The Queen's Price

EIGHTEEN

With Surreal beside him, Daemon stepped off the landing web, then dropped the Black shield he’d wrapped around her so that they could both travel on the Black Winds.

He’d asked her to come with him because Beale’s message last night had been lacking in information, considering that the Hall’s butler had said his presence was required this morning. A quick psychic scan of the Hall’s residents revealed a great deal of emotional turmoil but little information of use. With one exception.

Daemonar felt . . . wounded. And Daemon’s temper went cold in response to the boy’s pain.

Surreal gave him a sharp look but didn’t move away from him until they started walking toward the Hall’s front door. Then she took a long step to the side and would enter the Hall a couple of steps behind him.

Fighting room.

Beale waited for him in the great hall. He’d expected that, but he didn’t expect his butler to look tired—or regretful.

“Beale.” Daemon’s voice was filled with a quiet warning. “Are you well?”

“I am well, Prince,” Beale replied. Meaning he had no physical injuries or serious emotional trauma.

“And Daemonar?”

“Physically, he is well.” Beale hesitated. “Although he barely touched his breakfast.”

Daemonar wasn’t eating? What in the name of Hell had happened? And who . . .

“We have guests?” Daemon asked too softly.

“Lady Grizande and Prince Jaalan.” Beale called in two sheets of paper. “Their bloodlines.”

“Grizande?” Surreal stepped up to stand beside Daemon. “Wasn’t she . . . ?”

“The Queen of the Tigre and a member of the Dark Court’s First Circle,” Daemon replied. “This witch is a descendant of Grizande and Elan.” And the Warlord Prince came from Jaal.

Hell’s fire.

“They came to the Hall last evening, looking for help and safety.” Beale hesitated again. “The girl has been tortured. I don’t know about the kitten.”

It took effort to keep the Sadist leashed. “Sexual?”

“No. Lady Nadene confirmed that Lady Grizande is still a virgin.”

Sexual torture didn’t require a loss of virginity, and if the girl was the unfamiliar Sapphire his psychic probe had picked up, someone would have tried to break her before she grew into her strength. Unless that person died trying and the girl had escaped.

Daemon pushed those thoughts aside since they called to the Sadist.

“I am sorry, Prince, but . . . Her will.” Beale held out a pale gray paper, folded and sealed with black wax. “It was a small indiscretion, but since you weren’t at the Hall, it fell within the boundaries of her command.”

“Shit,” Surreal whispered.

Daemon took the paper, broke the seal, and read his Queen’s command.

“Hell’s fire,” Surreal said as she read the note. “I’ve known women to spritz a bit of their signature perfume on a letter, but I didn’t know anyone could infuse the feeling ‘I am seriously pissed off’ into paper and ink.”

“Yes,” Daemon said. “The Lady is not pleased.” He read the names of the individuals who had been summoned to the Keep; then he looked at Beale. “Who crossed that line?”

Beale sighed. “Lady Zoela.”

That’s what he figured, based on the names. If it had been Daemonar, Witch would have dealt with her erring nephew directly. This formal summons was meant to scare the shit out of everyone. Especially a young Queen.

Daemon folded the summons and vanished it.

“What else is going on?” Surreal asked.

“Squabbles among the young Queens,” Beale replied. “Nothing connected to the guests.”

“But connected to whatever prompted Zoey to cross a line?” she suggested sweetly.

Beale didn’t answer—which was an answer.

“Have a Coach brought around to the landing web,” Daemon told Beale. Then he looked at Surreal. “With me.”

They went to his study.

“You want me to stay at the Hall while you get this settled,” Surreal said.

“Yes,” Daemon agreed. “You don’t have to interact with the youngsters if you don’t want to get entangled in their . . .”

“Bitch drama-trauma?” she supplied cheerfully. “Actually, sugar, I think I will wade into that and show them what a real bitch looks like.”

He choked on a laugh. “Yes. That.” He sobered. “I’m making the request because you’re my second-in-command and you wear the Gray.”

“And someone might come looking for the girl while you’re at the Keep.”

“Yes.”

“Well, the staff here has had plenty of experience cleaning up ponds of blood, so we’ll be fine.”

Her enthusiasm for the possibility of another pond was a little alarming. “Do you want to come with me to meet our guests?”

Surreal studied him for a long moment before shaking her head. “Not right now. The Tigre witch came here seeking help from you. Prince of the Darkness, High Lord of Hell. One side of the Queen’s Triangle. Time enough for her to meet me.”

Queen’s Triangle. As Daemon walked to the guest room, he wondered if that was as significant as Surreal seemed to think. He and Daemonar were two sides of that triangle. How would Grizande react to Lucivar, the third side?

Maybe they should find out before he made any decisions about the girl.

Assuming he would be making any decisions.

As he approached the room, he released a thread of psychic power. He’d expected to feel the girl’s Sapphire and the kindred tiger. But . . . Green?

He rapped on the door and walked in.

*Prince!* Liath gave him an enthusiastic tail wag. *I am reading to Grizande and Jaalan to help them learn the human words.*

Daemon recognized the book floating on air. Sceltie Saves the Day. Well, generations of four-footed youngsters had learned how to read using those books.

The Tigre witch leaped to her feet. Fearful. Wary. Hopeful. Uncertain.

“Lady Grizande.” He slipped his hands into his trouser pockets, giving the impression of being totally at ease, despite the way his heart ached for this girl who had such need. “I knew Grizande and Elan. You come from a strong line, witchling. As does your little brother.” He tipped his head to indicate the kitten.

Her fingers touched the tunic she wore. “Helene gave. I not take.”

“I know,” he said gently. “Did she give you more than one outfit?”

She nodded.

“We have been summoned to the Keep.” He watched her. A moment’s panic eclipsed by excitement—and hope. “We’ll leave in about an hour. Liath? Can you escort Lady Grizande and Prince Jaalan to the great hall when it’s time?”

*I will escort them.*

Badger and herd was closer to the truth, but everyone learned about dealing with Scelties in their own way.

“Have you had breakfast?” Daemon asked. Then clarified when she looked confused: “Food?”

“Yes.” She seemed to be gathering herself to ask a question. “Daemonar. He said in morning. I not see.”

“He’ll be coming with us.” That didn’t explain why the boy hadn’t come to check on her, but it did confirm that Daemonar was Grizande’s touchstone. For the time being, anyway.

Daemon gave the girl a warm smile, then headed for his nephew’s room. The boy wasn’t eating, wasn’t honoring a promise to see someone who clearly needed some help?

He rapped on Daemonar’s door, and this time he waited for permission to enter—and he wondered who the boy was keeping out by putting a Green lock on the door and a Green shield around the room.

He released a drop of Black power, rippling it across the Green shield in a way that would let Daemonar know who was outside his room without breaking the shield.

The door opened. Daemonar stared at him, then stepped back.

Daemon walked into the room and closed the door—and found his arms full of a boy who’d received an emotional kick in the gut and hadn’t regained his balance yet.

“What happened?” Daemon asked as he massaged the back of the boy’s neck and added a soothing spell to quiet some of the emotional turmoil. “Report.” A word that required a recitation of actions but didn’t require any explanation of the feelings connected to those actions.

Daemonar took a breath, released it in a shuddering sigh, and told Daemon everything he had done to settle Grizande—and told him about his clash with Zoey.

“You danced on a knife’s edge, and you danced well,” Daemon said when Daemonar finally stopped talking. The boy had done everything right, so why was there still this distress?

Daemonar rested his head on Daemon’s shoulder. “Titian is mad at me.”

Ah. That explained the boy’s lack of interest in breakfast. “Every girl can be a bitch some days. Every boy can be a bastard or a prick. We are not sweet and even-tempered all the time.”

Daemonar snorted.

“We’ve been summoned to the Keep. We’ll leave in an hour.”

Daemonar raised his head and stepped back. “Summoned? By Witch or Auntie J.?”

Daemon swallowed a laugh. “I think most of us will be dealing with Witch. You? No guarantee which side of her you’re going to be dealing with.”

“Hell’s fire.”

“And may the Darkness be merciful.” Daemon kissed the boy’s forehead. “Why don’t I arrange for scrambled eggs and toast to be brought to your room? You should have something under your belt before you get a scolding from your auntie J.”

“I guess I should.” Then, “Is Father going to be at the Keep too?”

Oh, I’ll make sure Lucivar’s there, Daemon thought as he stopped at the auxiliary kitchen to request that a plate be brought to Daemonar’s room.

One more chat before he met with Holt, Helene, Nadene, and Beale to receive their reports.

He found Zoey and Titian in the sitting area of Zoey’s room. The plates on the small table held nothing but crumbs. That they could dismiss what happened yesterday easily enough to enjoy breakfast while Daemonar struggled pissed him off, so he gave them a cold smile.

“Lady Zoela.”

“Prince Sadi.” Zoela lifted her chin. “I want to—”

“You disappoint me.” He watched her crumple under the lash of those words. “We’ve been summoned to the Keep. We leave in one hour. Be down in the great hall by then. You, too, Titian.”

“I’ve been summoned to the Keep?” Titian squeaked.

“No, but I expect your father is going to want to have a little chat with you.”

He walked away. He didn’t need to say more. Neither girl had any comprehension of the fury waiting for them at Ebon Askavi.

But they would learn.

Standing with Beale and Holt, Surreal watched the combatants gather in the great hall. Zoey and Titian. The Tigre witch and the tiger Warlord Prince. And Daemonar, looking like he’d flown through a storm, standing alone—and standing exactly halfway between the two pairs, seeming to take no sides.

But you took a side, Surreal thought as she watched him. You just never imagined you would need to side against your sister, or that she would turn on you, and that hurts you.

But Hell’s fire, a girl who already wore Sapphire had the potential to wear Ebon-gray when she made the Offering to the Darkness. What had the Tigre Queens been thinking to condone any kind of abuse, let alone torture?

Daemon walked into the great hall with Liath. The Sceltie eyed the groups, seemed satisfied with the arrangement, and trotted off to perform his other self-appointed herding duties.

Sadi looked at her, Beale, and Holt. He gave them a nod, said, “Let’s go,” and walked toward the front door. A footman sprang to open the door for the Warlord Prince of Dhemlan—or the High Lord. Surreal wasn’t sure which level of Sadi’s temper was currently leading. Not the Sadist, thank the Darkness.

Zoey and Titian followed Sadi out the door. Daemonar stepped forward, offered Grizande a smile, and walked out of the Hall with her and the kitten.

The footman closed the door.

Surreal turned to Beale and Holt. “So. Tell me the reason for the bitch drama-trauma.”

Beale blinked. Holt choked on a laugh before sobering abruptly.

“Jealousy,” Beale said.

“Resentment that Zoey is Prince Sadi’s favorite,” Holt said.

“I would have thought that was Titian, at least among the girls,” Surreal said.

“Titian is family,” Beale replied. “A relationship that gives her an acknowledged advantage when it comes to receiving the Prince’s time and attention. That’s the perception, but Titian has to request an audience with her uncle the same as any other girl.”

“But he will go out with Zoey and Titian for an early morning ride,” Holt added. “He doesn’t invite them to join him every time he goes riding, and he does go out riding with other groups of youngsters, but the other girls, especially some of the other Queens, are of the opinion that Zoey receives special treatment, and they were expressing their . . . opinions . . . about it yesterday.”

“Which provoked Zoey into trying to prove she deserves special treatment?” Surreal guessed. She called in a small stoppered bottle and held it out to Beale. “Please ask Mrs. Beale to fill this with a thick dark liquid. Something that tastes bitter and has a scent that stings. She could ask Nadene to assist. A Healer would know how to brew up something like that.”

Beale took the bottle. “When do you need it?”

“As soon as possible.” Surreal gave the men a knife-sharp smile. “The Ladies and I are going to have a chat before they all start their formal lessons this morning.”

Zoey and Titian sat in the front seats of the Coach. Grizande and Jaalan sat in the back seats. Since Uncle Daemon was driving the Coach on the Black Winds, Daemonar took the middle ground—a physical barrier of pissed-off male that discouraged any discussion. Time enough to discuss things when they arrived at the Keep.

Sitting in a chair that faced three rows of chairs that had been curved and spaced so that everyone could see the instructor, Surreal watched nineteen witches file into the room and hesitate when they saw her.

She hadn’t been at the Hall much since the youngsters arrived a few weeks ago. Even when she stayed at the Hall overnight to talk to Sadi about Dhemlan’s business or keep him informed about the sanctuary she ran for witches who had been broken, she had kept to the family wing, preferring to eat in her suite rather than deal with adolescent girls.

She accepted that what had been broken inside her would never fully heal, but the wounds her daughter had inflicted were still too raw for her to want to be sociable with girls that age.

She wasn’t sitting in this room to be sociable.

“Queens in the front row,” she said, holding up the stoppered bottle of dark liquid and tilting it one way, then the other. “Black Widows and Healers in the second row. The rest of you in the third row.”

Yes. The seeds of five courts. She watched the girls. She recognized Jhett and Arlene, who were friends of Zoey’s, as well as the other three girls who had been at the house party that had given Sadi the proof he needed to destroy the coven of malice—and had cost her family so much in so many ways.

“In case some of you don’t know who I am, I am Surreal SaDiablo,” she said pleasantly, tilting the bottle back and forth, drawing the girls’ eyes to what she held. “In case you haven’t heard about me, when I lived in Terreille centuries ago, I was one of the highest-paid whores in that Realm. I was also one of the highest-paid assassins in that Realm. I retired from whoring before I came to Kaeleer.” She gave them a sharp smile and let silence tell them a truth about her other profession.

The girls shifted in their chairs and looked longingly toward the door.

“You want to play the bitch, do it somewhere else,” Surreal continued. “Sadi has a cold hatred for bitches, and he has good reason for that hate. You continue that way and come to the age when you can set up a court? If you try to play the bitch with him then, the High Lord of Hell will declare war on your court. That war will be swift, it will be messy, and he will leave no survivors.” She watched every girl in the room turn pale—and she noted the one Queen who, despite turning pale, wasn’t sufficiently alarmed by that statement. “I understand there was some bitchy drama going on yesterday between all the Queens, and the squabbling extended to the rest of you. Here and now, I’m giving you a chance to voice all your complaints and concerns without penalty. What you say to me, here and now, will go no further. After today?” She shrugged. “You’ll take your chances with cold rage.”

Surreal crossed her legs and continued to play with the bottle of dark liquid. “Names first. Then we’ll begin.” She focused on the Queens: Dinah, Kathlene, Felisha, and Azara.

“We’re Queens, but Zoey is treated like she’s special,” Azara said.

“Because she’s tonguing a Yaslana,” Dinah said, sneering.

Well, you won’t last long here, Surreal thought. “That’s not the reason she’s special. Do you all realize that Zoey is the reason you’re here? That she’s the reason this protected training at the Hall was set up in the first place?” She waved a hand at the four Queens. “Did any of you know that?”

All four shook their heads, and Dinah looked miffed that she might owe Zoey anything.

Surreal wasn’t sure if they truly didn’t know why the Hall had become a training ground or if they didn’t want to admit knowing they were chosen to be here because they’d also been targeted by the coven of malice.

She looked at the four Queens, one by one, and held up the bottle of dark liquid. “Want to be special like Zoey?”

All the girls looked at the bottle.

“Safframate. A powerful, vicious aphrodisiac. One teaspoon of this, in this concentration, will guarantee you about seventy-two hours of agony and suffering and sexual need so fierce you’ll be begging and screaming for the boys to mount you and ram their cocks into you hour after hour after hour after hour. You’ll be torn and bloody and half mad from the pain, not to mention that your power will be broken and you’ll no longer wear a Jewel, and it still won’t be enough. But you won’t have to worry about that if you want to try a dose here. I’ll put a Gray shield around your room so the boys can’t reach you. I can’t say whether ramming a dildo between your legs and breaking the hymen will break your power the same as a flesh-and-blood cock, but I wouldn’t advise trying it. Of course, if you pound on the walls of the room until the bones in your hands break and the tendons in your shoulders tear, well, those things can be healed almost as good as new. You’re young and healthy, so the odds are good that your body won’t give out before the drug finally burns out of you. And if you spend weeks or months or years having nightmares, if you startle when someone approaches you without warning, if you flinch because of the lightest touch? Well, everything has a price, doesn’t it? You may still be a virgin who will have to go through her official Virgin Night; you may still have your power; but you won’t be innocent. You won’t be who you were. This will change you, will scar your body, mind, and heart.”

Smiling, Surreal waggled the bottle and looked at Kathlene, the Queen directly in front of her. “Want to have your life ripped apart in order to be special like Zoey?”

Kathlene swallowed hard. She shook her head.

Felisha shook her head. Azara hesitated, then shook her head. Dinah stared at the bottle.

Surreal stared at Dinah. “You have some romantic notion that Sadi would service you in order to see you through those seventy-two hours?” She shook her head. “If you were dosed by someone else at the Hall, he would do what was required to help you by arranging for trained individuals to walk with you, run with you, spar with you, as a way to help you burn out the drug. They would do that for hours, until you were too physically exhausted to stand. And while those individuals were giving you that help, Sadi would be taking apart the person who drugged you, layer by layer, piece by piece, body and mind—and he would find out everything that person knew, including any possibility of collusion on your part. And if you should be so foolish as to take the drug yourself in a misguided attempt to get him into your bed? Sugar, he would stand there and watch you suffer for the whole seventy-two hours, without any help from anyone.”

She looked at all of them. “Any questions? No? Then you should go on to your classes.”

They scurried out of the room—except Zoey’s five friends. Three hung back, leaving Jhett, the Black Widow, and Arlene, the Healer, to approach her.

“What happened to Zoey was private,” Jhett said. “It wasn’t fair to tell the rest of them without her consent.”

“You think no one has noticed how she reacts to an unexpected touch?” Surreal countered. “You think some of the girls haven’t done exactly that, coming too close to her without warning, just because they know how she’ll react even if they don’t know why? People, especially Queens, need to understand that there is a price for being special, and that price is usually very high. Zoey receives extra care and attention because she is still healing. Those other girls attacking her, whether they use words or fists, because she is still healing? Zoey’s friends should have had a quiet word with Lady Nadene or Lord Holt or Prince Raine to make them aware of what was happening, especially if yesterday wasn’t the first time the other Queens took a swipe at her. Protecting your Queen is one of the duties of members of a First Circle. It’s not tattling or bitching or whatever else someone might want to call it. It is your duty.”

“Would reporting it make a difference?”

She vanished the bottle. “Well, I’m here—aren’t I?—having this little chat with all of you because someone did report what happened. And you should all be grateful that Sadi is not here today.”

“You wouldn’t have let anyone take a dose of that,” Arlene said. “Since it’s so awful and possibly lethal, you wouldn’t have let anyone try it. Would you?”

Surreal just smiled—and walked away.