring, Lucivar lifted his hand. “Better?”

“Some,” Daemon murmured. “Thank you.”

Lucivar stood and used Craft to put the bench back in its place under the window. “Get some sleep. I’m going to put a shield at the end of the corridor to keep my offspring from checking on you every five minutes.”

“Good idea.” With a sigh, Daemon turned on his side . . . and slept.

By the time Lucivar put the shield at the end of the corridor and made his way to the front of the eyrie, Nurian had returned—and she was pissed.

“Anything?” he asked.

“Nothing.”

Not the answer he’d expected. “Nothing?”

“Nothing. Including what should have been in a healing brew to help a man in pain.” Nurian blew out a breath. “I can understand being stupid and targeting Prince Sadi. Hell’s fire, the man is walking temptation.”

“Trying to play him is a messy way to commit suicide.”

“I’m more concerned that this Healer might be targeting other men in the village to create dependence, or to acquire a lover, or . . . I don’t know. But a Healer has to be trusted, and if she’s caught doing something like this, it smears the reputation of all of us.”

“I’ll have a word with the Queen of Halaway. This Healer wouldn’t be the first idiot to try to ensnare Sadi, but it’s a reason for the Queen to look closer at any disturbance in her court or around the village. One thing is sure—this will be the last time that bitch tends to anyone in the SaDiablo household. I imagine the Hall will have its own Healer very soon.”

“I’ll make up more of the healing brew that the Prince can take with him,” Nurian said.

“How much sedative did you put in that?” Lucivar asked.

She hesitated. “I wasn’t sure how much to use for the Black, so I used the amount I would have used for you if you were in his place. Should be sufficient to help him relax enough to sleep for a while.”

Lucivar nodded. “It was enough.” And wasn’t too much.

He saw Nurian out and watched her fly to her eyrie. Then he checked on Daemonar and Titian, who were playing hawks and hares, a children’s card game. Crouching, he balanced on the balls of his feet, his wings tucked tight. “Your uncle Daemon isn’t feeling well and needs to sleep awhile.”

“We’ll be quiet,” Titian said.

“I know you will.” He kissed their foreheads before going to the kitchen to talk to Marian.

“Are you going to tell Surreal about this?” Marian asked, taking the soup off the stove.

“Don’t you think she already knows?” he countered.

“Did you know he was feeling this bad?”

“Shit.” He liked Surreal. Loved her as a sister. Would throw everything he was into protecting her and Jaenelle Saetien. Had been willing to stand against Daemon when Surreal learned she was pregnant and wasn’t sure she wanted to marry the man who had become the High Lord of Hell when Saetan became a whisper in the Darkness. But he wasn’t blind to the fact that Surreal could be a prickly bitch at times and had her own emotional scars. And he wasn’t blind to the fact that, while Daemon and Surreal loved each other, they weren’t, and never had been, in love with each other.

The Birthright Ceremony and acknowledging paternity didn’t always make things easier between a man and a woman, but he hadn’t sensed any serious trouble between them. Just the opposite, in fact. He’d just have to visit the Hall more often over the next few weeks and consider if he’d been wrong about that.

“If it looks like I need to talk to her, I will,” he finally said.

He kept an eye on the children and set the table for dinner while Marian fed and changed baby Andulvar. And he wondered what it might mean to all of them if Surreal didn’t know about Daemon’s headaches.

Tersa followed a path only she could see as she wandered the courtyards and corridors inside the massive structure known as the Keep. Built inside the mountain called Ebon Askavi, the Keep was the repository of the Blood’s history—and the lair of Witch, the living myth, dreams made flesh.

She was aware of the watchers—the Seneschal, some of the demon-dead, and the shadowy beings that guarded the Keep—but no one tried to stop her as she looked for the place she needed to reach before she said what she’d come to say.

Finally, she found the garden sleeping under a thin layer of snow, in a part of the Keep that was usually inaccessible without an invitation.

Shivering, she closed her eyes and reached out with everything in her—power, mind, and heart—and sent her plea as deep into the abyss as she could.

“I’m here about the boy. My boy. Daemon.” Her shattered mind wanted to wander the paths of memory, but she fought hard to stay in the present, fought to find the words that would convey the message she needed to deliver. “He’s not well, but he doesn’t recognize the signs, doesn’t understand the warning. He’ll try to chain the reason he isn’t well, and the shattered chalice you mended will crack more and more and more, and the High Lord will not be here when he’s most needed. And he will be needed. I saw it in a web. He will be needed. Please help him. The cracks have already started, but the girl doesn’t see the signs, doesn’t understand the warnings, won’t be able to help. Please.”

Exhausted, empty, Tersa opened her eyes and noticed the witch who stood in the doorway, watching her. An old woman. A Gray-Jeweled Queen. Demon-dead.

“It’s time for you to go, Tersa,” the witch said.

An old woman. And then not old as the shards of Tersa’s mind formed a new pattern, veiling the old woman with the memory of a younger one with spiky white-blond hair and ice-blue eyes—and legs that had been damaged by poison and the desperate healing that had followed.

“Time to go,” the witch said again—gently, because she, too, was a Sister of the Hourglass and understood about dreams and visions.

As Tersa shuffled her feet to take the first step away from her chosen spot, she heard a whisper rising from deep, deep, deep in the abyss.

If he asks for help, I will answer. But only if he asks.

“Thank you,” Tersa whispered as she walked toward the Gray-Jeweled witch. “Thank you.”

The Keep’s Seneschal and the witch gave her food and hot drinks before arranging for a Coach and driver who could ride the Winds and quietly return her to her cottage in Halaway.

“Thank you,” she whispered again once she was home and tucked in her own bed. “He’ll ask. Perhaps not soon enough to mend all that gets broken, but he will ask.”

NINE

Dillon riffled the stack of silver marks and eyed the red-faced, Purple Dusk–Jeweled Warlord who stood on the other side of the desk. If pushed, he could win a fight, since his Opal outranked Purple Dusk. But he’d spent just enough time around the man’s daughter to realize winning wouldn’t be in his favor. That was no reason to let the man off easy. He had expenses, after all.

Dillon riffled the stack of silver marks again. “Looks like your daughter has played this game so often her value is going down.”

“How dare you . . . ?” the Warlord blustered.

“There was a promise of a handfast, which is a binding one-year contract of marriage.” Dillon pitched his voice to carry anger and disappointment he didn’t feel. “There were two witnesses who heard your daughter invite me to her bed and her subsequent agreement to a handfast when I refused, and we had a Priestess ready to perform the ceremony before you intervened.”

“Someone pretending to be a Priestess,” the man countered, making a slashing motion with one hand. “The whole thing was a poor jest, nothing more.”

“Then I’m the injured party, played by a jade who enjoys compromising men’s honor.”

“I’ve heard about you, Lord Dillon. You don’t have any honor.” The man looked triumphant when he said the words.

The words cut deep, which only made Dillon more determined to walk away with a full purse.

“If I take this to the District Queen, your daughter will have to explain the ‘jest’ that was intended to lure me into her bed, and you know how a formal complaint can fuel gossip—especially when it’s not the first time a girl has been accused of this ‘jest,’” Dillon said.

The man looked at Dillon with equal measures of fear and hate, confirming the accusation. Then he called in another stack of silver marks and threw them on the desk.

So. The girl’s father had been hoping to bluff him into taking less to make all the unpleasantness go away.

Dillon picked up the second stack of silver marks and vanished both stacks.

“You got your payment, Lord Dillon. If I hear anything that smears my daughter’s reputation . . .”

“No one will hear anything from me.” And may the Darkness help the next fool who falls for your daughter’s game. “But I will say, sir, that I’ve heard you’re hoping your daughter marries into another aristo family of equal standing to yours. If that’s the case and is one of the reasons you’re trying to smear my reputation, I hope your daughter ends up with exactly the kind of man she deserves.”

The flicker of distress in the man’s eyes told Dillon he’d slipped the verbal knife into the right spot. If the daughter married the kind of man she deserved, her life would be a misery.

He walked out of the man’s study, walked out of the house, walked several blocks before hailing a horse-drawn cab to take him to the modest hotel that had been home for the past few weeks.

He kept his anger and his growing despair tightly reined during the ride to the hotel and for the few minutes when he was in view of other people. He bade acquaintances a good day, helped an elderly Lady and her granddaughter into the cab he’d just left, smiled at the clerk at the desk.

By this evening it would be all over town, although whispered behind hands, that the handfast had been a jest that he had taken seriously. There would be sympathy for someone who had fallen for the ruse, but every young man from a minor aristo family would breathe a sigh of relief when Dillon and his tarnished reputation left town.

No one wanted to sit at a table with a moral lesson.

Once he reached his room, Dillon locked the door and put an Opal shield around the room to assure he wouldn’t be disturbed.

He opened a bottle of brandy, settled in the room’s small sitting area, and drank straight from the bottle. Drank until he needed to breathe.

After making careful inquiries in a place that aristos didn’t frequent for honorable reasons, he had found a witch who could teach him the “if you loved me” spell—and didn’t want to know who he was or where he came from. It had cost him almost every mark he had, which made him wonder if the spell had become some kind of fashionable game among the wealthy Blood families because no one else could afford it, and bored aristos might think it amusing to see whom they could coerce into doing something otherwise unpalatable.

For a moment, as the brandy gave him a fuzzy kind of clarity, he wondered if he should report the use of this spell. He had the names of some of the men who had been damaged by Blyte’s use of it, but whom could he tell? If this was some fashionable aristo game, how could he be sure that whatever Queen granted him an audience wasn’t also playing? And if she was playing and didn’t want anyone to know—because, fashionable or not, it was a sordid game—would he live to see another sunrise?

The only thing he could do right now was use the spell on a girl before she used it on him. He’d been one step ahead this time. The girl had known what he’d done, but his Jewel was sufficiently darker than hers that she couldn’t resist him. Besides, if she’d said anything, he would have countered that she had tried the spell on him and it backfired. That would have opened up questions about her previous liaisons—something her father preferred to hide beneath substantial payoffs.

He could continue targeting aristo bitches whose fathers would pay him to disappear, but he was already tired of pretense, tired of lies. He wanted the chance at a real future, not a continuation of these games. He wanted honest work. He wanted a real handfast as a first step to proving he could be a good and faithful husband. He needed both those things to restore his reputation and remove the stain on his honor.

He wasn’t going to find either of those things in a Rihland city that catered to aristos. If he was going to be successful, he’d have to settle in some out-of-the-way place and find a girl who was sufficient to his needs and then use the spell for a little while—just long enough to make her love him.

TEN

Four pegs, each one as big around as the palm of his hand. A loop of leather went around each peg, one end of the leashes that were attached to the choke collar around his neck. He had to keep the leashes tight, so very tight, to protect the people he loved from what he was. It should have been all right. It had always been all right. Hadn’t it? But now, as the leashes tightened, so did the collar around his neck, choking him until he couldn’t breathe.

His heart pounded, pounded, pounded in a way that would damage it eventually. His lungs burned with the effort to draw a breath, but he had to keep the leashes tight because . . .

A hand slapped his shoulder hard enough to sting, and a voice said, “Kiss kiss.”

Gasping, Daemon looked at the witch now standing beside him. “Karla.”

“Prince Idiot.”

A flash of temper. One leash relaxed a little; the strangling collar loosened a little. He sucked in a breath and studied the witch who had been the Queen of Glacia—and one of Jaenelle Angelline’s closest friends.

She looked old. She looked the way he remembered her in the last years of her life. White hair, lined face, a body that was still straight-backed yet growing frail. But the ice-blue eyes had never changed. He hadn’t been the High Lord of Hell when she made the transition to demon-dead, but he’d known she had settled in Hell near the Gate that was closest to Glacia, in order to keep track of her adopted daughter—Della—and Della’s children and grandchildren.

“What are you doing here, Karla?”

“What am I doing here? What are you doing here? This is supposed to be my vision, my dream, my tangled web.” She looked at the pegs, at the leashes, at the collar that had bruised his neck. “Then again, you’re the one who’s in trouble. You need to loosen those leashes before you ruin yourself.”

“I have to stay in control,” Daemon protested.

“Not this much. You’ve never held the leashes this tight. No one could for long.”

“I can. I will.”

The leash that had loosened a bit with his flash of temper tightened again, choking him.

“And what price will Kaeleer pay for this self-indulgence?” Karla asked.

Daemon smiled a cold, cruel smile as one particular leash relaxed around its peg. Unlike the others, this one was leather braided with chain. This one held the Sadist in check.

“You do not want me to slip this leash,” he said too softly. “Not this one.”

“And you don’t want to snap this leash along with the rest of them when you start fighting to survive,” she replied, sounding too damn reasonable. “So loosen another one, Sadi.”

“They’re all there for a reason.”

“Yes, yes, yes. Temper. Power. Sexual heat.” She waved a hand at the chain and leather. “And whatever that one keeps in check.”

“I’m a Black-Jeweled Warlord Prince. I have to keep power and temper under control.”

“Not under this much control. Not all the time. But if you truly believe you have to keep power and temper so tightly leashed, at least loosen that one.” She pointed to the leash he held on the sexual heat.

“You want me to turn all of that on a woman? You want to see every woman around me begging to be mounted? I don’t.” Even the thought of it reminded him too much of being a pleasure slave and added cold claws to his temper.

She smacked his shoulder again, making him snarl.

“Dream. Vision. Me, who was never impressed with the wiggle-waggle even when I walked among the living. What’s done here won’t matter, so do it now.”

Allowing that leash to go slack around the peg, Daemon drew his first full breath in . . . How long had it been?

Sweet Darkness, had he really been holding on too tight? And when had that leash frayed to the point of breaking, leaving him in less control than he’d realized? He couldn’t be around other people if the heat wasn’t under control. He certainly couldn’t be around Surreal, since the heat continued to upset her.

“You have your own bedroom, don’t you?” Karla asked as if she’d heard his thoughts. Maybe she had. As she’d pointed out, he’d somehow landed in her dream vision, not the other way around.

“I do.”

“Breathing room, Sadi. You need it. You’re too damn dangerous to indulge in being foolish.”

Daemon looked thoughtful. Then he shook his head. “I can control it.”

“Until you can’t.”

Karla blinked. Sat back in her chair and stared at the tangled web of dreams and visions. Uneasy, she pushed away from the worktable and used Craft to glide across the room to the small table that held a decanter of yarbarah and a ravenglass goblet. She filled the goblet, then created a tongue of witchfire to warm the blood wine.

Tersa’s plea hadn’t been directed at her, but that didn’t matter. She had heard, and Tersa’s concerns about Daemon Sadi had been troubling enough that she had woven her own tangled web.

The demon-dead were not supposed to interfere with the living. When he’d been the High Lord, Uncle Saetan had held that line. All right, he had smudged the line when it came to his own family, but being Jaenelle Angelline’s adoptive father had been necessary, and he’d needed the help of his eldest son, Mephis, as well as Andulvar and Prothvar Yaslana—especially after he ended up being the honorary uncle for Jaenelle’s First Circle.

No, the demon-dead were not supposed to interfere with the living. But couldn’t the new High Lord of Hell have advisors who no longer walked among the living even if he still did? Couldn’t he have the relief of talking to old friends whose only interest in Kaeleer was their concern for him? Couldn’t he be allowed the luxury—and necessity—of expressing his feelings to someone who had no reason to fear his temper?

“The time will come when you’ll be needed. I hope you can stay in Hell that long.”

“Well, Sister, it looks like you were right.” Karla raised the goblet in a salute to the friend who wasn’t there. Of course, if Jaenelle still walked the Realms, Daemon wouldn’t be descending into this troubling state of mind.

How could she tell him his control was slipping when his reaction would be to try to tighten that control even more—which would only fray the leashes of his self-control faster until either the leashes snapped or his mind shattered? If his mind shattered, there was no one in the Realms anymore who was strong enough or gifted enough to heal him.

The sexual heat seemed to be the sticking point, but why now? And why, if Tersa had seen something similar, had she come to the Keep to beg for help from someone who didn’t exist anymore instead of telling her son to ease his control of the sexual heat and put up with the annoyance of women—and men—lusting for him?

Unless Tersa’s tangled web had revealed more than Daemon’s excess of self-control. Unless Tersa had seen something coming that would require the intervention of someone who didn’t exist. At least, everyone believed Witch didn’t exist—except, it would seem, a broken Black Widow.

“Song in the Darkness,” Karla whispered. “Are you more than that, Sister? If the need is great enough, can you be more than that?”

Which brought her back to the question of what to do about Sadi.

She could tell him what she had seen and let him do whatever he liked with the information. Or she could wait and keep watch. Whatever was coming, Daemon would need some old friends, but he wouldn’t go looking for them. She’d just have to be in a place where she would be easy to find—a place where he couldn’t avoid finding her.

Having made that decision, Karla drank the rest of the yarbarah, cleared away her tangled web, and went to talk to Draca, the Seneschal, about taking up residence in the Shadow Realm’s Keep.

Daemon woke in the dark, heart pounding, throat feeling bruised. Where . . . ?

Feeling overheated, he sat up, tossing aside the bedcovers as he used Craft to create a small ball of witchlight.

His bedroom at SaDiablo Hall. His room.

By the time he’d returned to the Hall from his trip to Ebon Rih, Surreal had retired for the night, and he’d had no desire to disturb her—and even less desire to tangle with her temper. Time enough in the morning to discuss Jaenelle Saetien’s misbehavior and the whole nutcake incident.

Getting up, he went to the window and pushed aside the heavy winter drapes that Helene and her staff had hung in the bedrooms recently to keep out the cold. The moonlight shined through the glass—and the chill from the glass whispered over his skin, a refreshing sensation after the bed’s heat.

He drank water straight from the carafe Jazen brought up each evening when the valet came in to turn down the bedcovers. Daemon thought it was an unnecessary bit of work, since he slept with Surreal most nights, whether or not they had sex, but he knew better than to interfere with any household routines and requirements. He might own the Hall and pay all the bills, but the place ran according to the dictates of Helene, Beale, and Mrs. Beale—and skimping on one’s duties was not acceptable.

Leaving the drapes open, Daemon drained the power from the witchlight and returned to bed. He stretched out, ignoring the covers as he tried to recall the odd dream he’d been having just before he woke. Something about Karla? Why would he dream about Karla? Couldn’t remember. Besides, he felt languid, lazy, better than he’d felt in weeks.

The feel of cool air against his bare skin was almost as sensual as a lover’s caress, and he was just floating back to sleep when the door between his bedroom and Surreal’s opened. His mind registered her psychic scent as he breathed in her physical scent—a scent heated by lust.

“Surreal.” Too languid and lazy to have any interest in sex, even with a woman who had entered his private domain, he drifted toward sleep again.

Then she climbed on the bed, took his cock in her mouth, and worked him until he swelled to an edgy lust that equaled her own, until he was hard and hungry and needed to be ridden. Spurred by her hunger, he welcomed the pricks of pain from her nails as she impaled herself on him and rode him to a climax that took them both to the razor’s edge of marrying pain to pleasure.

When she was done, she didn’t settle next to him to cuddle or talk or even sleep. She didn’t say a word. She simply dismounted and went back to her room, leaving him to wonder what had just happened—and why.

Surreal washed away the smell of sex—and him—before putting on a fresh nightgown and getting into her own bed. Then she grabbed fistfuls of her hair and pulled, hoping the pain would settle her, would help her think past the wanting that was twisting into something terrible.

Daemon had always been a demanding lover. He wore the Black and was a Warlord Prince, so that wasn’t surprising. He’d always been a wonderful lover, enjoying the pleasure he gave almost more than his own. He also liked to play, and while that play never physically hurt her, ever since the night when she’d found herself in bed with the Sadist, having sex with Daemon—even being around Daemon—frightened her, because he made her so needy, so desperate for his touch, his kiss, that she couldn’t think past feeling.

He swore the sexual heat was leashed, but she knew that wasn’t true. It was more now, always more, wrapping around her like a cocoon of soft fur that imprisoned, took away choices.

That was what the Sadist did—wrapped his victims in desire that they couldn’t escape. Didn’t want to escape until it broke them. Ruined them. Destroyed them.

She should talk to him again, should demand an explanation for why he was continuing to play with her like this. Like tonight, going to his own room without saying anything. Then that sexual heat drifting from his room into hers, and her waking with hard nipples and a wet need between her legs that wouldn’t be slaked by anything but him.

She had entered his room, ignoring the danger of being there, not sure if she intended to tell him to stop or to take her, but that one word purred in that deep, smooth voice—“Surreal”—took the decision away from her, had her working him, riding him. And leaving him. Escaping before the Sadist woke and decided to play with her.

She should talk to him in the morning and insist that he stop this game. But she was afraid, so terribly afraid, that if she forced him to admit that he had turned sex into an addictive torment, he would apologize with genuine sincerity—and never touch her again. And that was a torment she didn’t want to endure.

ELEVEN

Jillian dumped a pile of clean diapers at one end of the wooden table in the laundry room, then started folding the dry baby clothes. Daemonar and Titian were eating breakfast, and Marian was taking care of baby Andulvar. That gave her a little time to complete some chores before she escorted the children to the Eyrien school.

She liked Lord Endar, but she had learned everything he could offer. How much longer did she have to sit in a classroom, listening to the same lessons over and over and over? But if she didn’t go to school . . . When she was younger, she’d wanted to be a guard, a warrior, but she wasn’t sure she wanted that anymore. And she wasn’t interested in the other work that was usually pursued by Eyrien women, so what was there to do? She liked Marian, but she didn’t want to be someone’s helper forever. She wanted . . . She didn’t know what she felt, didn’t know what she wanted, didn’t know . . .

“What’s wrong with you?” Daemonar asked, approaching the table but not getting too close.

“Nothing is wrong with me.” What did it say about boys that Daemonar, a Warlord Prince who wore a Green Jewel, could plunge his hands into the guts of a deer but got squeamish about touching a diaper—even a clean one? “If you’ve finished your breakfast, you should clean your teeth and get ready for school.”

“Something is wrong,” Daemonar insisted. “You’ve been acting . . . odd. You’ve been acting like . . . a girl.”

Her hands clenched on the little shirt she had just folded. If she didn’t say something, he would keep poking at her until she hit him or started crying, so she said the one thing she knew would rout him. “I used to change your poopy diapers, boyo, so don’t you get bossy with me.”

She watched color rush into his face, darkening his light brown skin, before he rushed out of the laundry room.

Bitch, she thought as she finished folding the shirts. She grabbed the pile of little trousers and kept her head down as she felt the return of a male presence. Then, angry with herself for being bitchy and angry with Daemonar for pushing her into being bitchy, she turned and said, “Look, boyo . . . Oh.” She pulled her wings in tighter, an instinctive reaction when facing an adult Eyrien male. Lucivar Yaslana had a hot, volatile temper, but it was seldom displayed inside his own home. Remembering that, she offered a wobbly smile. “Is there something I can do for you, Prince?”

Lucivar studied her a moment before he started folding diapers.

Relieved to have some of his attention off her, Jillian folded more of baby Andulvar’s clothes.

“You should start thinking of another argument, witchling,” Lucivar said as calmly as if he were pointing out something of interest on the mountain. “Right now the boy is of an age where he’s embarrassed that he needed diapers and doesn’t want to think about who changed them. In a few more months—or years if you’re lucky—he’ll still be embarrassed, but he’ll set his heels down and fight . . . and he’ll fight harder for being embarrassed.”

“It’s none of his business.”

“You’re probably right.” Lucivar gave her a smile that she knew meant trouble. “But now it’s my business. So what’s wrong?”

Trapped. Excuses like being late for school or needing to do something that would get her away from him wouldn’t work. A glance at him told her everything she needed to know—the relaxed wings, the easy stance, the lazy smile. Anyone who didn’t know him wouldn’t realize he was prepared for a brutal fight. And right now she was the opponent he was focused on.

“I don’t know,” she said, her voice barely audible.

Lucivar went back to folding diapers. “You must have some idea.”

“I don’t!”

They folded clothes in silence for a minute before Jillian blurted out, “I broke the permission-before-action rule. I kissed Tamnar. And he kissed me back.”

“Oh?” Lucivar didn’t look at her, just kept folding diapers.

“It wasn’t intentional. It just sort of happened. And that’s all we did, so we barely broke the rule.”

“And?”

She was down to matching little socks and wasn’t sure how long she could spin out the task. “And what?”

“Did you like it?”

Relief that he wasn’t roaring at her made her head swim. “It was all right. I think Tamnar liked it more than I did.” She instantly felt disloyal. Tamnar was her friend, and it wasn’t his fault that kissing him hadn’t felt wonderful or exciting. Except . . . “Who else is there to kiss?”

Lucivar folded the last diaper. “That is a question, isn’t it?” A beat of silence. Then he looked at her. “Shouldn’t you be getting ready for school?”

“Yes, sir.” He was letting her go. He wasn’t going to push. She hurried out of the room but stopped when he said, “You didn’t eat this morning. Get some food in your belly before you leave here, so your legs don’t give out. Understood?”

Maybe feeling dizzy wasn’t all due to relief. “Yes, sir.”

As she passed through the eyrie’s kitchen, Marian handed her a hollowed-out roll filled with scrambled eggs, bacon, and cheese.

“You know he’ll ask you if you ate anything, and you know you can’t lie to him,” Marian said quietly. “If he was willing to use Craft to pin his sister’s chair to the table and keep her there until she ate enough to satisfy him, he won’t hesitate to do the same to you.”

Lucivar’s sister had been Jaenelle Angelline, the Queen of Ebon Askavi. Jaenelle could have exploded Lucivar’s defensive shields and torn him to pieces, despite his Ebon-gray Jewels, but he still was willing to fight her into the ground if he thought she was ignoring anything she needed to do to stay healthy. Which made no sense, on the one hand, since that kind of fight would have left both of them badly injured—or worse. But knowing he was willing to do exactly that usually had the Queen backing down or negotiating a compromise.

Unlike Jaenelle Angelline, she wasn’t powerful and she wasn’t a Queen. She’d have no chance to make her own choices if Lucivar started paying that much attention to her.

Jillian took a small bite of her sandwich. Marian smiled in sympathy and shooed her out of the kitchen.

“I’ll be back in the afternoon to help with the baby,” Jillian promised.

She collected Titian, ignored Daemonar’s surly looks, and made them wait—him especially, since he’d been the one who had tattled to his father—until she finished her sandwich. Then they flew to the eyrie that had been converted into a small school.

Lucivar’s chest tightened as he watched Marian walk into the laundry room. His darling hearth witch was ill, and there was no denying it even if he pretended along with her that it was just something that happened sometimes after a hard birthing and she would recover.

Pretending because that’s what she needed from him didn’t mean he wasn’t acutely aware of every aspect of his wife’s health—and would fight her with everything in him if that’s what he had to do to keep her safe. To keep her with him.

“I don’t know what to do for the girl,” he said as she wrapped her arms around his waist and settled against him. “How can I help her if she can’t tell me what’s wrong?”

“She’s not a girl,” Marian replied. “She can sense the sexual heat now, so she’s not a girl.”

“Well, as sure as the sun doesn’t shine in Hell, she isn’t old enough to be considered a woman.” He tried, unsuccessfully, to keep temper and frustration out of his voice. Marian didn’t need either of those things. Not from him.

She looked up at him and smiled. “Is that transformation from boy to man as hard on your gender as girl to woman is for mine?”

“Not a question I’m going to answer.” When she laughed, he rested his forehead against hers. “She kissed Tamnar, which Rothvar and I already figured out. Kissed him without permission, which explains some of her moodiness and the boy’s lack of concentration when he’s been sparring.”

“It was mutual, wasn’t it?” Marian sounded concerned. “I can’t imagine Jillian taking advantage of a boy—and certainly not a Warlord she’s grown up with.”

“It was mutual, but I think Tamnar is going to be disappointed if he hopes Jillian will continue to help him practice his kissing technique.”

“There aren’t any other Eyriens their age,” Marian said.

“I know that.” Just as he knew how limited the choices were for his own children finding Eyrien partners.

“Did you know what you wanted to be at her age?”

“I wanted to survive.” By the time he was Jillian’s age, he’d realized that wasn’t something he could take for granted. He was a half-breed bastard in the Eyrien hunting camps, and every man in those camps wanted to put him in the dirt, wanted him to believe he was nothing. Problem was that the boy was already a better fighter than most of them, and the boy grew up fast and hard and deadly. “I’m a Warlord Prince. We’re born to fight—and to kill.”

“I had dreams when I was her age,” Marian said quietly. “I wanted to get out of the Black Valley, wanted to get away from the drudgery of caring for my mother and sisters, since they made it clear that my being a hearth witch was a family embarrassment and I was beneath their notice—unless I didn’t do a chore they wanted done right that instant.”

“Bitches,” he said just as quietly. He hadn’t met any of Marian’s family. He still hoped they would be foolish enough someday to come to Ebon Rih and try to contact her. Even if they weren’t that foolish, they would die eventually, if they hadn’t been swept away decades ago in Witch’s purge of the Realms, and then they would end up having a chat with his brother.

“Being a hearth witch, there are skills I’ve had since I was very young, and there is work that attracts me. So my dreams had a shape. But Jillian is a young witch who hasn’t found her passion yet, and I think this valley is starting to feel small. She doesn’t fit in with the Rihlander girls who are her equivalent age. She might one day, but she doesn’t now.”

“What am I supposed to do? Let her be moody and unhappy?”

Marian rose on her toes and gave him a light kiss on the lips. “For now.”

Lucivar studied the concern in her gold eyes. “What?”

“Are you going to check on your brother today?”

“Wasn’t planning to. I have a full day of work in Ebon Rih. Besides, if I show up today, he’ll think I’m worried about him.”

“Aren’t you?”

He sighed. “Yeah. I am. But that’s not something I can tell him.” Just like I can’t say how much I’m worried about you.

“You could tell him that Nurian asked how he was feeling and if he’d like her to make up another batch of those healing herbs for him to take when the headache is just coming on.”

“I’m not going to lie to him, Marian.”

“It wouldn’t be a lie if you actually asked her.”

That would give him an excuse to see Nurian and ask about other things as well. “I can do that.”

She gave him another kiss and stepped back. “You’re lingering and about to start fussing. Go to work, Lucivar.”

“I’ll bring something from The Tavern for the midday meal.” She would “forget” to eat during the day if he wasn’t there, so he made sure he swung back home to feed her. She was still nursing the baby and he could see the weight slipping off her—weight she couldn’t afford to lose.

He flew to the communal eyrie, where Rothvar and the other men waited for him to review the day’s list of duties. Once the other men headed out, he flew to Nurian’s eyrie.

“Prince Sadi?” she asked as soon as Lucivar entered the room where she made her tonics and healing brews.

“He’s fine as far as I know. I just wanted to check if he could get another batch of those herbs. . . .”

“He’s run out already?” Nurian sounded alarmed. “I gave him enough to make up several healing brews. If he’s run out—”

Lucivar raised a hand to stop her. “I just wanted to let him know you would do that if he needs more.” His eyes narrowed as he watched the tension leave her shoulders.

“Of course,” she said. “My apologies, Prince. I made the mixture strong, since his headaches were so severe, and it shouldn’t be used in excess.” She thought for a moment. “And it shouldn’t be used by anyone else. You would be all right with that mixture, but not anyone who wears a Jewel lighter than Ebon-gray.”

“I’m sure he wouldn’t leave the jar unshielded, but I’ll have a word with his valet just to be safe. Right now, I’d like to encourage him to use the stuff, but I’ll say something to him if it looks like he’s using more than he should.” He gave Nurian that lazy, arrogant smile. “Now, Healer, is there something I should know about my wife?”

She hesitated. “I’ve told you everything I know, Prince. I won’t deny that I’m concerned, but Marian isn’t the only woman whose recovery after having a baby has taken longer than is usual. It happens. There is nothing for me to heal, nothing to mend.”

“She’s fading, Nurian. She’s hidden it well, but she’s fading.”

“I know. All I can recommend is food and rest—and time to let her body heal on its own.”

He wasn’t sure that would be enough, but he knew Nurian was doing everything she could—and he suspected everything she could do wouldn’t be enough.

As he stood in front of Nurian’s eyrie, he looked toward the mountain called Ebon Askavi. A century ago, there had been someone else he could have asked for help, would have asked. But maybe there was someone there now who could help. It wasn’t his place to challenge visitors who came to the Keep. The vast library and historical records drew scholars and historians from all the Territories in the Realm. However, the appearance of someone wearing a Gray Jewel was bound to catch his attention.

His visit to the Keep didn’t take more than a handful of minutes to confirm that, yes, Lady Karla was now in residence and would be staying for the foreseeable future.

He didn’t think Draca could actually foresee the future, but considering who and what she was, he wouldn’t have bet on it. Didn’t matter at the moment. The sun was up, which meant Karla, being demon-dead, was at rest until the sun went down. He would return then, since Karla had not only been a Queen and a Black Widow; she’d been a strong Healer who had learned some of her healing Craft from Jaenelle Angelline.

Nothing he could do right now for Daemon or Marian, so he dealt with the work of ruling Ebon Rih. If worry was the whip that pushed him to work harder, to work until his body ached with fatigue, it was no one’s business but his own.

Daemon knocked on the door and waited to be acknowledged before entering Surreal’s bedroom. Staying near the door, he tucked his hands in his trouser pockets and watched her transfer the folded clothes on the bed into a trunk.

“Going somewhere?” he asked quietly.

“I’m going to check on the family’s other estates,” she replied, not looking at him.

“Again?”

“Yes. Again. I’ll be back in a few days.”

Will you be home and back under my protection before your moon’s blood begins to flow? He’d done a quick calculation that morning while he was in the shower and wondered if her mood last night—and apparently this morning—had a simple explanation. While she should be safe at any of the SaDiablo estates, she knew it was easier for him to allow other males to be around her during the vulnerable days if she was here at the Hall or staying at the family’s town house in Amdarh, where he could count on the staff to assist in protecting her.

He studied her stiff movements, which usually meant she was primed for a fight. It wouldn’t be prudent to mention her moontime, but perhaps he could make things easier for her.

“Would you like help draining some of the power from your Gray Jewel?” he asked. Since she couldn’t use her power during those first three days of her moontime, her Jewels needed enough of the reservoir of power drained to make room for the power that needed to be channeled out of her body.

“No, I already took care of that.” She looked up from her packing but didn’t quite look at him. “But thanks for the offer.”

She’d already drained the Gray? How?

“Surreal.” He took a step toward her, then stopped when she instantly snapped to attention, her right hand curling as if holding a sight-shielded weapon. Which was quite possible. “What’s wrong?”

“What could be wrong?” she countered.

That evasion instead of giving him a straight answer confirmed that there was something wrong, because Surreal didn’t evade. Something wrong with her? Was she hiding a secret from him for the same reason he was hiding the severity of his headaches from her? Because neither of them wanted to add another problem to a marriage that was turning sour?

“You’re running away. That’s not like you.”

“Maybe I don’t want to get in the middle of this ongoing pissing contest you’re having with Jaenelle Saetien over nutcakes,” she snapped.

“It’s not about nutcakes. It’s about an attitude she’s trying on that can’t be allowed to continue.”

“Whatever it’s about, I don’t want to deal with it. Is that clear enough?”

“Very.” His voice cooled, his temper responding to hers. “My apologies for disturbing you. Have a pleasant journey.”

She picked up a stack of underclothes and threw them into the trunk. Then she wrapped a hand around the bedpost, as if she needed help staying on her feet.

Daemon crossed the room and had her in his arms before she drew another breath. They sat on the side of the bed, silent, while Surreal shuddered with the effort to regain control.

“I’m all right.” She pushed at him, but he didn’t let her go. “Sadi, I’m all right.”

“Would you like to try a more believable lie?”

She hesitated. “I don’t want to fight.”

“Since when?”

She laughed, but it was a reluctant sound. “I just need some time on my own. That’s all.”

“You would tell me if this was something more?” he asked quietly.

“Of course.”

She should have known better than to lie to him when he was holding her, when he was so attuned to her body and her emotions.

He kissed her cheek and left her bedroom, then went down to his study to review paperwork and write a brief note to Beron, warning him that Manny and Mrs. Beale would be expecting him to bring his appetite when he came to visit. He seldom worried about the young Warlord, who had resided in Amdarh ever since Beron had been deemed old enough to live on his own and study to be an actor. Understanding how fast the leash could be tightened if he didn’t keep in touch with the patriarch of the family, Beron had always been a good correspondent. And while he had his own lodgings, he took advantage of the SaDiablo town house, staying over at least one night a week, which guaranteed he would be well fed for one evening meal and the next day’s breakfast. It also guaranteed that Daemon would hear any significant gossip or concerns about Beron, since Helton, the town house’s butler, would report any activity or association that might endanger the young man’s well-being.

Daemon hesitated. Should he ask Beron to spend a few extra days at the family’s town house when it was most likely that Surreal would be staying there? Helton would defend Surreal with everything in him, but it would be easier on everyone who had to deal with a Black-Jeweled temper if there was a male member of the family in residence during Surreal’s moontime.

He felt the absence of the Gray and knew the moment when his wife and second-in-command stepped on the stone landing web in front of the Hall and caught one of the Winds to ride to whichever estate was her first destination. Still, he waited for Beale to enter his study and inform him that Lady Surreal had left.

“Jaenelle Saetien has gone to school?” he asked.

“She has.” Beale waited a beat before adding, “The young Lady was keenly disappointed in the lack of breakfast pastries this morning, which I’m sure you’ll notice when you come in for your own breakfast.”

Daemon set his pen in its holder and sat back. “Is this lack of pastries because of my instructions not to provide dessert or treats, or did Jaenelle Saetien do something to piss off Mrs. Beale?”

“The young Lady made one or two imprudent remarks.”

Hell’s fire. Maybe Surreal had the right idea when it came to abandoning this particular field of battle. Except he couldn’t. Wouldn’t.

He also wasn’t foolish enough to ignore Beale’s warning that the staff had noticed what he was—and wasn’t—eating and soon would come to their own conclusions about his lack of appetite.

Pushing back his chair, he said, “I’m sure I won’t notice a lack of pastries while I’m tucking in to whatever dishes Mrs. Beale has prepared this morning.”

As he followed Beale to the dining room, he noticed Morghann and Khary trotting out the front door.

“They didn’t accompany Jaenelle Saetien to school?” he asked.

“They did not,” Beale replied.

That troubled him, because Scelties didn’t hold on to grudges. Not when they loved the person who had made the mistake.

“Beale.” Daemon stopped outside the dining room door. “Was I too harsh? I hadn’t intended to cause a schism between Jaenelle Saetien and the Scelties over a nutcake.”

“I would not presume to have an opinion about how you raise your daughter, Prince,” the butler replied.

“If my father had asked you that question, would you have offered an opinion?”

Beale looked him in the eyes—a reminder that no matter what Beale did for a living, he was a Red-Jeweled Warlord.

“Like your father, you understand the need to draw lines when behavior is inappropriate,” Beale finally said. “In my opinion, you were not too harsh with the young Lady.”

Relief washed through Daemon. At least he had one ally. But . . . “With Morghann?”

“Whatever you said to Morghann is not the problem.” Beale sighed. “Trust betrayed is harder to forgive than a shared mistake.”

Yes. “Thank you, Beale.”

Opening the dining room door, Beale said quietly, “You can thank me by appreciating the breakfast Mrs. Beale prepared for you.”

He felt a little fragile this morning, but the headache wasn’t threatening to return in full force, so he found his appetite and appreciated the breakfast sufficiently to please his staff.

Before he returned to his study to deal with more paperwork, Daemon wandered the Hall, checking on the shields that were woven into the building’s stones—protection for everyone living there against anyone foolish enough to launch an attack.

All secure. And yet Surreal’s comment about having drained her Gray scratched at him. He’d have felt any spell or use of Craft that required that much power. Unless . . .

Down and down and down through the cellars beneath the Hall until he came to the corridor that led to the door to his father’s private study. His private study now.

Like Saetan, he was a Black Widow and had the snake tooth and venom sac beneath the ring finger of his right hand. Like Saetan, he had been trained in creating the Hourglass’s tangled webs of dreams and visions—and trained in the creation and use of poisons, although most of that knowledge he had acquired on his own.

This study deep beneath the Hall was the place for the darker aspects of ruling Dhemlan and its people. It was the place for the creation of the darker kinds of Craft. It was not a place for weakened shields.

His hand moved just above the stone walls on either side of the door. He hadn’t been down here for a while, hadn’t felt the need to visit the study. An error.

Had Surreal thinned these shields for a reason, or had she chosen this part of the Hall because it was so out of the way that she thought using the shields here to drain the Gray would go unnoticed? It was tempting to follow her to the family estate she intended to visit and demand an answer, to ask why she was choosing this method of draining her Jewels instead of the personal contact he had offered. But he wouldn’t ask the question, wouldn’t demand an answer. Not until he figured out what was going wrong between them. For now . . .

Black power flowed into the shields, replenishing them and wiping away all trace of the Gray. The next time Surreal came down here, she would realize he had discovered her secret. And he might discover one or two other things as well, based on what she did—or didn’t—say.

Marian opened a secret drawer in the sewing cabinet Lucivar had given her when she’d still thought she was his housekeeper and nothing more. The cabinet held fabrics and skeins of yarn and all the other tools and supplies she used for the handcrafts and weaving that she enjoyed doing in her spare time.

It also held a simple wooden box that contained Jaenelle Angelline’s last gift: a piece of a clear Jewel no bigger than her thumbnail. A special spell inside the Jewel made it look translucent black.

“I made this for you, so don’t use it for anyone else,” Jaenelle said. “It won’t work for anyone else.”

“What is it?” Marian asked, studying the Jewel.

“It’s a healing spell. Put the Jewel in a mug and pour hot—not boiling—water over it. The hot water will release the spell. Let it steep for five minutes to release the whole spell and turn the water into a healing brew. Five minutes. No more. Time it carefully and make sure you drink all of it. This isn’t meant for something as simple as a head cold or a fever. It can be used only once, so keep it until you need it most. You’ll know when that day comes.”

Marian lightly pressed a hand against her belly. Had Jaenelle seen this in a tangled web of dreams and visions? Had she known there would be complications from a birth that would occur years after she was gone?

The pregnancy might not have happened. Lucivar had agreed to put aside the contraceptive brew because she’d wanted one more child, but this particular pregnancy might not have happened if he’d been away from home during that cycle of fertile days. A different pregnancy, a different outcome. And whatever Jaenelle had seen wouldn’t be more than a vision of what might have been.

But Jaenelle had seen something, had known a day would come when something would go wrong inside Marian and had gifted her with a way to make things right.

Was this the time? There were fewer and fewer days when she had the strength and energy to do more than take care of the baby. There were fewer and fewer nights when she wanted more from Lucivar than the warmth of his body and the unspoken assurance that she wasn’t facing this unknown illness alone.

Was it time?

“Don’t leave it too late, Marian.”

Even when it took a while, women recovered from hard birthings. Maybe she was expecting too much from herself.

Maybe she was afraid to make a choice because she didn’t know what to expect—and all Jaenelle could tell her was the healing would depend on why the spell was needed and would continue for as long as required. Which meant she might be bedridden for days, caught in whatever way the healing manifested.

Was it time?

Winsol was a few weeks away, a time of happiness and celebration. A time when the family gathered together. She didn’t want to shroud the Blood’s most important celebration with however the healing would manifest itself.

“Admit it,” Marian whispered. “You’re scared. You don’t want this to be serious enough that you need Jaenelle’s gift.”

She’d give her body a few more weeks to recover by itself. If she was still unwell after Winsol, she would use Jaenelle’s gift and make the healing brew—and hope that postponing this decision wasn’t going to be a fatal mistake.

TWELVE

Anticipating his father’s arrival, Dillon set the box of carefully wrapped gifts next to the trunk of clothes. He hadn’t been able to afford much and had spent more than he should have for these Winsol gifts.

During the weeks leading up to Winsol, he had gone from one town to the next, reluctant to use the “if you loved me” spell on girls whose families couldn’t afford a decent payoff and might agree to a handfast because even a minor aristo would enhance their social standing. He couldn’t see himself spending a year with any of those girls—and their families. And the aristo girls he might have targeted for money looked at him like cats looked at mice—something to play with until it was too broken to be amusing.

He’d ended up in a small village where he’d found work in a sweetshop, of all places, and had settled in to do some honest work. The owner of the shop, a Warlord heading into his twilight years, had been pleased by his enthusiasm and glad to have employed a young man who wanted to learn all aspects of the trade.

Then the bitches found him. Not the girls from merchant families who had thought he was shy because he didn’t flirt. No, it was the bitches from the handful of aristo families in the village, who must have talked to someone who had talked to someone. Oh, the first couple of times they came in, they bought the chocolates and other sweets. Then they made it very clear to the owner that they expected to be able to buy something else as well—and if they couldn’t buy the services of that particular sweet, well, a shop depended on the perceived quality of its merchandise, didn’t it?

He didn’t blame the owner for dismissing him. After all, one of the bitches was a second cousin to the District Queen who ruled that town. The owner couldn’t even lodge a complaint about a verbal threat when it would have been his word against an aristo’s. And for what? To defend a young man who might have been a good worker but whose reputation was already sullied?

Now he was back to counting coppers and needing a new place to live. If the bitches had found him at the shop, it wouldn’t be long before they found his lodgings. Whether he opened the door or barricaded it against them, the result would be the same. He would be shunned by the other tenants, and the landlord would want him gone before a respectable place to live became smeared with a reputation for being a kind of brothel.

A quiet knock. Dillon’s pulse raced until he recognized the psychic scent of the man on the other side of the door. Filled with relief, he rushed across the room. His father was here, responding to the letter he’d sent. He was going home for Winsol.

He’d barely opened the door before his father slipped into the room.

“Cold out there,” his father said.

“Yes. Well, it’s Winsol.” Unease began to replace the relief when his father wouldn’t look him in the eyes. “Let me take your coat.”

“No, no. I won’t be long.”

“Of course. I’m all packed.”

His father looked at the trunk and the box of gifts. “Ah.”

“Sir?”

“I’m sorry, Dillon, but we can’t have you staying with us over Winsol.”

The room spun once. “What?”

“Some of our social engagements are with families of quality. Those are important connections for your brothers.”

“All right.” Dillon swallowed bitterness. “I don’t have to attend any parties or—”

“Just you being in the house might give some people the wrong idea.” His father’s voice took on a wheedling tone. “You understand.”

“But it’s Winsol.” It wasn’t about going to parties. It was about taking quiet walks and being with family. “If I can’t come home, where am I supposed to go?”

His father smiled sadly. “If it was my decision . . .”

Except you haven’t made a decision in a lot of years, have you?

“We have to think of your brothers,” his father added. “We have to protect their reputations.”

Dillon felt something break inside him. Felt some part of himself die—and wanted to inflict an equal amount of pain.

“Like father, like son,” he said quietly.

His father looked puzzled—and nervous. “I don’t—”

“I can count, Father. Early baby?” Dillon shook his head. “I don’t think so. I think my being born seven months after you married Mother proved to everyone that you were doing more than cuddling before the marriage contract was signed.”

His father paled.

“While it might have proved sufficient vigor to sire offspring, it also showed a lamentable lack of restraint.” Dillon smiled. “How much did your father pay her father to get that marriage contract signed so that your actions wouldn’t smear your brothers’ reputations?”

“Now see here!”

Bluster without power. Why hadn’t he realized that until now?

“If a whisper were to start in certain circles that your moral weakness was a flaw you had passed on to your sons—all your sons—what do you think would happen to those promising invitations?”

“You wouldn’t!” His father stared at him. “You would ruin your brothers?”

“If you had stood up for me the way your father stood up for you, would we be having this discussion?”

His father sputtered. Dillon smiled and waited.

“You’re no son of mine.”

He’d expected that verbal thrust and blamed the sentiments of the season for the words hurting so much. “In that case, sir, let’s discuss what your sons’ reputations are worth to you.”

Dillon counted the gold marks. One thousand in the first envelope. That was the one his father had brought as “compensation” for his not being allowed to come home. The three thousand gold marks in the other envelope had arrived an hour ago. Which of his uncles had been tapped for the loan? Didn’t matter. His uncles had sons, too, and four thousand marks wasn’t a high price to pay to keep the reputations of all the males in the family from getting dirty. A scandal from a generation back shouldn’t have caused that much worry, so maybe his brothers and cousins weren’t quite as pristine as his father wanted him to believe.

He’d find a quiet village and use a different name. He could be a young widower whose cherished wife had died after a swift illness that the Healer was unable to identify in time. He could take those quiet walks and avoid people. He could purchase a stack of books and spend his evenings reading. He could smile sadly when invited to participate in festivities. He could do that.

And no one would wonder why he wore loneliness like a heavy cloak.

Surreal stood beside Daemon as he listened to another Province Queen struggle to find things to say in order to keep his attention a little while longer. He gave no indication that he knew why these women were struggling or why women whom he’d been on good terms with a year ago now looked like they wished to do nothing but rub themselves against him.

She could have told them to be careful of such wishes.

Since the Province Queen had to deal with Daemon in his role as the Warlord Prince of Dhemlan, she would be cautious. She would be wary. And she would wonder if the Prince was meting out some subtle form of punishment.

Lately, Surreal wondered the same thing.

Despite his insistence that the sexual heat was leashed, it continued to smother her, made her helpless and desperately needy—and resentful. An hour ago, he’d humiliated her by arousing her so fiercely that she’d come when he’d done nothing more than brush his fingertips across her palm. No matter how hard she’d tried to hide her response, she was sure everyone in the room had recognized what had happened. Some of the women might have thought it was terribly romantic to be so consumed by a lover, but it wasn’t romantic. Not anymore. Now it was just terrible. And the cruelest part was the baffled look he gave her, as if he didn’t know what he’d done.

She hadn’t been paying attention to the words, but she heard the sharpness in Daemon’s reply and knew the Queen’s unwitting—and, most likely, unwilling—sexual interest had honed his temper.

“Let’s dance,” she said abruptly, slipping her arm through his. “If you’ll excuse us, Lady?”

“Of course.” The Province Queen looked relieved, as if she’d been pulled away from a steep cliff that had been crumbling beneath her.

Surreal swore silently when she realized the dance was a waltz. Better for the rest of the people in the room—certainly safer for them—but a misery for her. Still, she smiled at the women who looked at her with envy and greed and ambition and let her smile say: Look at that beautiful face, that body. Listen to that voice so deep and dark and luxurious, and imagine what it’s like when he comes to your bed and whispers all the things he’ll do to you. You may look but never touch, because he’s mine. I won the prize, and I’m going to keep him.

“Another hour should be enough to fulfill our official obligations, don’t you think?” Daemon asked as they moved with the other dancers.

“It’s up to you.” She gave his face a quick study when he looked past her. “You all right, Sadi?”

“I have a headache.”

“That’s usually the woman’s excuse.” She wanted to kick herself when he looked at her, confused. “The clash of perfumes is making my head a bit achy too.”

Maybe he wouldn’t want to sleep with her tonight. Did she want that when this need for him was building again?

She’d loved him for decades—centuries, even—and had never thought she could have him as a lover. Had never expected to be Daemon Sadi’s wife.

Lately, as she tried to endure this game he was playing, she didn’t know if she loved him or hated him. Sometimes she wondered what would happen if hate became the dominant emotion. After all, when she’d lived in Terreille, she had been a very good assassin and sex had always been the best bait.

Karla studied the crystal chalice. It had been shattered twice and expertly repaired.

More than repaired. It had been healed with a skill that no longer existed in the Realms. Oh, the seams between the individual pieces were still visible, were, in fact, filled with a hairline of power that didn’t come from anything as simple as the Black.

“It can no longer hold what it was meant to hold. Not completely.”

Karla looked over her shoulder and watched Tersa walk into her web of dreams and visions. She turned back to the chalice. “If it shatters . . .”

“He will fall into the Twisted Kingdom beyond reach,” Tersa said. “The Black gone mad will bring terror to the Realms.”

“Will bring war.”

Daemon Sadi, raging and insane, against armies of Warlords and Warlord Princes. And leading those armies . . .

“The winged boy will not turn against his brother,” Tersa said. “Even if the boy falls, the winged boy will stand with him.”

“Then may the Darkness have mercy on the living,” Karla replied. “And the dead.” Lucivar and Daemon at war with the rest of Kaeleer. The cost would be staggering. “There must be something we can do.”

“Pain will lance the wound, but the blade isn’t sharp enough yet.”

Tersa walked around the chalice, then studied the four leashes that were wrapped around posts at one end and secured to the chalice’s stem at the other. She pointed to something at the base of the chalice.

Karla looked closely to find the pinprick hole. As she watched, a tiny bead of Black power oozed out of the hole, hung for a moment, then fell on one of the leashes. Thank the Darkness it wasn’t the leash braided with chain, but two of the other choices wouldn’t be much better.

As she watched, the bead moved down the leash to the post. Or what should have been the post. What had been the post when she’d seen it in another vision not that long ago.

Now that post looked bloated, and the leash, instead of giving Sadi some measure of control, was being covered, like a tree might grow over a wire wrapped around its trunk. Except the spillage, the excess . . .

“He’s fighting to survive,” Tersa said.

“I told him he was holding on too tight. I told him to relax his hold on that leash.” But when she’d said that in a dream, she hadn’t seen this. Hadn’t realized he was channeling Black power he couldn’t hold and transforming it into more sexual heat than anyone could want or need.

“He doesn’t know.” That realization staggered her. “He thinks he’s still holding the leash, that the sexual heat that surrounds him is the same as it’s always been.”

“Yes,” Tersa agreed.

Karla went back to studying the chalice. “Mother Night, he can no longer survive what he is. The only way for him to get through this is if he could somehow dilute the Black power that is an essential part of who and what he is so that he wouldn’t stand so deep in the abyss.” She looked at the mad Black Widow who was Daemon’s mother. “Could he do that?”

“No,” Tersa replied.

“Is there anyone who could do that?”

They looked at each other.

“Until he’s the one who asks for help, there will be no answer,” Tersa said softly.

“Even if he asks, how can he get an answer from someone who doesn’t exist anymore?”

It disturbed her that Tersa didn’t reply. Made her wonder again if, in her madness, Tersa knew something the rest of them didn’t know.

“Could you tell Surreal?” she asked.

“The girl sees the warning signs but does not trust herself or the boy enough to speak. She has chosen not to listen.”

“Can’t you tell Daemon?”

“Tell him what? That madness will break him, and the price will be the destruction of Kaeleer? Should I tell him this when there is nothing he can do to stop it or change it? Even his physical death won’t stop this. Only one thing can stop this.”

“For the pain to become so great that he asks for the impossible.”

“Yes.”

“And Surreal? This will leave deep wounds in her too.”

“Yes. But she could ask for help, for guidance, for counsel—and has not.”

The air shimmered. The vision faded.

Hell’s fire, Mother Night, and may the Darkness be merciful!

Karla poured a glass of yarbarah and drank it cold.

These weren’t typical dreams and visions. She didn’t usually interact with other people, didn’t have these conversations.

Then again, the two individuals who had invaded the past two visions were also Black Widows, and one was broken and always lived in the Twisted Kingdom, and the other was starting to break and slide into madness.

According to Tersa, telling Daemon would be pointless, but maybe that just depended on who did the telling.

٭Prince Yaslana,٭ she called on a Gray thread. ٭Your presence is required.٭

She’d barely had time to pour and warm another glass of yarbarah before Lucivar walked into her suite. He gave her one sharp look, then scanned the room, stopping when he saw the tangled web still connected to its wooden frame.

“Problem?” he asked.

“How is your brother?”

“Still getting bad headaches. The herb mixture Nurian makes for him relieves the pain to some degree, but she can’t find a physical reason for the headaches.”

No, she wouldn’t, Karla thought.

Lucivar closed the distance between them, his eyes never leaving her face. “You know why this is happening.” It wasn’t a question.

“I know there will be a price to pay before this is resolved, and it may be steep.”

“I won’t sacrifice my wife or children, but anything else . . .”

The Tersa in her vision had been right. If Daemon fell, Lucivar would go with him—and Kaeleer would lie in ruins by the time it was done.

“How is Surreal? Are things all right between her and Sadi?”

A flash of hot anger, swiftly controlled, filled the room.

“This hunt would be easier if you told me what kind of quarry I’m looking for,” Lucivar said.

And this is why the dead shouldn’t interfere with the living. And why Black Widows shouldn’t meddle in other people’s lives unless asked. We have no stake in the consequences of our words.

“I think Daemon’s headaches are being caused by his keeping the sexual heat leashed too tight,” Karla said.

Lucivar looked pointedly at the tangled web, then at her. “That’s it?”

No, that wasn’t all of it, but if Tersa was right about the rest and Daemon had to reach an unendurable threshold of pain in order to keep his mind from shattering, relieving any of the pain could be a mistake. She still felt Lucivar should know at least some of it. Since he wore Ebon-gray, he might see the warning signs of deterioration in Daemon faster than anyone else.

She sighed. “There is some indication that Sadi has . . . damaged . . . his ability to control the heat, and that might be causing some trouble between him and Surreal.”

“Shit.” Lucivar blew out a breath. “Well, it’s Winsol, and in a couple more days all our official obligations will be met and the family will gather for a private celebration. I’ll see if he and I can go off on our own for a few hours during that time. Or as alone as we can be with children and Scelties underfoot.”

Lucivar took a step toward the door.

“I’m sorry I couldn’t be more help.”

He turned back. “I’ve known you since you were seventeen. I saw you through your Virgin Night. I know I’m the only man who has ever touched you that way. And I know when you’re lying. Telling me about the sexual heat? You’re just throwing ash in my face, making it hard for me to see the rest. You always talked straight, Karla. The fact that you’re not doing it now means whatever you saw in that web scares you, and there is nothing you or I or anyone else can do about what’s coming. So Daemon and I will do what we’ve always done: wait until we recognize the face of the enemy—and then fight.”

And if the enemy’s face is the one you see in the mirror? “Let’s hope it won’t come to that.”

“You go ahead and hope. I’m going home to sharpen my knives.”

Once Lucivar was away from the Keep, Karla disposed of the tangled web.

Bad choice. Shouldn’t have told him anything, especially during Winsol.

Nothing she could do now except hope that Daemon asked for help before the fighting began, because once it began, help, even if it came, would come too late.

THIRTEEN

Did I leave it too late?

Marian carefully set the clear Jewel that held the healing spell into a large mug and poured hot water over it. She immediately turned the five-minute hourglass timer, then struggled to think clearly for a few more minutes.

She’d made it through Winsol, feeling more frail with each passing day. She hadn’t wanted to upset everyone during the Blood’s most important celebration of the year, but she hadn’t fooled the adults in the family. Lucivar, Daemon, and Surreal had said nothing, but they’d all watched her.

Someone should be here to watch her. Why hadn’t she thought of that?

٭Lucivar?٭ She should have said something before he’d left to check on the villages in Ebon Rih. She should have . . . ٭Lucivar!٭

He was beyond the range of a Purple Dusk communication thread.

Nurian, then? But what if Nurian tried to stop her from taking this healing brew because the Healer didn’t understand what it was and Marian didn’t have time to explain?

She wasn’t thinking clearly. Wasn’t thinking . . .

Lucivar. Had to tell him, explain, something . . . in case the healing took a while.

She reached for a square of paper and the pencil she used to leave notes for her family. She looked at the sand running in the hourglass. Almost time.

Unable to hold the pencil properly because her fingers didn’t work right, she tried to form letters, tried to think of what to tell him. Lu . . . ci . . . var . . .

No time to explain, no time to call for help. Either Jaenelle Angelline’s healing spell cured the fading that had begun at baby Andulvar’s birth or . . .

She wouldn’t think about the alternative. Jaenelle had made the spell, so it would work.

As soon as the last grain of sand fell, she fished the Jewel out of the mug, wrapped it in a kitchen towel, and put the towel in a bowl. Taking bowl and mug with her, she retreated to her workroom. Besides the sewing cabinet, a worktable, and her loom, there were a daybed and a chair where she could rest or read. This was her private space in the eyrie, where she could enjoy solitude when she needed some. Lucivar insisted that no one was allowed to enter without her permission—and that included him.

The room, which usually felt cozy, now seemed impossibly long as she took step by shuffling step to the daybed. She drank the healing brew. When she tried to use Craft to vanish the bowl and mug, she discovered she couldn’t do something even that basic, so she pushed the items under the daybed to keep the room tidy. Had to keep things tidy, had to . . .

She lay down on the daybed, got as comfortable as she could, and pulled up the two quilts she hoped would help her fight the sudden chill that seemed to wrap around her bones.

Then she felt herself fall into rivers and night skies and cold winter winds. Falling, falling, falling. Couldn’t get her wings to open, couldn’t stop the plunge.

She didn’t think she was supposed to feel these things. Which meant she had squandered Jaenelle Angelline’s last gift by waiting until it was too late.

Lucivar finished his monthly review with the Master of the Guard in Agio, the Blood village at the northern end of Ebon Rih. A fist of Eyriens who worked for him was assigned to help defend Agio and the landen villages and farms that were under the hand of Agio’s Queen, and he had no reason to doubt their loyalty or their willingness to stand and protect. But even the short-lived Rihlanders hadn’t forgotten the stories about the Eyriens who had given their allegiance to Prince Falonar, Lucivar’s former second-in-command, and who hadn’t given any assistance to Agio’s guards when the Jhinka had attacked. So he sat with the Master of the Guard once a month and listened to what was said—and what wasn’t said.

“Sure you won’t join me for the midday meal?” the Master asked.

“I appreciate the offer, but I have other stops to make,” Lucivar replied.

“Well, then, I’ll see you—” The Master’s eyes narrowed.

Turning, Lucivar watched Rothvar fly toward them. Flying fast.

Rothvar backwinged hard and landed a man-length away, gave Agio’s Master a curt nod as he approached them, then focused on Lucivar. “Anything else that needs doing here, I’ll do it. You need to go home.”

The tone, so close to a command, grated against Lucivar’s temper—and he wondered if Rothvar was starting to turn against him, like Falonar had done.

“I still need—,” Lucivar began.

Rothvar gripped Lucivar’s arm hard, a fast move that had Agio’s Master calling in a fighting knife.

“Lucivar,” Rothvar said with quiet intensity. “You need to go home. Now.”

Lucivar read the concern, the sympathy in Rothvar’s eyes—and felt chilled.

٭Marian,٭ he called. ٭Marian!٭ An Ebon-gray communication thread could reach far beyond the borders of Ebon Rih, but that didn’t help him reach a hearth witch who didn’t answer.

“Nurian?” he asked Rothvar.

“She’s already at your eyrie. She sent me to find you.”

He understood the message. Rothvar could have reached him on a Green psychic thread, could have told him to come home. But a Healer had sent a Warlord to find the Warlord Prince he served and deliver the message in person. That told Lucivar more than the words themselves.

“Go,” Rothvar said.

Lucivar launched himself skyward, caught the Red Wind, which was the darkest Web within easy reach, and flew toward home and the woman who held his heart.

Jillian walked with baby Andulvar from one end of the front room to the other. Back and forth. Back and forth. The playroom or the family room would have been more comfortable—certainly warmer—but she needed to keep an eye on the other children while Nurian tried to heal Marian, and Daemonar wouldn’t budge from the eyrie’s front room. He just stood there, tears running down his face as he stared at the door, waiting for his father. And Titian clung to her elder brother. So no one was going anywhere until Lucivar returned or Marian . . .

She didn’t know what had happened to Marian. Daemonar had shown up at Nurian’s eyrie in a panic, saying the baby was crying and his mother wouldn’t wake up. While Nurian rushed to Marian’s side the moment they arrived, Jillian had been left to deal with a baby, a frightened girl, and an anguished Warlord Prince who had taken a long step away from being a boy.

As the minutes crawled by, Jillian watched Daemonar Yaslana age and harden, understood that this moment was one of the forges that would shape the steel and hone the blade of the man he would become.

As he met her eyes, she also understood that he would never again back down from a fight. Any kind of fight.

Lucivar entered the eyrie with a blast of controlled temper and cold air.

“Papa!” Daemonar took a step toward him.

Lucivar glanced at the boy and kept going, heading deeper into the eyrie. “Give me a minute, boyo. Then we’ll talk.”

He stopped at the doorway of Marian’s workroom and took a moment to leash his temper, his fear, his everything. If Nurian was performing a healing, his power could overwhelm her efforts and destroy a healing web. And that might make the difference in whether Marian survived.

He entered the room carefully. So carefully.

Nurian knelt beside the daybed. She waited until he, too, knelt at his wife’s side.

“I don’t know,” Nurian said. “It’s like she’s fallen into a deep healing sleep, but it doesn’t feel like any kind of healing sleep I could create. It’s more—and it’s powerful.”

“An attack of some kind?” he asked.

“I don’t think so.”

“Can you break it?” Lucivar watched Marian breathe. He wrapped his fingers around her wrist and felt the slow beat of her heart. Too slow?

Nurian shook her head. “Right now there’s a chance she’ll come out of this on her own. I just don’t know what would happen if I interfered with this . . . living death.” She sucked in a breath. “My apologies, Prince. That wasn’t what I meant to say.”

Wasn’t what you meant to say out loud, but it was what you meant, what your Healer’s instincts are telling you.

“Is there anything you need from me?” he asked. “Fresh blood for a healing brew?”

Nurian shook her head again. “Maybe when she wakes, but not right now.”

“Then I’ll see what I can do for the children.”

He left the room as quietly and carefully as he had entered it, but he didn’t go to the front of the eyrie, where Daemonar waited. Instead he went to the bedroom he had shared with Marian since the first time they’d made love. He closed the door and locked it.

Then he gathered everything in him and sent it on an Ebon-gray spear thread to the one person he needed right now.

٭Daemon! Daemon!٭ A hesitation before he admitted who might really be needed. ٭High Lord. Please.٭

Looking at Morghann’s hopeful expression and wagging tail, Daemon regretted that he hadn’t used Craft to fetch the novel he’d intended to read for a few minutes before he returned to the stack of reports, post-Winsol social invitations, and a smattering of requests and complaints that were couched as backhanded compliments—not to mention deciding what he wanted to do about a few personal, and highly inappropriate, invitations. But he’d wanted to move instead of using Craft, wanted to stretch his legs by walking up to his suite in the family wing of the Hall.

He hadn’t expected to be ambushed by a different kind of hopeful witch.

٭Play?٭ Morghann asked.

“I can’t, Morghann. I have to work.”

٭More work?٭ Big sigh.

“Why don’t you go out and play with Jaenelle Saetien and Khary? They’re playing in the snow. You would have fun.”

Head down. Tail down. ٭I might do a wrong thing. There might be blame.٭

You’re still fixated on that?

Daemon stifled a sigh and swallowed a hefty measure of guilt. He’d lost count of how many generations of Scelties he’d helped raise, educate, and train, but this was his first experience with an insecure Sceltie. Or was she an overly sensitive Sceltie? Whatever the reason, that one incident with the nutcake a few weeks ago had seriously damaged the friendship between Morghann and Jaenelle Saetien and had made the pup fearful of doing anything without his prior approval.

She was young—that’s what she was. She wouldn’t go through her Birthright Ceremony until spring, so maybe she felt vulnerable.

She felt betrayed—that’s what she felt. He knew it every time Morghann abandoned Jaenelle Saetien in favor of his company. He was the Prince, the power, the adult male who would teach her properly and wouldn’t tell her to do a wrong thing. He made sure his instructions were clear and within her current abilities—and any correction was carefully phrased to rebuild her confidence while still teaching her.

If Morghann had made this choice earlier, he would have let it play out differently, would have accepted Morghann as a friend and companion in the same way that Ladvarian had been a friend and companion—and so much more—to Jaenelle Angelline. But Morghann was clinging to him now because she didn’t trust his daughter, and he needed to help restore that friendship and at least some of that trust if he could.

He sank to his knees, sat back on his heels, and held out a hand. “Come here, little Sister.”

She rushed to him, climbing into his lap and into his arms, happy to be held by the person she trusted more than anyone else.

He petted and soothed until her psychic scent told him she was calm enough to listen.

“Learning to play is important,” he said quietly, continuing his soothing strokes. “That’s why you should go outside and play with Khary and Jaenelle Saetien while I take care of the work I need to do in my study.”

٭Ladvarian knew about human kinds of work,٭ she said timidly. ٭Ladvarian learned a lot of things when he lived with the Lady.٭

Ladvarian was a legend among the Scelties—the first among them to know Jaenelle Angelline, the first to serve in her court. And he was the Warlord who had gathered the kindred who had stubbornly, and against all odds, saved Witch and brought her back to the living.

Brought her back to him.

Was Morghann’s attachment to him just a sign of insecurity, or was she one of the Scelties who was inclined to learn about the human rules of business in order to help him with the school in Scelt that Jaenelle had created decades ago and he still oversaw?

She was young, but he could show her simple things—addition, subtraction—and see if she had any interest. Today, though, she needed a different kind of lesson.

“I would like you to go out and play,” he said. He felt the resistance in her body. “Khary knows how to play in snow. He knows games you can play with human children. You go outside and learn from Khary.”

٭Khary will not do a wrong thing.٭

“No, he won’t. And after you play, you can come back and keep me company while I work. I’ll show you one of the things Ladvarian learned from the Lady.”

Her confidence momentarily bolstered, Morghann trotted out of his bedroom.

Feeling the Gray presence in the next room, he wished the trouble with his wife could be fixed as easily. He knocked on the door between their rooms and waited for Surreal’s permission to enter—and wondered if he’d receive that permission. She finally used Craft to open the door in silent invitation.

“I have a meeting in Halaway,” Surreal said as she tossed a dress with its matching calf-length coat on the bed.

He almost said that a meeting wasn’t listed on the schedule of engagements that Holt kept for both of them, but he didn’t want her making up an excuse for why the meeting wasn’t listed or, worse, lying to him about whom she was meeting.

He didn’t understand what was happening with her. The woman who hadn’t hesitated to aim a crossbow at him a few months ago to make sure she had his undivided attention when they needed to talk was now unwilling to give him a straight answer about anything that touched on her thoughts or feelings. Her emotions were a maelstrom, especially in bed. She hid it well on the surface, but he’d always gone below the surface to gauge the mood of a lover, and she was anger coiled with lust. She didn’t want tenderness anymore, even when he wanted to give it, needed to receive it. She still wanted—still demanded—sex, but she didn’t want to make love.

“I hope the meeting isn’t too tedious.” He stepped close to her, bent his head to give her a light kiss on the lips—and felt her flinch.

٭Daemon!٭ Lucivar, reaching for him.

He raised his head and noted Surreal’s furious relief, but he focused on his brother.

٭Daemon!٭

He took a step back. Lucivar sounded upset. Frightened. Nothing could frighten the Ebon-gray except . . .

“Sadi?” Surreal said.

“I have to go to Ebon Rih.” He hurried to his bedroom, intending to grab some clothes, aware that Surreal had followed him to the doorway. Then . . .

٭High Lord. Please.٭

Daemon stopped. Let his brother’s fear and those words—those words—settle as a weight on his shoulders. Only one reason why Lucivar Yaslana, reaching out and afraid, would request the High Lord of Hell.

“Daemon, what’s wrong?” Surreal entered his bedroom and grabbed his arm. She studied his face, his eyes. “Marian?”

“I think so.”

“What can I do?”

At least in this they were still partners. “Have Jazen pack a couple of changes of clothes for me, and tell him to add additional clothing suitable for staying at the eyrie. And fetch Manny. Tell her she’s needed at Lucivar’s home.”

“There are Eyrien women who can handle the children.”

“I’m sure there are, but none of them will be able to handle Lucivar.”

Daemon rushed through the corridors. The servants who saw him must have alerted Beale and Holt, because both were waiting in the front hall.

“Prince?” Beale asked.

“My presence is required at Prince Yaslana’s eyrie,” Daemon said as Holt helped him into his winter coat. “I may be there a few days.”

“Prince Yaslana asked for your presence?” Beale asked quietly.

He looked his butler in the eyes, understanding Beale’s question. Very few people knew for sure that he had become the High Lord of Hell when Saetan embraced the final death and became a whisper in the Darkness, but Lord Beale, the Red-Jeweled butler at SaDiablo Hall, was one of them.

“Not his brother’s presence,” Daemon replied just as quietly. “Mine.”

Beale dipped his head in acknowledgment.

Daemon walked out of the Hall, went to the landing web, and caught the Black Wind to ride to Ebon Rih.

The land looked bleached of all color to the point that there were barely shades of gray. It looked . . . faded. It looked like Marian felt, like all the vitality that had once filled the land had been siphoned off, leaving little more than a failing memory of what it had been.

She remembered falling, but she didn’t remember landing. Didn’t remember how she’d come to be in this lost, fading place.

Then she heard the voice, the song. The song wasn’t familiar, but she remembered that voice. Recognized that voice.

Not knowing what else to do, Marian followed the voice until she reached a cascade of black water spilling into a warm pool.

Surreal wasn’t sure what to say when Tersa walked into Manny’s cottage carrying a cloth travel bag. Since it wasn’t likely that Tersa would think to pack clothes, the Darkness only knew what was in the bag.

“My boy will need me,” Tersa said. “The winged boy will need me.”

She couldn’t argue with that. If Lucivar’s call for help was an indication that Marian’s illness had taken a turn for the worse, she would need all the assistance she could get to deal with Yaslana’s emotions. She’d been too caught up in her own grief—and the aftermath of the first night she’d spent with Daemon—to remember what Lucivar had been like when his father died. By the time she’d seen him, her pregnancy was the paramount concern, and Lucivar had been Lucivar—arrogant, demanding, and ready to stand on a killing field if that was what it took to protect someone who was a member of their family.

Manny walked into the front room with her own cloth travel bag, looked at Tersa’s, and said, “Mikal.”

Hell’s fire. She’d forgotten about the boy. Not forgotten, exactly, but she hadn’t known Tersa would be coming with her, so no provision had been made for the boy.

٭Holt,٭ she called. ٭Mikal needs to stay at the Hall for a few days. Tell him Manny and Tersa have gone with me to Ebon Rih.٭

٭We’ll take care of him,٭ Holt assured her.

She hustled the two older women into the small Coach she’d chosen for this trip. It was meant for short distances and didn’t have a toilet or sink. Hopefully no one would need such amenities.

Or was she hoping for an excuse to delay their arrival by needing to set down in a village somewhere to accommodate an older woman’s personal needs?

When had she become a coward?

When? It had happened on the day she’d realized that Daemon Sadi changed into the Sadist every time he saw her, spoke to her, made her desperate for him to take her.

Tortured her.

Lucivar knew the moment the Black arrived in Ebon Rih, knew by Daemon’s psychic scent that his brother had understood the message. By the time he reached the front room, the High Lord of Hell walked into his home—but it was his brother who reached out and held him.

“Bad?” Daemon asked.

“She’s unconscious. We can’t wake her. Nurian says it feels like a healing sleep, but it’s more, and it’s powerful, and it’s like nothing she’s seen before. She thinks if we try to break whatever this is, Marian won’t find her way back.” Lucivar rested his forehead against Daemon’s. “If the worst happens . . .”

“If her body dies, I will take care of her. If Marian no longer walks among the living, your children won’t lose their mother. It’s not like our family hasn’t included the demon-dead before. Daemonar might not remember Andulvar, but he’s old enough that he would have memories of his grandfather. We’ll adapt.”

“Right now, there’s just a body in that room, not their mother. If the body dies before Marian returns . . .”

“Then I will find her. Whatever I have to bend or break in order to do that, I will find her and bring her back.” Daemon’s hand closed around the back of Lucivar’s neck, both comfort and warning. “Do you understand me?”

Lucivar eased back enough to look at the man who held him. It didn’t matter what the rest of the Blood called Daemon—Prince, High Lord, Sadist—for him there was one word that meant all of those things and more: brother.

“I understand you.” He stepped back. “I’d better check on the children. Jillian’s been looking after them, but I’ve left her on her own long enough.”

As he turned to head for the playroom, Daemon fell into step beside him.

“I’ll check the food supplies, bring in what we’ll need,” Daemon said.

Lucivar snorted. “Give it a couple of hours. Rothvar came to find me when Nurian was called to the eyrie. By now all the Eyriens in the valley and most of the Blood in Riada know Marian is very ill. I expect the casseroles, cakes, and other offerings will be arriving anytime now.”

“Then I’ll handle that while you concentrate on the children.” Daemon hesitated. “You feel easy about Rothvar taking charge while you tend to things at home?”

“He’s a good man—and an honorable one.”

Lucivar knew why Daemon asked the question, and he knew Rothvar’s life depended on his answer. Prince Falonar had been sent away to serve in a Rihlander Queen’s court and had disappeared soon after. Most people assumed he’d gone into hiding somewhere in the Askavi mountains or, more likely, had returned to Terreille. Lucivar had always suspected that the man walking beside him was the only person who knew exactly what had happened to Falonar after he vanished from Lady Perzha’s court.

They heard the baby fussing before they walked into the playroom. Jillian looked frazzled as she rocked the baby, and Titian rushed over to them the moment they entered the room.

As Lucivar hugged his daughter, he scanned the room. “Where’s Daemonar?”

“He left a while ago to use the toilet and said he was going to wait with you until Prince Sadi arrived,” Jillian said.

Lucivar looked at Daemon.

٭He wouldn’t do anything foolish,٭ Daemon said.

٭He found Marian, and he’s upset.٭ And the mountains could be a dangerous place, especially for a boy preoccupied with worry about his mother.

Daemon walked out of the room. By the time Lucivar untangled himself from Titian and offered half-assed reassurances to her and Jillian, Daemon met him in the corridor.

“The boy’s not here,” Daemon said.

“I am going to kick his ass all the way down the mountain for leaving and not telling someone,” Lucivar snarled.

“Let’s find him first. Why don’t you fly over the mountains and see if you can pick up his psychic scent? He’s probably tucked in a hidey-hole somewhere. I’ll check the Keep and Riada.”

“Let’s try one thing first.” Lucivar gathered a measure of the Ebon-gray and let power and temper thunder from one end of the valley to the other. ٭DAEMONAR!٭

They waited. There were queries from the Eyrien men—some startled by his summons, some wary, and many responding with concern—but as the minutes passed, his son didn’t answer.

If the boy had done something fatally careless, it could take a few hours for him to make the transition to demon-dead. He wouldn’t be able to respond until then.

Cursing himself for not paying enough attention to Daemonar’s whereabouts, Lucivar left the eyrie to fly over the mountains in search of his son.

Daemonar looked around and breathed a sigh of relief. He had reached the Misty Place. He never knew when it would happen, couldn’t say what combination of need and feelings brought him here. He’d come to realize that if he wanted to be here but didn’t need to be here, the problem was something he could, and should, figure out for himself—or ask for more ordinary help with.

But he always found this place when he really needed to talk to her.

“Auntie J.?”

The sound of a delicate hoof striking stone.

Daemonar turned, keeping his eyes focused at about knee height. Hooves came into view. Knees. Halfway up the thighs was the hem of a sapphire garment. That provided enough reassurance—and disappointment—for him to look at the rest of Witch, who had been the living myth and dreams made flesh. Still a myth. Still a dream. But no longer flesh. And never like this in the flesh. Except here.

He’d begun wishing that he hadn’t been such a prudish little boy the first time he’d seen her in this form. She’d been naked that first time, unconcerned about a shape that revealed the Self that had lived within the flesh. Amused and a little baffled by his reaction, she’d created a garment to cover what the boy hadn’t wanted to see.

He wasn’t interested in the titties or the thatch of hair between her legs. He figured all girls had those things. But here, in this place, her golden hair was more like fur, and her hands had a cat’s retractable claws, and there was the small spiral horn on her forehead. And there was that faun’s tail visible through a back slit in the garment. Along with the delicately pointed ears, those were the things he could see, but what else was now hidden under cloth that he hadn’t observed that first time?

Tiger and Tigre, Arcerian cat and unicorn, satyr and centaur, Dea al Mon. So many races had yearned so long for this dream that her Self reflected all of them. But the eyes, those ancient sapphire eyes, were the same as they had been when she’d walked among the living.

More than his beloved Auntie J., she was his Queen, always and forever. He knew it—and she knew it. That was why she allowed him to come here when he needed her.

“What’s wrong, boyo?” Witch asked.

“Mother is sick. She’s really sick, and she won’t wake up. I found her.”

She studied him, then turned her head as if listening to something only she could hear. Back to him, frowning. “Didn’t Marian use the healing spell I left for her?”

“What?”

“A last gift. Did she use it?”

“I don’t know.”

A stone bench appeared. Witch sat and waited for him to join her.

He sat and leaned toward her. What he could see was nothing but a shadow, an illusion created by Craft and power. If he leaned against her, he would fall right through the shadow. If she, on the other hand, leaned against him, she felt real and skin touched skin. He didn’t know why it was true; he just accepted. She had never been like everyone else when she had walked among the living. He saw no reason for her to be like everyone else now.

She leaned just enough for their arms to brush.

“When you found Marian, did you see anything that looked like this?” Witch asked. A black translucent stone floated in the air in front of them. “Or this?” The stone became clear.

Daemonar thought for a moment, then shook his head. “I wasn’t paying attention to anything but Mother, but I don’t remember seeing anything like that.”

“Look around as soon as you can. If you find the stone and it’s clear, then Marian used the healing spell, and that’s why you can’t wake her. She’s in a healing sleep, and she’ll wake when the healing is complete.”

“What if I find the stone and it’s still black?” Daemonar asked.

Sorrow in her eyes. “That means she left it too late and didn’t have a chance to make the healing brew.”

“Could we give it to her now?”

“No.”

He didn’t ask why. If Witch said it wouldn’t help now, then it wouldn’t.

She nudged him. “Your mother is not a fool. She wouldn’t have wasted the gift by not using it when she needed it.” She pursed her lips. “Where is your body, boyo?”

“At your cabin in Ebon Rih.”

“Inside?”

He shook his head. “Only Uncle Daemon goes inside. He stays there sometimes. And Mother goes in once a month to clean. But no one else is allowed to go in.”

“So you’re outside?”

“Yes.”

“In the cold. It’s winter there, isn’t it?”

“Uh-huh.”

Hell’s fire. She was getting that look—the one she got just before she whacked him upside the head for being stupid.

“Did you at least remember to put a warming spell around yourself so your body doesn’t freeze to death while you’re here?” Witch asked sweetly.

Sweetly was bad. Very, very bad. She didn’t sound like syrup unless she was really pissed off. Of course, her sounding cold was even worse. Potentially deadly.

Fortunately, he had the correct answer. “Yes, I did. I put a warming spell on my cape and another one around me. And a bubble shield for protection.”

Her lips twitched. “Worried about getting your ass kicked?”

He was more worried about her preventing him from visiting her anymore if he got careless with his body. “Maybe.”

“Go inside next time. Or stay in your own room, where you’ll be safe—and warm.”

“Yes, Auntie,” he said meekly.

Her silvery, velvet-coated laugh rang through the Misty Place. “Meek does not suit you, boyo.”

He grinned.

When she stood, so did he, knowing this visit had come to an end. He always wished to stay longer, but he understood that the Misty Place stood so deep in the abyss it wasn’t a safe place for him. For anyone. Except Witch.

“If I find the stone and it’s clear, can I tell Papa? He’d want to know that Mother will get better.”

Witch looked away and he wondered what she could see. Or what she had already seen.

“If you find the stone and it’s clear, let someone else explain it to him.”

“Who?”

“Oh, there are one or two people around who could explain it to him without getting into trouble—or having him ask awkward questions when it isn’t time for him to hear the answers.” She smiled. “Time for you to go, boyo.”

He bowed, a Warlord Prince acknowledging his Queen. “Lady.”

“Try to stay out of trouble.”

“But I only get to visit when I’m in trouble.”

She faded away, but her laughter lingered, surrounding him as the Misty Place also faded away.

Daemon stopped at the Keep to inform Draca and Geoffrey that Daemonar was missing and asked that they let him know if the boy turned up looking for shelter or a hot meal. If the boy was still missing by sunset, Draca would inform any of the demon-dead currently in residence and they, too, would join the search.

He didn’t think it would be necessary. He knew where he would have gone for the illusion of comfort—where he still went several times a year.

He dropped from the Winds and landed in front of the cabin Saetan had built for Jaenelle Angelline when she was an adolescent—a solitary place on the outskirts of Riada where she could be Jaenelle instead of Witch or the Queen of Ebon Askavi. During the years when he and Jaenelle had been married, whenever they needed a couple of quiet days to be nothing more than a man and woman in love, they came here. Since her death, on the nights when he stayed here, he still dreamed that he slept with her, still smelled her unique scent on the sheets when he woke, even though he knew that wasn’t possible. It didn’t matter if it was self-delusion; the nights when he dreamed of nothing more than Jaenelle being there with her body lightly pressed against his back quieted something inside him that nothing else could—not even being with Surreal, despite his love and respect for the woman who was now his wife. In those dreams he felt that he could stretch a part of himself that was usually coiled and tightly leashed, could purr and show the claws he usually hid from the rest of the Blood.

In those dreams he could be everything he was in all of his terrible glory.

Sometimes he caught Lucivar looking at him, studying him, and knew his brother feared the day when the dreams stopped and nothing would quiet all that he was.

Pushing those thoughts aside, Daemon tried the front door and frowned. Still locked. He scanned the porch, letting a touch of his Birthright Red power drift over the floor and furniture in case the boy thought a Green sight shield would keep him hidden.

Nothing on the porch, but he did sense the Green nearby.

Since he wasn’t about to wade through knee-deep snow to go around the cabin, Daemon used Craft to air walk above the snow, a neat trick Jaenelle Angelline had taught him long ago.

He found the boy curled up against the back door, unmoving. Taking the step that brought his foot just above the narrow back porch, he reached out, relieved to feel the Green shield—and frustrated, because he didn’t want to destroy the shield unless the boy was hurt.

“Daemonar.”

Daemonar raised his head and looked at him with eyes that held a familiar mix of emotions—grief, guilt, and, most of all, relief. And that made him wonder if, in this place, he was the only one who dreamed.

“Am I in trouble?” Daemonar asked.

“Let’s just say your disappearance has exercised your father’s temper.”

“Everything has a price,” the boy muttered as he stood up, his movements stiff from the cold.

Relieved that the boy hadn’t done himself any harm, Daemon allowed annoyance to fill his voice. “Hell’s fire, why didn’t you go inside instead of staying out here to freeze?”

“No one is allowed to use the cabin.”

The boy had a point. Daemon welcomed no one to this cabin, not even Lucivar, and barely managed gratitude and grace when Marian cleaned the cabin or left food for him. Of course, she didn’t give him any choice. Cleaning the cabin had been one of the services she had performed for the Queen of Ebon Askavi. As long as the cabin stood, Marian would continue performing that service.

Daemon pointed to what looked like a slice of a tree trunk nailed to the side of the cabin. He pressed his fingers to the center. Using basic Craft, he lifted the inside half of the trunk, the separation skillfully made along one of the tree’s rings so that it went unnoticed. He took out the key hidden in the back of the removed section and held it up.

“Key to the back door. Next time, use it.” Daemon looked at his nephew and let some of his power whisper between them. “But only you. Understood?”

“Yes, sir.”

Satisfied that the boy really did understand, Daemon replaced the key and fit the center piece of the trunk back into place. “You used a warming spell?” He hadn’t sensed any Craft except the shield, but the warming spell could have been used up.

“Yes, sir. Two of them.”

Since the boy was all right, it was time to contact Lucivar. ٭Prick? I found him. He’s fine.٭

٭He won’t be when I kill him flatter than dead.٭

Flatter than dead had become a family catchphrase that indicated annoyed relief rather than true anger at a child’s misbehavior.

٭We’re going to stop for a hot drink and something to eat before returning to the eyrie,٭ Daemon said.

٭Going to fortify him for the scolding when he gets home?٭ Lucivar asked dryly.

٭As an indulgent uncle, what else would I do?٭ Why did he get the impression that Lucivar was relieved to have him away from the eyrie a while longer?

No questions about where the boy had been found. There was no need. Lucivar would know everything when they talked later that day.

“Come on, boyo,” Daemon said. “We’ll stop at The Tavern for some soup.”

“And hot chocolate?”

He should withhold the treat as a penalty for upsetting the adults, but today an occasionally indulgent uncle would learn more than a strict one. “And hot chocolate.”

Surreal hung her clothes in the wardrobe and tucked her underwear in one of the dresser drawers before turning to Tersa. “Would you like me to help you unpack?”

Tersa dropped her travel bag next to the dresser. “The boy is sleeping in another room?”

“Yes. You and I are sharing this room.” And a bed, since none of the guest rooms at the eyrie had two beds. She could squeeze a daybed into the room, but those were being used by Manny, who was staying in the baby’s room, and Jillian, who was staying with Titian. Lucivar had said nothing when she told him she would stay with Tersa. Maybe he had his own concerns about a broken Black Widow staying in an unfamiliar place without someone close by who would know if she woke up and wandered out of the eyrie. They were on a mountain, after all.

Lucivar hadn’t asked why she didn’t intend to sleep with her husband, an indifference she put down to his being preoccupied with Marian’s illness and Daemonar’s disappearance. She wasn’t sure what Daemon was going to say about the sleeping arrangements.

She found out an hour later when Daemon and Daemonar returned.

“Is Daemonar all right?” she asked, staying just a step away from the door of the primary guest room while Daemon hung up the clothes Jazen had packed for him.

“He just needed some private time to think,” Daemon replied.

He didn’t look at her, but she could feel that sexual heat drifting toward her—a lure to compel her to give in to something she wanted to resist while they were at the eyrie. They weren’t here for him to play his games. They were here to help his brother.

“You’re sleeping elsewhere?” he asked mildly.

“Tersa came with us. Someone needs to keep an eye on her, and Manny is looking after the baby.”

“You should do what you think best.”

Something under those bland words. Something that might be dangerous.

“I do think it’s best while we’re here,” she said, her voice sharp before she regained enough control to remember that courtesy was the way most of the Blood survived interacting with the most dangerous among them. “I’ll let you finish unpacking while I figure out what to do with all the food that’s arriving.”

He turned and looked at her. She couldn’t interpret what she saw in his gold eyes, but the door closing as soon as she stepped into the corridor—and the click of the lock—expressed his feelings quite well.

Dressed in the flannel sleep pants he occasionally wore on cold winter nights, Daemon put a warming spell on the sheets before settling into bed. Just as well that Surreal had chosen to sleep elsewhere. If she’d stayed with him, she’d want sex, and he wasn’t in the mood to oblige her.

His smile was sharp and a little bitter when someone knocked on the Black-locked door. Then Lucivar said, ٭Bastard?٭

After creating a dim ball of witchlight that floated near the ceiling, he released the Black lock and sat up as Lucivar walked into the room and closed the door.

“Problem?” he asked.

Lucivar stared at a spot on the wall just past Daemon’s shoulder. “I can’t sleep in that bed. Not tonight.”

His arrogant Eyrien brother seldom hesitated, but they both knew who had to extend the invitation.

Daemon lay back and raised his right arm. Lucivar came around to that side of the bed and tucked in beside him, laying his head on Daemon’s shoulder. How many times had they slept this way over the years when one of them was wounded in body or heart? Protection and comfort. A silent promise that the one who was hurting more could rest because the other would keep watch.

Tonight that was Lucivar.

Daemon said nothing. Whatever was happening to Marian they would face together. As his fingers drifted through Lucivar’s hair, he added a soothing spell that would ease his brother into needed sleep.

Once Lucivar fell asleep, Daemon allowed himself to drift toward his own rest. Then the door opened and Daemonar hurried in. The boy didn’t even blink when he saw his father and uncle together. If anything, he looked relieved—and piled onto the bed, fitting himself against Daemon’s other side.

“All the girls have someone to sleep with,” Daemonar whispered. Then he yawned, made a snuffling sound, and went alarmingly limp.

Before Daemon could decide if the boy was ill or really fell asleep that fast, Lucivar reached across and wrapped a hand around the boy’s arm, a move so ingrained that neither Eyrien woke—and Daemon relaxed.

When Lucivar took Daemonar hunting on the mountain, he probably allowed the boy a lot of freedom to learn—and to make small mistakes. But at night, when they both needed sleep and the boy might make a potentially fatal move? Daemon imagined Lucivar kept a hand on his son as protection and would wake immediately if he sensed anything wrong.

Someday, when baby Andulvar was old enough to join them, he would sleep between father and elder brother, protected by both.

And hopefully, when that day came, they would return to the eyrie after a hunt to find Marian working in her garden or reading a book, whole and healthy and able to welcome them home.

Marian stood under the cascade of warm, soft black water. The song, that familiar voice, seemed to fall with the water, seeping into her skin, down into her muscles, through her bones right into the marrow.

She wasn’t sure how long she stood under the water before she felt something trickle between her legs. Alarmed, she started to reach for herself when she noticed a fine black silt dripping from the ends of her fingers.

Stay, the voice sang. Stay until the water runs clear. Stay until what doesn’t belong is washed away.

She felt a tickle, a trickle along her scalp, and tipped her head back to let the black water wash more silt away. And as she listened to the song, she stayed beneath the black water that washed away what didn’t belong.

FOURTEEN

Propped on one elbow, Dillon watched the woman sleep.

He hadn’t been looking for anyone during the days of Winsol, and it had taken him a couple of days to realize the witch who was a decade older than he had focused on him for more than brief conversation. He hadn’t thought much of her interest in him until she began sharing her sad tale about the lover who had jilted her. They had been handfasted and were going to marry, were going to have children and be together forever. But he’d abandoned her, had packed up his things and had left one minute after the handfast expired.

After being with her a couple of days, Dillon didn’t blame her former lover for running. He’d accepted her invitation for “company”—which, it turned out, had meant sex—because he was lonely and still hurting from his own family’s rejection during the days of the Blood’s most important celebration. In the days since then, he’d likened her to one of those plants that ensnared its prey and then sucked the life out of it.

She constantly compared him with her previous lover. Favorably, yes, but he felt like she was ticking off boxes on a list. Or, worse, was simply desperate to acquire another lover to prove the other man was wrong about her and whatever had been said wasn’t true. What had, at first, seemed like a need for reassurance now felt smothering.

She’d asked too many questions about the cottage and village where he claimed to live, had pouted when he hadn’t leaped at her suggestion of coming for a long visit, and had started making “teasing” remarks about him having another woman as the reason for his lack of enthusiasm. She’d mentioned too many times how she longed to have children, making him glad that he kept the contraceptive brew he used hidden and shielded. He wondered if she’d tampered with the brew her former lover used, intending to get pregnant and hold a child for ransom to ensure the man would dance to her tune until the Birthright Ceremony, when he would either gain legal rights to his child or be denied forever.

He’d told himself he wanted a handfast, wanted a way to begin restoring his reputation and honor. But not with her. All he could see with her was a year, or a lifetime, of misery.

He did want a handfast, but he didn’t want to be the one feeling the knife’s edge. Not again. He needed someone he could control.

His thankfully temporary lover opened her eyes, smiled, and reached for him.

Her fingers were skilled. But the desperation and calculation in her eyes confirmed that he needed to convince her to let him leave. Time to find out how well that spell worked and whether it was worth what he’d paid to learn it.

If you loved me . . . If you loved me . . . If you loved . . .

Surreal dreamed of hands that caressed her until she felt helpless with pleasure, dreamed of long black-tinted nails that were sharp as a razor slicing her thighs. She dreamed of her husband pleasuring her as he watched her bleed out—and woke in a panic, on the verge of a savage orgasm.

Using her own hand would take away the worst of the need, but it wouldn’t satisfy. She’d learned that the hard way. Everything else was a pale substitute for Sadi’s touch.

Tersa wasn’t in bed, wasn’t in the room. Surreal had no idea how long the Black Widow had been gone, but she’d find Tersa later. Right now her husband needed to fulfill one of his duties. The bastard.

Daylight but still early. She hurried through the eyrie’s corridors to the primary guest room, grateful she hadn’t run into anyone—and wondered why Lucivar, at least, wasn’t up and about yet.

She didn’t knock on the door. She just walked in and took a step toward the bed before she stumbled and stared.

Daemon in the middle of the bed, his chest bare, his face turned away from the door, his cheek resting against Lucivar’s head. And Lucivar, asleep, his head on Daemon’s shoulder, one arm draped across Daemon’s belly.

Sadi and Yaslana didn’t talk about their past—especially not their past with each other. She’d been a whore for decades before coming to Kaeleer, had accommodated the kind of sex play that required discretion. As she stared at them, she didn’t wonder what they had been to each other in the past; she wondered if they still . . . indulged . . . on occasion.

Then, finally, she noticed Daemonar tucked in with them.

No matter what Daemon might do with his brother, she couldn’t see either man playing any kind of sex game when the boy was in the room.

Realizing they’d slept together for comfort and not sex, when she desperately needed sex, made her furious with both men.

She didn’t know how long she’d stood there, staring at them, when Tersa said behind her, “Puppies in a basket.” Then Manny let out a huffing laugh and said, “Huh. Some things don’t change.” As if seeing Lucivar and Daemon together was nothing special—was, in fact, ordinary.

She’d been distracted by the older women for a moment, just a moment. When she looked back at the bed, Daemon still slept, but Lucivar’s gold eyes were open and fixed on her—a predator assessing a potential adversary.

Surreal backed away. Turned and ran to her own room.

As she dressed, she tried to decide if she was distressed or relieved that the sexual heat that pumped out of Sadi these days had ensnared the Ebon-gray, even if it was for nothing more than comfort. What chance did she have of escaping if someone as strong as Lucivar could get pulled in?

Daemon pulled casseroles out of the cold box. One had eggs, ham, and some vegetables. Suitable for breakfast. He put that dish and another one in the oven to heat, then started making the coffee.

Marian’s condition hadn’t changed overnight. At this point, he’d take no further decline as a good sign—just as he recognized Lucivar’s temper running sharp and hot as a sign of trouble. Something had sparked that temper. Or someone.

He’d picked up a hint of Surreal’s psychic scent in the room when he woke. He didn’t know who had still been in the bed or in the room when she walked in, but he suspected that her coming in and looking for a morning ride was the reason for Lucivar’s temper. Not because she wanted the ride but because she didn’t want to share a bed with her husband for any other reason.

Or had she seen them and said something? Sweet Darkness, please don’t let her say anything to Lucivar. If she wants to stick a verbal knife into someone, let it be me.

Tersa wandered into the kitchen. He managed to get half a slice of toast into her and a couple sips of tea before she wandered off again. Lucivar had an Ebon-gray shield around the eyrie, effectively locking everyone in, so Daemon wasn’t worried about Tersa beyond the usual worry of coaxing her into eating enough.

When Jillian entered the kitchen, with fatigue smudging the skin under her eyes, he said, “Scrambled eggs for the children?”

She blinked at him, and he watched her effort to wake up. “I can make them.”

Daemon smiled. “No, darling, I can make them if you think the children will eat them. What about you? Do you want to eat the casseroles I’m heating for the adults, or would you prefer to eat scrambled eggs this morning?”

Being included with the adults perked her up. He poured coffee for her and spooned out generous portions of the casseroles for both of them. Her cheeks pinkened with pleasure over his attention. After finishing her own breakfast, she took a tray for Nurian so that her sister, who had arrived a few minutes ago to check on Marian, could have a quiet meal before resuming the duties of a Healer; then she returned a few minutes later to make up a tray for Manny, who was watching the baby.

Daemon stood at the counter, eating the food out of necessity but not enjoying it. Right now, food was just fuel for the body, and he needed to be at his strongest to deal with Lucivar today.

Daemonar entered the kitchen, looking not as worried as Daemon expected the boy to be but more than willing to reduce the amount of food currently hot and available.

Except the boy set his plate on the table and made no move to eat.

“I guess you got squashed with me taking up space last night,” Daemonar said, staring at his plate.

“Your aunt Jaenelle and I used to share a bed with an eight-hundred-pound Arcerian cat. Compared to Kaelas, you don’t take up much room.”

Daemonar took a bite of the ham-and-egg casserole. “All that fur must have been nice in the winter. Warm.”

“Yes, it did provide warmth.” Daemon sipped his coffee, wondering if the boy was fishing for something or just making an observation. “Arceria is so cold and has so much snow in the winter, the Arcerian cats build dens under the snowpack, and there is still enough snow above the dens that a grown man could walk over them and not fall through. Despite that, the damn cat used to whine about Jaenelle’s feet being cold.”

Daemonar grinned. “Did you whine about Auntie J.’s cold feet?”

“Husbands do not whine about cold feet.”

“If they’re smart, they put a warming spell around their legs before their darlings scramble into bed and put those feet on them,” Lucivar added, walking into the kitchen.

“How do you learn things like that?” Daemonar asked.

Daemon looked at Lucivar. They looked at the boy and said, “Experience.”

Daemonar pushed away his plate, the food uneaten. “I want to help watch over Mother.”

“No,” Lucivar said.

“Of course,” Daemon said at the same time. “All the Warlord Princes in the family should take a turn. If you’re finished with breakfast, why don’t you take the first watch?”

As he expected, Lucivar turned on him as soon as the boy left the kitchen.

“He’s too young to see his mother like that,” Lucivar snarled.

“He knows something, Prick,” Daemon said softly. “He found out something yesterday and he’s been searching. When he volunteered to dry the dishes last night, he tried to be subtle—”

Lucivar snorted.

“—but he was looking through the cupboards for something. He didn’t find it. I think he wants to look around Marian’s workroom without us asking questions.”

“What could he be looking for?” Lucivar asked.

Daemon filled a mug with black coffee and handed it to his brother. “We’ll know that when he finds it.”

Daemonar opened the doors and drawers of the cabinet that held all of his mother’s sewing and weaving supplies. A Jewel the size of the one Auntie J. had shown him could be hidden anywhere, tucked into a skein of yarn or hidden in folds of cloth. It could even be in a jar of buttons. He couldn’t sense any power, so he’d have to take everything out, and if he couldn’t put it back as she’d had it, his mother would kill him flatter than dead.

If she ever woke up.

“Looking for secrets?” Tersa asked.

Daemonar suppressed a yelp. He hadn’t thought she’d noticed him when he entered the room. She’d been staring at Marian and hadn’t responded when he’d greeted her, leaving him free to poke around.

He approached the chair next to the daybed and considered what he could say. You never lied to Tersa. That was one of his father’s and uncle’s strictest rules, because Tersa’s hold on the world as the rest of them saw it was tenuous. But she was a Black Widow, and Witch had said there was one or two people who could explain things to his father once Daemonar found the clear Jewel. Could Tersa be one of them?

“Yes,” he said. “There is something I need to find. A gift Mother might have used before . . .” He looked at Marian.

“Nothing on, nothing over. What is left?” Tersa looked at him expectantly.

Was she seeing this room or some other place? Was this a riddle or an actual question?

Nothing on. Nothing over. He scanned the furniture around the daybed. Someone would have checked the covers already and there was nothing above the bed. So what was left?

“Under.” Daemonar dropped to his hands and knees and looked under the bed. “Found something.”

As his hand closed around the mug, it occurred to him that his mother might have needed to use something as a chamber pot if she’d been too ill to move or call for help.

The mug was empty, a dried stain at the bottom that looked like some kind of tea or witch’s brew. The bowl had one of the kitchen towels. Since it was dry and didn’t smell, he sat back on his heels and had started to unwrap the towel when the door opened and his father and uncle walked in.

“What did you find, boyo?” Daemon asked.

He glanced at his father, who stood behind his uncle, as if not daring to come closer. Better to talk to Uncle Daemon, who knew lots of things about the Hourglass’s Craft. “I’m not sure. It depends.”

Daemon went down on one knee beside him. “Open it.”

He unwrapped the towel and breathed a sigh of relief.

“A clear Jewel.” Daemon sounded puzzled. “Why have a clear Jewel here? They’re only used as beacons on landing webs.”

“They can have other uses,” Tersa said. “Can hold a different kind of beacon.”

“A trap or a spell of some kind?” Lucivar asked, sounding like there were shards of glass in his throat.

“Not a trap.” Tersa stared at the clear Jewel. “A beacon holds special kinds of healing spells. This one . . . Dark water washes away what doesn’t belong. Dark water—and a song in the Darkness.”

Lucivar sucked in a breath. Daemon tensed, and the room suddenly filled with a yearning that made Daemonar want to cry—or reveal a different secret.

“Tersa?” Daemon said softly. “You’ve seen something like this before?”

“She gave me some beacons before she left the Realm of the living. Like but not the same. A special brew that helps Tersa find the path back to the boy and the winged boy and the Mikal boy when Tersa wanders too far. She saw. She knew.” Tersa laid a hand over Marian’s. “Once the black water washes away what doesn’t belong, the hearth witch will be shown the path home.”

“So we wait,” Lucivar said.

“We wait,” Daemon agreed.

Tersa pointed at the clear Jewel. “The beacon must be returned to the Keep. That is part of the bargain.”

Daemon rewrapped the Jewel in the towel, vanished it, then tapped Daemonar’s shoulder. “Come with me.” He looked at Lucivar.

Daemonar wasn’t sure what was said on a psychic thread, but as he walked out of the room with his uncle, he looked back to see his father kneel beside the daybed.

Daemon kept a hand on Daemonar’s shoulder as they walked through the eyrie toward the front room, where Lucivar would join him in a few minutes. There were so many questions he wanted to ask, needed to ask. But he couldn’t ask any of them.

Did you talk to her? Can you see her?

Witch had told him after Jaenelle Saetien’s Birthright Ceremony that she wouldn’t come to him again, because he needed to stay connected to the living. But when he stood in the Black at his full strength, she was a song in the Darkness, a reminder that he wasn’t alone. He had to accept that was all she could—would—give him.

He wouldn’t jeopardize whatever gift Witch had granted the boy, but there might be a way to find specific answers to this particular puzzle.

“You probably saw one of those clear Jewels when you were younger,” he said, keeping his tone conversational. “You would have seen them used in village landing webs and could have wondered what other use might be made of these smaller pieces. Your aunt Jaenelle might have explained that pieces of clear Jewels could be used to hold spells for a long time.”

Daemonar said nothing, but he felt the boy tensing under his hand.

“Things you’d been told, memories of seeing Jewels like that, might have woven themselves into a dream, which is how you thought about looking for the thing that had contained an unconventional healing spell. Does that sound possible?”

“Yes, sir.”

“That’s what I thought.” Daemon felt the boy relax a bit. “Why not tell your father and me? We would have helped you look for it.”

Hesitation. He and Lucivar needed to get to the Keep before the sun got much higher, but he hoped his brother wouldn’t walk into the front room just yet.

“I didn’t want to tell him unless the Jewel was clear again,” Daemonar finally said.

“If it wasn’t clear?”

“It meant Mother didn’t have a chance to use the healing spell and it would be too late.”

“You’ve got balls, little Brother, to carry the weight of that knowledge in order to spare your father.” Daemon leaned down enough for them to be eye to eye. “But we share the weight in this family. If you can’t tell one of us, think about telling the other. Understood?”

“Yes, sir.”

Did you talk to her? Can you see her?

Before he could ask a question that might break the boy’s willingness to tell him anything in the future, Lucivar walked into the front room and Daemonar bolted.

“You think we’ll get any answers at the Keep?” Lucivar asked as they put on their outer garments.

“That will depend on whether we get there before Karla retires for the day,” Daemon replied.

Lucivar solved the problem of Karla’s needing to retire to conserve the reservoir of power in her Gray Jewel: he opened a vein and filled a small cup with fresh blood.

Accepting the cup, she took a sip and made a face. “Next time, consider doing this when you’re calmer.”

He wasn’t sure if temper really changed the taste of blood or if she was simply commenting about the emotions she felt pumping in him. “We have questions. We need answers.”

She drank the rest of the blood. Two swallows. Setting the cup aside, she said, “Marian?”

“In a way,” Daemon replied. He called in a kitchen towel, unwrapped it, and held up the clear Jewel. “Whatever was in this Jewel is the reason Marian fell into a healing sleep unlike anything Nurian had seen before. We’re hoping that, being a Healer and a Black Widow, you have seen something like this.”

Karla took the Jewel, rubbed a thumb over the surface. “If you’re asking if a Healer like Nurian could create a healing spell and place it in a clear Jewel to lie dormant for decades, the answer is no.”

“What about other kinds of spells?” Daemon asked. “We can wrap spells into objects. Death spells and witchfire are a couple that come to mind.”

“Yes, but power fades over time and the potency of a spell fades with it. If the spells you mentioned fade, someone may survive the death spell, or the witchfire might burn out quickly. A healing spell has to work when it’s needed and be as potent as when it was made.”

Daemon nodded toward the Jewel. “Could you do this?”

“Not even when I walked among the living.” Karla studied both of them. “But you already know there was only one witch, one Healer, who had figured out how to do this.”

Lucivar felt like his heart would explode in his chest. “Jaenelle could have warned us. Warned me.”

Karla held up the Jewel. “This was between Marian and Jaenelle. I’m guessing they didn’t tell you because neither of them knew when the spell would be needed, and both of them knew that when the time came, there was nothing you could do to change the outcome for good or ill. Not saying anything to you before she drank the brew? That’s something to discuss with your wife when she’s feeling better.”

Oh, yes, they would have a discussion. “Tersa described the spell as dark water that washes away what doesn’t belong. Dark water—and a song in the Darkness.”

“Tersa also said that Marian would be shown the path home,” Daemon added.

“Are you sure Jaenelle did this?” Lucivar asked. If his sister had created the spell, then Marian would survive. But if this was an attempt to kill his wife and leave her Self imprisoned somewhere . . .

“Do you remember when I was poisoned and Jaenelle did the healing that saved me?” Karla asked.

Daemon shuddered. He had assisted Jaenelle during that healing. “I remember.”

“When a Territory’s stability depends on the strength of its Queen, the Queen cannot afford to appear fragile. Cannot afford to be fragile. Injured, yes, but not susceptible to things like cold winters. I wasn’t going to hide the damaged legs or the need for a cane or the wheeled chair, but the rest of the damage the poisons had done to me? That was a secret between Jaenelle and me. She tried to teach me the particular healing brew and spell that helped me stay as healthy as I could be. I could get close to what she made, but not quite close enough. Every six months, when we’d gather, she would make that brew and weave the healing spell she combined with it. And I could take care of my people for a while longer.”

Lucivar huffed. “No one knew?”

“Not even Gabrielle, and she was the other side of the Golden Triangle.”

The Golden Triangle had been Saetan’s term for Jaenelle, Karla, and Gabrielle—the three Queens who were also natural Healers and natural Black Widows. The only witches in Kaeleer with the triple gift.

“The last Winsol we celebrated together, Jaenelle gave me a pretty container that held pieces of clear Jewels.” Karla smiled. “She told me she wouldn’t be able to do complex healing spells much longer, but these would be enough. When there were two left, it would be time to put my affairs in order. It would be time to decide what I wanted to do when I made the transition to demon-dead.”

“All of the First Circle had made the transition before I . . . before Saetan became a whisper in the Darkness,” Daemon said. “I often wondered how all of you seemed to know and were ready.” He took a step back. “Thank you for your assistance, Lady.”

Lucivar watched Daemon walk away, then turned back to Karla. “Did everyone who mattered receive a last gift?”

“I’m sure they did. But not every gift was stored in a piece of clear Jewel, Lucivar, and some won’t appear until they’re truly needed.”

If Marian recovered, that was the only gift he needed. Jaenelle probably knew that too. But Daemon? Was his daughter the last gift, or was there another one waiting for him? And what would be the trigger that would indicate the gift was truly needed?

Jillian opened the glass doors that led to the snow-covered lawn and outside play area and breathed in the fresh air. The eyrie felt stuffy, or maybe it was the additional psychic scents and so much emotion that had her wishing she could locate one of those cleansing spells Marian used after Prince Yaslana slipped into the rut and spent a few days doing nothing but having sex with his wife. Afterward, you could almost taste the sex in the air.

This wasn’t the same, but the . . . swamp . . . of feelings made her a bit ill. She didn’t want to tell Yaslana about her reaction to whatever was going on with the adults, but maybe Manny would know a similar cleansing spell.

Until she could talk to Manny, cold fresh air would have to do.

Prince Sadi had treated her like an adult this morning. Like a woman instead of a girl. She understood the danger of thinking his actions were anything other than the courtesy he would offer any woman, but this morning, she’d seen him as a man. Beautiful, intelligent, powerful. Educated.

She’d been aware of him in a way that made her tingle. That, in itself, wasn’t dangerous as long as she kept thoughts and feelings to herself. He was married, and a married Warlord Prince didn’t welcome invitations from anyone who wasn’t his wife—would, in fact, defend his marriage vows with a savagery no other caste of male could match.

That didn’t mean she couldn’t enjoy his attention, couldn’t talk to him about books and other things that were of interest to her and of no interest to Eyrien males.

Why couldn’t she find someone like Prince Sadi? Maybe someday. Right now her education wasn’t sufficient to hold the interest of a man like him.

“Where is everyone?”

Jillian smiled at Lady Surreal as the Gray-Jeweled witch walked into the front room. Educated, sophisticated, beautiful. Knowledgeable about so many things, including how to use a knife. Just the sort of woman who could be the wife of a powerful Warlord Prince like Sadi.

“Daemonar is in the playroom with Titian. Tersa is sitting with Lady Marian, and Manny is feeding baby Andulvar. Prince Yaslana and Prince Sadi went to the Keep to find out about the healing spell that Daemonar found. Well, he found the container for the spell, but it sounds like Marian will be all right once the spell is completed.”

Looking at the tight way the other witch held herself, Jillian wondered if Surreal had quarreled with Prince Sadi. She hadn’t been around for breakfast. Maybe her moontime was approaching and she wasn’t feeling well?

“Would you like me to make some fresh coffee? Or some tea?” Jillian asked. “There is plenty of food. I can heat something for you.”

Surreal hesitated, then said, “Thank you. Would you like to join me?”

Before Jillian could reply, the front door opened and Yaslana and Sadi walked in.

“Did you find out anything?” Surreal asked.

“Healing spell,” Sadi replied, removing his winter coat and hanging it on the coat-tree near the door. “A powerful one. Marian will wake once the spell has completed its work.”

“But you don’t know what it’s doing or who made it?”

“We don’t know what it’s doing,” Lucivar said. Using Craft, he removed his heavy wool cape, handed it to Daemon, then fanned his dark, membranous wings to clear the snow off them.

Jillian bit her tongue to keep the scold behind her teeth.

Lucivar looked at her. “I’ll wipe up the floor in a minute.”

“I didn’t say anything,” she replied.

He huffed out a laugh. “You didn’t have to, witchling. You learned that look from Marian.”

She studied the men. Relaxed now. Conserving their strength while they waited for the next battle, whatever it might be.

“Coffee?” she asked.

Sadi smiled at her. “That would be welcome.”

“I could heat up some food.” Jillian was painfully aware of Yaslana’s sudden stillness, so she was also aware of the moment he let go of some weight he’d been carrying since Marian fell into this mysterious healing.

“Yeah,” Lucivar said quietly. “Yeah, I could do with some food now.”

Feeling like she’d suddenly flown into stormy air over jagged rocks, Jillian hurried to the kitchen, leaving the adults to sort things out for themselves.

Surreal waited until Lucivar went into the kitchen to choose a meal from the mounds of food that had been delivered since the news of Marian’s illness reached the Blood in Riada. Then she turned to Daemon. “You know who did that to Marian.”

Something cold and lethal flickered in the back of his gold eyes before he hid it. “That is a powerful healing spell, something no Healer now in the Realms could duplicate. The Queen’s last gift to Marian, to be used when it was needed.”

The Queen. Jaenelle Angelline. That explained why Lucivar had relaxed, and it explained Daemon’s cold response to what he had heard as criticism. But it was her job to push—not as Daemon’s wife but as his second-in-command. “You’re sure it came from her?”

“Two Black Widows recognized the use of a clear Jewel as a container for such a spell, and one of those Black Widows is also a Queen as well as a Healer. Or she was a Healer when she walked among the living.”

Surreal blinked. “Karla? You talked to Karla?”

Daemon nodded. “She’s now in residence at the Keep.”

“That’s good news, then.”

“Yes.” He took a step toward her, then asked softly, “Are you all right?”

“I’m fine,” she lied.

“Of course.” He waited a beat, then added casually, “Once Marian wakes, I’ll return to the Hall. There’s always a lot of work to be done after Winsol.”

“I’ll see what needs to be done here. Maybe stay an extra day or two.”

“Whatever you think is best.”

He walked into the kitchen, and Surreal wondered if the disappointment she heard in his voice was real or something she imagined because she needed it to be real.

The black water ran clear. No silt running off her scalp or her fingers or between her legs.

Marian climbed out of the pool and spread her wings, fanning them until they were dry.

The path that had led to the pool was overgrown now. Gone. But there was another path, barely discernible. There were no familiar landmarks, nothing to tell her if the path would lead anywhere. Except the song, that voice in the Darkness.

As Marian followed the voice and the path, she noticed the land changing. She walked and walked, and with each step, what had been fading and failing regained color and vitality. Then she walked around a curve in the path and stepped into her own garden in the full bloom of summer . . .

. . . and opened her eyes.

“Marian.” Lucivar’s voice. Soft. Strained. “Marian.”

She turned her head and looked at him, wondering why tears filled his eyes.

“Welcome back, sweetheart.” He kissed her lips, and she felt him tremble. “Welcome back.”

FIFTEEN

The following day, Marian was bathed, fed, and moved to the family room to spend an hour with her children before being tucked into the bedroom she shared with her husband. Lucivar retreated to his study to give the children that time with their mother. He listened to Rothvar’s report and gave his second-in-command orders for the next few days so that he could keep a sharp eye on Marian’s recovery.

When Surreal saw Rothvar escort Nurian out of the eyrie, she judged it was time to have a chat with the Warlord Prince of Ebon Rih. The study door was open, so she walked in and found Lucivar staring at a basket overflowing with letters as if it were his fiercest enemy.

“Problem?” she asked, knowing perfectly well why he was scowling at the basket.

Lucivar could read, and did when it was required, but it was a struggle for him. Marian usually sorted the mail, winnowing down the stack to the pieces the Warlord Prince of Ebon Rih had to see. If Marian wasn’t available and Lucivar needed help with a document, he requested assistance from the other person he trusted above all others.

She approached the desk but stayed out of reach. Which didn’t mean anything when dealing with Lucivar, but it made her feel easier. “Couldn’t Sadi help you with that?”

“He left at first light.”

And hadn’t said anything to her before leaving.

“I saw the two of you yesterday.” She had decided not to mention it, but the words tumbled out anyway.

“I saw you too.”

“You and Sadi . . .” Did she really want to know?

“Wasn’t the first time. Won’t be the last.” Lucivar shook his head and growled. “Look, witchling, if I’d needed to spend the night walking around the mountain, he would have gotten dressed and gone with me. If I’d needed to scream until my throat bled, he would have put aural shields around a room and listened. If I’d needed to feel flesh and bone under my fists, he would have said whatever would spark my temper, and we would have beaten the shit out of each other. Because that’s what we have always done. Even when we hated each other, that’s what we’ve done. Last night, I needed to sleep, so I went to my brother for help.”

Lucivar walked around the desk, stood so close she wanted to take a step back, except she couldn’t. Wouldn’t.

“Sugar, if you don’t want a knife between your ribs, you’ll step back now.”

There was some anger in his smile, but he stepped back. “Now, that’s the Surreal I know. So tell me, little Sister, why are you and Sadi at odds?”

“We’re not.”

His smile took on a knife-edge. “Liar.”

She couldn’t deny it.

“At the Birthright Ceremony you were worried that Daemon would back out of the marriage once he had legal rights to his daughter. But he didn’t back out. Never occurred to him. And it seemed like the two of you had come to a . . . richer . . . understanding, at least for a little while.” Lucivar studied her. “He loves you. You love him. Or you did.”

“Still do,” she snapped. “And even if we were at odds, it’s none of your business.”

“For now. When it does become my business, you’ll know.”

Warning? Threat? “I thought we were friends.”

“We’re more than friends. You’re my brother’s wife, which makes you my sister. Even before that, you were family, and I would do almost anything for you.”

“As long as it’s not against him.”

“Yeah. As long as it’s not against him.”

He’d drawn the line. He wouldn’t bend it.

“Surreal?” Lucivar’s voice softened. “Until that moment, I will do everything I can to help you. You just need to tell me what’s wrong.”

He’d slept in the same bed with Sadi. If he couldn’t feel what was wrong, how could she explain it? And damn it, now that Sadi wasn’t here, now that the sexual heat that poured out of him wasn’t creating a need in her that was also a misery, she missed him. Wanted him.

“There is nothing wrong.” She pointed at the basket. “You want me to sort those for you?”

“Sure. Thanks.” As she reached for the basket, Lucivar said, “Has he told you about the headaches?”

Surreal frowned. “Headaches? Sadi?”

“For months now. Bad ones. Nurian makes a blend of herbs for a healing brew that reduces the pain and helps him sleep, but it’s not as effective as it was in the beginning, and she says it’s not safe to make the brew any stronger.”

Surreal put the basket back on the desk. “Why is Nurian making this healing mixture?”

“Because the Healer in Halaway was more interested in having Daemon come back to her for help than actually helping him.”

Now she understood why he’d insisted that she and Jaenelle Saetien be seen by the Healer in Amdarh who served in Lady Zhara’s court. Did Sadi believe the Healer in the village would be so foolish as to do something to his wife or daughter in order to insert herself into his life? Could the headaches be the reason for his cruelty in bed?

“He didn’t tell me.”

“And I wasn’t supposed to tell you.”

“Why not?”

“You’d have to ask him.”

For months now. Months. “Does Nurian know what’s causing the headaches?”

Lucivar shook his head. “She can’t find any physical reason. But I know this: Daemon can endure a lot of pain. If this gets bad enough to break something inside him, nothing and no one will be safe.”

Surreal swallowed hard. She’d married him because she was pregnant and he wouldn’t let her walk away with his child. She’d married him because she’d loved him for a long time. And she’d married him because he needed to stay connected to the living, and she’d felt strong enough to do that. Had been strong enough until sex with him had become a demoralizing addiction.

“If Manny and Tersa aren’t ready to leave . . .”

“I can get them back to Halaway.” Lucivar stepped close, rested his hands on her shoulders, and kissed her forehead. “Sometimes you can’t fix things once they’re broken.”

“Are we broken? Sadi and me?” she whispered. Was he talking about her marriage or the man she’d married?

“I hope not. If you need help, I’m here.”

Manny and Tersa wanted to stay another day, so Surreal left the small Coach for whomever Lucivar assigned to take the older women home. Catching the Gray Winds, she rode toward Dhemlan and home.

At the last minute she altered direction and went to Amdarh instead of going all the way to SaDiablo Hall. She needed an evening alone to think. She needed a day at the family’s town house, away from Sadi and Yaslana.

Sadi had been in pain for months and had hidden it from her. Until the headaches were under control, she would have to endure the sexual addiction he’d created in her.

Daemon stepped off the landing web in front of SaDiablo Hall and found himself surrounded by snow-covered children and Scelties.

“Papa!” Jaenelle Saetien flung her arms around him in welcome, transferring a fair amount of snow from her coat to his.

“Hello, witch-child.” He hugged her, grateful for the welcome. “Mikal.”

“Sir.”

٭Daemon!٭ Morghann, wild with excitement, scratched at his legs for attention.

Khary, his gray and white fur blending with the snow and shadows, just wagged his tail and leaped into another snowbank, disappearing until Mikal lifted him out of the snow.

“Aren’t you cold?” Daemon asked. “I’m cold. Let’s go inside and you can tell me what you’ve been up to.”

“Lots of things!” Jaenelle Saetien sounded gleeful.

Ah, Hell’s fire. Since a quick scan of the Hall didn’t reveal any broken walls or windows or holes in the roof, the children couldn’t have caused too much trouble. He hoped.

When they walked in, they were met by Beale and a dozen maids and footmen armed with towels for drying off Scelties and children, and baskets to carry the snow-encrusted clothes to the laundry rooms, where they would be dried.

Divested of his own coat and promising to meet the children in the family room to hear all the news, he waited until he was alone with Beale and Holt, who had come out of the study when he’d heard the commotion.

“Marian was wrapped in a powerful healing spell,” Daemon said quietly. “She rose out of it yesterday evening and will recover.”

“That’s good news,” Holt said.

Daemon nodded. “For all of us.” He looked at Beale and raised an eyebrow in question.

“There were a few . . . spats . . . but differences of opinion were resolved,” Beale said. Then he added blandly, “Some teeth were involved.”

Whose teeth? Noting the steely look in his butler’s eyes, Daemon said, “Was a Healer required?”

“No, Prince.”

“Then I don’t need to know.”

“That would be for the best.”

Sweet Darkness. Daemon turned to Holt, who said, “I have nothing that can’t wait for an hour or two.”

“In that case, I’ll be up in the family room.”

It had once been a private sitting room used by adults and visiting children. Now, as the family room and Jaenelle Saetien’s playroom, it still had a lived-in shabbiness seen nowhere else in the Hall. Overstuffed bookshelves held children’s books and stories for the Scelties. Cupboards held games and toys. A hodgepodge of comfortable, worn furniture that was no longer suitable for the public rooms ended up here, where rough use by children and Scelties didn’t matter.

“We’re helping Morghann and Khary learn how to count,” Jaenelle Saetien said as soon as she and Mikal and the Scelties piled onto a sofa with him.

“They’re as smart as some of the boys at school,” Mikal said. “Smarter.”

٭One, two, three, four, five,٭ Morghann said.

“Yes, there are five of us on the sofa,” Daemon agreed.

“Lord Marcus helped us,” Jaenelle Saetien added.

He smiled at the thought of his man of business teaching the Scelties how to count. “Well, Lord Marcus does know his numbers.”

No one mentioned any spats. In fact, Jaenelle Saetien and Mikal seemed to have reached a new understanding and a renewal of the friendship they’d had before she acquired her Birthright Jewel.

After Daemon assured Mikal that Marian would get well—a subject that worried the boy, since he’d lost his own mother when he was very young—boy and Scelties left, giving Sadi time alone with his daughter. He ran a fingertip over the outer edge of her delicately pointed ear and thought she looked more like her mother every day, a fact that, today, caused him pain and joy in equal measure.

“Your mother is staying at Lucivar’s eyrie a little longer to help out, but she’ll be home in a day or two.” He wondered if that was true.

“Papa?” Jaenelle Saetien climbed into his lap.

“What is it, witch-child?” He wrapped his arms around her, an unspoken promise of protection.

“Beale said that the Lady had to follow the house rules even though she was a Queen and the most special witch in the Realm.”

“That’s true. Your grandfather followed the Old Ways of the Blood, as I do, and he insisted on proper attire for dinner. Ladies wore gowns when there were guests at the Hall, or a simpler dress or a skirt and blouse if it was just family and close friends at the table. If someone came to the table dressed in a way he didn’t feel was appropriate, he would hold the meal until that Lady changed her clothes.”

“Even if it was the Lady?”

“Yes, even if it was the Lady. She wasn’t just his daughter—she was also his Queen, and he still wouldn’t budge when it came to the house rules.”

Jaenelle Saetien crinkled her face. “But she was special.”

“Very special. But Saetan knew that her being special left her feeling isolated and alone sometimes, and he didn’t want her to feel apart from the rest of the Blood. So even though she was special, he treated her as if she were ordinary and insisted that she follow the same rules as the Queens who were her friends and also lived at the Hall. He did that because he loved her.”

“Like you love me?”

He kissed the top of her head. “Exactly like I love you.”

“Yeah, yeah, I know it’s not your mother; you’ll just have to make do, boyo.” Lucivar teased the bottle’s nipple into his baby’s mouth. “She doesn’t have any milk to give you, but losing the milk now is a small sacrifice in order to have her in your life for all the years to come.”

After a minute of fussing, baby Andulvar settled down to the business of getting his meal, his eyes focused on his father’s face.

Lucivar smiled. “We’ll take care of her. All of us.”

“Papa?”

His smile warmed even more. “You need something, witchling?”

Titian shook her head as she joined him. She leaned on his shoulder and watched him feed the baby. “Mama will get well?”

“Yeah, she will.”

“I was scared.”

“Me too.”

Titian looked at him as if seeing someone a little different. “Papas don’t get scared.”

“Yes, we do. But when things get scary, the people we love need us to be brave, so we’re brave.”

“Who do you have when you need someone to be brave for you?”

“I have you, witchling,” he said softly. “I have you and your brothers. I have your mother. I have your aunt and uncle.” And I have memories of a very special Lady.

They remained in companionable silence until the baby finished the bottle, but Lucivar sensed there was something on his girl’s mind. The past couple of days had been an emotional beating for all of them, and he just didn’t have the strength to pry right now. Fortunately, Titian, his quiet, somewhat timid little witchling, didn’t require prodding. It might take her a while, but eventually she would tell him whatever was on her mind.

He was about to get up and change the baby’s diaper when she said, “I think Uncle Daemon needs someone to be brave for him.”

Lucivar settled back in the chair. “What makes you think that?”

“Even when he smiled at me, he looked sad. Like Mama did before she fell asleep. When she smiled at me and Daemonar today, she didn’t look sad anymore.”

A chill went through him. “I’ll keep an eye on your uncle Daemon.”

“Promise?”

“Promise.”

Satisfied, she helped him change the baby’s diaper and tuck the boy in for a nap.

He took care of children and chores, encouraged Jillian to go home and rest—and have some time to herself. He waited until Daemonar was playing a quiet game with Titian, and Manny had settled in for a nap. Then he went looking for the one person he hoped could give him some kind of answer.

He felt Tersa’s presence in the eyrie, but he couldn’t find her in the common rooms or the laundry area or the bedrooms or the room that had a pool fed by a hot spring. He even checked his weapons room. Finally, he began searching the storage rooms that were deep in the eyrie—rooms that held the things that weren’t needed but Marian didn’t want to discard yet.

Feeling the chill in the corridors, he realized it had been a while since he’d replenished the power in the warming spells he’d put around these rooms, and made a mental note to do that once everything settled into some semblance of normal.

He opened the door to the last room . . . and walked straight into an illusion created by a tangled web of dreams and visions.

A crystal chalice on a stone altar. Leashes were attached to the stem, leading to four posts.

A Queen holds the leash.

His temper frayed the leash.

He’d used those phrases all his life. Here, in this vision, the leashes were physical things. He studied the leash that was leather braided with chain and instinctively knew what it controlled.

So. These weren’t the leashes that held him.

“Daemon,” he whispered.

Three of the leashes, including the leather and chain, looked normal—looked like he suspected his would look if they were made of something more than discipline, training, and self-control. But the other . . .

“The chalice is breaking again.” Tersa stepped up to the altar. “The vessel can no longer contain all it was meant to contain.”

That other leash cut into the fourth post, which looked soft, bloated. Sick. Pus oozed from splits and created a kind of carapace. Once it covered the whole post, he wasn’t sure anyone would be able to break through without breaking . . .

No. He couldn’t think of that. Wasn’t going to consider that.

“He fights to survive,” Tersa said, pointing to the bloated post. “He fights with instinct, not knowledge.”

Couldn’t someone provide the knowledge?

“Will he win?” Lucivar asked.

“No. The sand is running in the glass.” An hourglass appeared on the altar, the sand draining into the lower half. “When the last grain falls, not even she will be able to save him.”

“She? You mean Surreal?”

“It is too late for the girl to save him.”

“Then who . . .” Lucivar stared at Tersa. Felt his heart soar for a moment before he considered the danger.

Had the trouble started between Daemon and Surreal when Witch made an appearance at Jaenelle Saetien’s Birthright Ceremony? He’d had the impression that the meeting between Daemon and his Queen, the love of his life, had eased something inside him, had been responsible for Daemon’s ability to be a warmer, more loving husband.

But a onetime meeting wasn’t the same as Witch’s continued presence—assuming that was possible.

How could it be possible?

“Dreams made flesh cannot become demon-dead,” he said. “Saetan was sure of that.”

Tersa watched him.

A presence, but not flesh. They had all believed even that wasn’t possible. Daemon had certainly believed it wasn’t possible.

“If Witch comes back in any way, it will change things between Daemon and Surreal,” he said.

“Everything has a price,” Tersa replied. “And things have already changed. That is why it’s too late for the girl to help him.”

Lucivar studied the bloated post. He’d call in his biggest knife and slice through that leash without giving a damn what would come afterward, but he suspected breaking that leash wouldn’t help anything now. “Who did this to him?”

“He did it to himself. First he did it to help the girl, but everything he could do wasn’t enough. Now he does it to survive.”

He considered every person standing on this particular battlefield—and what it might cost each of those people. Then he considered what would happen to Daemon and to the Realm of Kaeleer if they lost this battle.

Only one choice, no matter the price. “How do I find Witch?”

“If the boy asks for her help, she will answer. But only if he asks.”

“Then we have to tell him.”

“We have tried to warn him. He isn’t ready to listen.”

“Then I’ll explain it to him.” With a brotherly fist to the ribs if that was what it took. “He has to ask.”

“What will he ask of her?” Tersa set a bloody knife on the altar. “What will he give, thinking that is the path back to her?”

Lucivar eyed the knife. “He wouldn’t hurt Surreal.”

“Not to ease his own pain, no.”

He felt hemmed in, chained in a way that was far worse than anything he’d endured while he was a slave in Terreille.

“What do we do, Tersa? What can I do?”

“The girl can’t help him now, but she will free him to ask.”

He swallowed frustration. “So we wait and watch them both suffer?”

“Wounds must fester before they are lanced.”

A flash of his temper, hot and pure, filled the room.

Lucivar staggered, spread his wings for balance, and breathed in air that felt like needles of ice stabbing his lungs.

Hell’s fire, it was cold!

And dark.

Creating a ball of witchlight, Lucivar lobbed it toward the center of the room and looked around.

Tersa wasn’t in the room. Not anymore. But there were footprints in the dust, and a tangled web, crumbling to ash now, sat on a table that had been moved to the center of the room.

Tersa had told him what she could.

“We have tried to warn him. He isn’t ready to listen.”

Daemon might not be ready to listen, but he was—and there was another Black Widow within easy reach who might be able to give him answers.

Late that night, while everyone slept, Lucivar flew to the Keep to have a chat with Karla.

“Seeing a problem in a tangled web isn’t the same as being able to fix the problem,” Karla said. She’d hoped Daemon would be the one looking for answers, because Lucivar was not going to accept the unpalatable truth.

“You’re a Gray-Jeweled Black Widow,” Lucivar snapped as he prowled a reception room at the Keep. “Why can’t you fix the problem? If it’s a matter of convincing Daemon to let you do some kind of healing, I will haul his ass to the Keep and hold him down for you.”

“I can’t fix this because I wear Gray and he wears Black. He’s beyond my reach, Lucivar. He’s beyond yours. He’s beyond everyone’s reach except his own.” After Lucivar’s description of the vision Tersa showed him, she wasn’t sure that was true anymore. What should have been light, and natural, self-control had turned into something ugly—a kind of self-mutilation. Every tangled web showed Daemon’s condition worsening with frightening speed.

“Tersa said Surreal couldn’t help him now, but she would free him to ask for the help he needs.” Lucivar’s eyes held a cold and bitter look. “Assuming he survives long enough to ask for that help.”

“You can buy him some time by convincing him to drain some of the reservoir in his Black Jewel and keep it drained,” Karla said. “Surreal would be able to help that much unless he’s already draining her Gray prior to her moontimes. You can help him find more ways to use the Black.”

“Sure. He could turn a city or two into rubble. He’d probably sleep much better for a few weeks after unleashing that much of the Black.”

“You could teach him that trick you have of making wood tapers.”

Lucivar didn’t scoff at the idea, which she found encouraging.

“Everything that uses the power Sadi is currently transforming into unneeded sexual heat will slow down the physical damage, maybe even reduce the headaches.”

“Yeah,” Lucivar said. “Slow down the damage, reduce the headaches. Until the thing that pushes him over the edge.”

Karla floated to a spot in front of him. “If he asks for information, for advice, for anything, I will do what I can. For him. For all of you.”

“Is that why you’re here at the Keep now?”

“Yes.”

The sharp smile that started to curve his lips faded.

“Things were seen and promises were made, Lucivar.”

He looked away. “Did she see this?”

“No, I don’t think so. I think what Witch saw was fairly simple and didn’t require help from any but the living. But Sadi turned it into something complicated. Not on purpose.”

“Instinct, not knowledge.”

Karla nodded. “What I don’t understand is why Surreal didn’t call him on it. She must have seen some change in him.”

“I don’t know. She says nothing is wrong.” Lucivar started to walk away, then stopped. “If you see another warning . . .”

“I’ll let you know.”

The way he looked at her, he seemed to be searching for something. “Do you see Witch, Karla?”

“No. Regardless of what happens, I don’t expect that to change.”

“Would you want it to?”

“Yes, I would. But I don’t expect it will change.”

She didn’t ask if he would want to see Witch again, but she wondered what answer he would give.

Pain was a familiar and faithful lover.

Daemon lay in bed, his eyes closed, and waited for the healing brew to ease the headache that had started as a dull ache during dinner and then turned savage soon after Mikal and Jaenelle Saetien had gone to bed.

No physical reason for this pain, which meant the cause lay beyond the flesh. A spell of some kind? Or a stealthy attack on his inner barriers? No. He would have recognized the attempt even if he didn’t immediately home in on the source.

“Breathing room, Sadi.”

He’d had a dream about Karla a while ago, but he couldn’t remember what it was or why it occurred to him now. Something to do with posts and leashes and the . . . wiggle-waggle?

He huffed out a soft laugh. Trust Karla to make a man’s cock sound like an embarrassing toy.

“You’re too damn dangerous to indulge in being foolish.”

How was he being foolish? How . . .

A sheet as soft as a wish covered his body, whispering pleasure with every small movement. Sensual, not sexual. Inviting him to relax, to rest, to let go of his fierce control just a little. Just enough.

He couldn’t get a sense of the sexual heat, couldn’t tell if it was banked or burning, but the collar attached to the leashes—the collar that had become a tight metal band—relaxed, letting him breathe again. Letting him rest.

“Sadi.”

A warm hand caressing his chest. Warm lips brushing against his.

Sensual, yes, but gaining the tang of sex. Pulling him away from the place where he could rest.

“Sadi.”

Daemon shook off the dream as his body responded to Surreal’s touch, to her need.

“I love you,” she said as she kissed his mouth, his face. “I do love you. Don’t go away.”

He gathered her in his arms and returned her kisses, her caresses. “I’m here, Surreal. I’m right here. Easy, love. Easy.”

She couldn’t be easy. It was like she was caught up in a female version of the rut, barely catching her breath after one orgasm before she was on him again, wanting more—needing more. Relentless.

He obliged her with sex for hours before she fell into an exhausted sleep. And he wondered what it was about him, about them, that she wanted so much from him and yet wept in her sleep.