The Queen's Price

THIRTY-EIGHT

Idiot, Daemon thought as he shut off the water and got out of the shower. You should have known better than to spar with Lucivar when he was agitated and looking to pound someone into the ground.

He did know better, but sparring had given them something to do during that hour when Jillian wasn’t doing what was normally done during a Virgin Night—which was taking place in the afternoon so that Jillian could be “rested” for the party that evening.

Rested. Ha!

A tapping on his bedroom door. Recognizing Helton’s psychic scent, Daemon wrapped a towel around his waist and walked into the bedroom. “Come in.”

Helton glanced at him, then focused on the floor. “Some of the guests have arrived.”

“Which guests?”

“Lady Nurian and Lord Rothvar. Lady Titian and Lady Zoela. Prince Daemonar and Prince Raine.”

“Raine? Why? He doesn’t know Jillian.”

Another quick glance at him. “Prince Raine knows Lady Brenda.”

“Ooohhh? Any indication of how well Raine knows Brenda?” Raine wasn’t a fool, and he knew the family’s rules about sex—and the consequences of getting into anyone’s bed without the High Lord’s permission.

“Well enough that, from what Beale conveyed as information—not gossip—Raine and Brenda intend to talk to you about their interest in being intimate. Beale thought you might want to be forewarned, with it being the celebration of Lady Jillian’s Virgin Night.”

Mother Night! That would mean another discussion with Brenda about sex.

“Thank you, Helton. I’ll be down in a few minutes.”

“Very good, Prince.”

Helton was too good a butler to bolt out of a room—most of the time—but his retreat was a bit hasty. Daemon could blame his own state of undress for the haste, but he suspected Helton had spent enough time around Brenda yesterday to decide that the best way to deal with any request from the Green-Jeweled witch from Scelt was a speedy response followed by a quick retreat.

Daemon and Lucivar met Surreal in the room she’d made into her office. A practical place to meet, since the sitting room seemed to be overrun with excited youngsters and with adults waiting to corner him into a discussion about sex.

“Permission before action is a stupid rule for adults,” he grumbled as Lucivar knocked on the door and walked in.

“Father held that line because it protected everyone who worked at any of the estates, and especially anyone who worked at the Hall, since that’s where troublesome guests usually ended up,” Lucivar replied.

“Guests aren’t the only troublesome individuals who end up at the Hall.” He knew when it was pointless to draw a line. After all, the Scelt contingent was already firmly entrenched at the Hall.

Lucivar stared at Surreal. “Well? How did it go?”

Surreal looked at the two of them. “When I explained his new role in this . . . activity . . . the Warlord, having heard that both of you were in the city, almost wept in relief. However, I gathered from the little Jillian said on the way back to the town house that she had enjoyed a frank conversation with the Warlord about what men like their lovers to do in order to stimulate and excite.”

They stared at her.

Surreal stared back. “We have establishments that teach young men—especially aristo men and those training to be consorts—how to be good lovers. They’re taught what generally pleases and what doesn’t, along with variations. Why shouldn’t knowledge also flow the other way?”

Lucivar looked at Daemon. Daemon looked at Lucivar.

Knowing what pleased a man, and thinking of a daughter doing that to please a man? No.

“Is the vintner here yet?” Lucivar asked, sounding much too reasonable.

“He is,” Daemon replied, sounding just as reasonable.

Surreal called in her crossbow and aimed it at Lucivar. “You are going to pretend that you don’t know that one of your children will be having sex and doing all kinds of other things with her lover, just like your children pretend they don’t know you have sex with Marian and do whatever it is that’s making you go pale right now when you think of them doing it too.”

That was the moment when Marian walked into the room. She looked at Lucivar and froze. Then she looked at Surreal holding the crossbow.

“What happened?” Marian asked.

“Nothing,” Surreal replied cheerfully. “We’re establishing boundaries about what Lucivar isn’t going to notice when Jillian and Stefan have sex.”

Marian choked on a laugh. “Mother Night.”

Then Surreal aimed the crossbow at Daemon. “And you, being marginally more rational right now, are going to give Jillian and Stefan official permission to be lovers and have sex. You’re also going to give Brenda and Raine permission to be lovers and have sex.”

“They haven’t . . . ,” Daemon began.

“Just find them together and tell them they have your permission. Then run.” Surreal raised her eyebrows. “Do you really want to have another discussion with Brenda about sex?”

Not in several lifetimes. “Very well.”

Daemon and Lucivar headed for the door, a strategic retreat.

“While you’re at it, you might talk to Zoey and Titian about expanding their permissions for romantic—”

Lucivar didn’t mean to rip the door off the hinges, but it made his position on Zoey and Titian quite clear.

“Maybe not today,” Surreal said.

Daemon looked back at Surreal, who seemed amused, and Marian, who seemed confused.

“Two more times,” he muttered. “We’ll have to go through this Virgin Night with our girls two more times.” Or more, depending on which girls were living at the Hall when they reached the proper age.

“Could have been worse,” Lucivar said. “Karla could be here offering advice.”

“Karla already talked to Jillian and offered advice. Remember?”

“Oh, yeah.” Lucivar scrubbed his hands over his face. “What were you thinking?”

Daemonar watched his father and uncle circulate among the guests. Together. As a pair of predators ready to take on whatever needed to get squashed flatter than dead.

“Somebody upset them,” he said quietly.

“Might have been me,” Brenda said cheerfully. “There was a bit of a discussion about why females have a Virgin Night and males don’t.”

He looked at Raine, who just looked back at him without offering an opinion—or even making a grunting noise that might be mistaken for an opinion.

“We do have a Virgin Night of sorts,” Daemonar said.

“Do you, now?” Brenda’s eyes brightened with interest.

Brenda had green eyes and Auntie J.’s eyes were sapphire, but that bright interest was a familiar look—a harbinger of trouble that always began with innocent curiosity and often ended with something blowing up. Which meant Brenda would have settled into the Dark Court’s First Circle without a second thought.

Had Uncle Daemon realized that yet?

“Male Virgin Night?” Brenda said.

Right. He’d been foolish enough to say that to her. “Sure. You Ladies need to have the first sexual encounter done properly to preserve your power. Males need to do it properly to preserve their reputations.” Daemonar swallowed some wine to wet a suddenly dry throat as he imagined trying to explain this to Auntie J. or Karla. “A male getting careless about his choice of lover that first time could spiral into Ladies thinking he’s going to accommodate anyone who has an itch and wants him to scratch it. Men who didn’t train to be consorts have been denied being able to serve in courts because of a reputation for providing sex at the snap of a woman’s fingers. They might be considered too unreliable to be a potential husband and father. It might take more than one bad choice for a man to damage his reputation and life beyond repair, but if he lets himself be used once, he can count on someone trying to use him again.”

“Did you learn that from your father and uncle?” Raine asked.

Daemonar shook his head. “I figured that out from Jillian’s first romantic entanglement. He was a Rihlander who made a bad choice about his first time and things soured for him after that, until he ended up in Ebon Rih and latched onto Jillian—and then had to deal with Lucivar.”

Brenda and Raine looked across the room at Daemon and Lucivar. “I’m thinking those two got a wee bit excited about it all,” she said.

“You could say that. It ended with the discovery of the ‘if you loved me’ spell and how it was being used—and it ended with my father taking the title of Demon Prince and ruling all of Askavi.”

“What happened to the boy?” Raine asked.

Daemonar smiled. “They gave him a second chance and sent him to Dharo to serve in a Queen’s court.” He lowered his voice. “One of his descendants works for Mrs. Beale now. The Dharo Boy?”

Brenda hooted. Daemonar and Raine shushed her when Daemon and Lucivar looked over—then pointedly ignored the three of them.

“Does Jillian know?” Brenda asked.

“No,” Daemonar replied. “And unless the Dharo Boy is the one to tell her, she never will.”

“What do you think those three are talking about?” Stefan asked as he watched Brenda, Daemonar, and Raine laughing about something.

“I don’t want to know,” Jillian replied. She slipped her arms around his waist and rested her head on his shoulder. “Well, it’s done, and we have Prince Sadi’s permission to bounce the bed.”

Stefan choked. “He did not say that.”

“No, Brenda said it. I’m not sure if she intended for Lucivar to hear her, but it certainly got a reaction.”

“Is that why he snapped the legs off that little table?”

Jillian nodded. “He gets exercised about some things.” She sighed. “You’re going to make us wait until we’re home, aren’t you?”

“Since I’d like to keep my balls behind my zipper and not in a jar on the mantel, yes, we’re going to wait.”

She stifled a laugh. It was funny, but knowing Lucivar and Daemon, it was also true.

“Besides,” Stefan added. “We have time.”

Jillian leaned back to look at him. Loving Stefan was a quiet excitement with plenty of sparks. Rather like Lucivar and Marian’s love, although she didn’t think Lucivar would understand the comparison—yet.

The party was winding down and nobody had died. Lucivar figured he and Daemon had done well, and Surreal was right—as long as he didn’t think too much about Jillian having a lover for a decade or two, he’d adjust to her being with Stefan.

He watched Jillian cross the room. Alone.

“If he ever hurts you . . . ,” Lucivar said softly.

“I will call in my Eyrien war blade and slice him into pieces,” Jillian replied. “And then I will call you to deal with whatever part of him is left. Although I guess Daemon would be the one who would deal with what’s left after the transition to demon-dead.”

“He’d let me help.”

A beat of silence before she said, “Stefan won’t hurt me.”

No, Stefan wouldn’t. Not because of the men in Jillian’s family who would be there to protect her, but because Lucivar had seen the way the vintner looked at Jillian. Had seen love and desire rather than lust.

“If you two decide to handfast, you’ll give me a little more warning?”

Jillian nodded. “We’re not thinking of that just yet, but I will tell you if we do. And Stefan is drinking the contraceptive brew, so we’ll give you plenty of warning before you become a grandfather.”

He hadn’t realized he was swaying until someone grabbed his arm to steady him.

Jillian smiled. “If you’ll excuse me . . .”

Rothvar shook his head as Jillian joined Stefan, Brenda, Raine, and Daemonar. “Did she just say . . . ?”

“Yeah.”

“Hell’s fire.” Rothvar released his hold on Lucivar’s arm. “You okay?”

“Living in Terreille, I never thought I would survive long enough to have children, let alone be a grandfather,” Lucivar said. “But here I am.” He looked at his second-in-command. “Here we are.”

Rothvar scanned the room until he located Nurian. The heat of love filled every aspect of the man. “Yeah. Here we are.”