The Queen's Price

SIXTY-FIVE

Daemon rose to the killing edge moments before he snapped awake and sat up in bed.

Had something—someone—entered the Hall?

No. Not someone extra. Someone missing.

He sent a pulse of power into the psychic web he maintained throughout the Hall. After confirming that the Sapphire wasn’t within the Hall itself, he expanded the search to cover the entire estate, in case Grizande felt too confined by walls and needed to move across open land.

Nothing.

Rolling out of bed, he pulled on trousers and shrugged into a shirt. He strode out of his bedroom and yanked on the door of his sitting room, intending to search Grizande’s room for some clue to the girl’s whereabouts, and almost plowed into Daemonar, who stood in the corridor holding two large mugs of coffee.

“Grizande is missing,” Daemon growled, expecting the boy to step aside.

“Not exactly,” Daemonar replied. He held up a mug. “Coffee?”

The boy’s expression was somewhere between Lucivar’s lazy arrogance and Jaenelle’s unsure-but-game smile. That made him hesitate enough to step back and allow the boy to enter the sitting room.

Daemon accepted a mug of coffee. “Then what, exactly?”

“Zoey and Grizande have gone to the Keep to seek wisdom from the Queen. They took a small Coach.”

“They had help getting that Coach?”

“Some help,” Daemonar agreed.

Well, that explained why the boy was awake at this hour. “How long ago?”

Daemonar looked toward the glass doors that led out to a balcony and the stairs down to the courtyard. “I barely had time to get back up here and make some coffee before I felt you getting . . . exercised . . . about the absence of the Sapphire.”

Riding the Black, he could easily reach the Keep ahead of them. But . . . Zoey and Grizande working together?

“You were giving the girls a little time to figure out what to do about those bad instructions,” Daemonar said. “And Auntie J. does give good advice, even if she sometimes adds a whack upside the head to make sure the advice sticks.”

Daemon sipped his coffee and studied the boy. It hadn’t been a flippant decision to help the girls. The choice of leaving in the middle of the night was also not a flippant decision. It would be hours before most of the people in the Hall knew Zoey was missing and might guess a young Queen was seeking help beyond the rules of the game.

But once someone knew and might start to worry about being discovered . . .

Daemon raised his right hand and released a ripple of power from the Black Jewel in his ring. That ripple engaged all the Black shields in the Hall’s exterior walls, trapping everyone inside. Then he released more Black power to create a Black shield around part of the estate, starting at the bridge and creek that formed a boundary between the estate and Halaway and extending to the north woods, where the wolf pack would keep watch for anyone attempting to enter or leave. It was by no means the whole of the estate, but he hadn’t sensed any humans anywhere they shouldn’t be, so shielding that much would do for now.

“Uncle Daemon?” The boy sounded worried.

The High Lord smiled. “We don’t want anyone else scampering off, do we?”

Daemonar looked wary but said, “No, sir, we don’t. With your permission, I’ll pull the Warlord Princes out of the court exercises to patrol as a group.”

“Under your hand?”

“Under my command, but under your hand. We’ll report to you, Beale, or Holt—and receive information from the three of you so that we can assist in . . . suppressing . . . trouble before it goes too far.”

Pulling the Warlord Princes out of the exercises and keeping them under control would reduce the possibility of someone like Raeth snapping the leash and hurting another boy because a cruel command had pushed a Warlord Prince too far.

“Very well.” Daemon thought for a moment. “Where is the tiger?”

“Still in Grizande’s room. I’m going to ask Allis to keep him company. That will keep both of them from fretting while the girls are gone.”

Oh, he doubted it would keep the Sceltie from fretting, since Zoey had broken the rules by not taking Allis with her, but it would delay Allis’s announcing to everyone that Zoey wasn’t where she was supposed to be.

And once Zoey returned and Allis got done explaining things, he doubted the girl would break that particular rule again.

Brenda sat up in bed, shivering and unsure as she hesitantly sent out a psychic probe. Something had roused her from sleep.

Her probe hit an unyielding Black shield.

“What?” Raine said, resting a hand on her arm.

“Something’s wrong,” she whispered.

He propped himself up on one elbow. After a minute he said, “Black shield?”

“Around the whole of the Hall.”

“That’s not good.” Raine scrubbed a hand over his hair. “I wasn’t at the Hall during that disastrous house party, but I saw some of what Sadi—what the Sadist—could and would do in response to someone putting children at risk.”

“What should we do?”

“Nothing. The Black is awake and aware—and may already be hunting.” Raine paused. “And Daemonar is already awake and aware—and declining to answer any questions right now. But he suggests we remain alert for any behavior that comes close to crossing a line.”

Brenda didn’t resist when Raine nudged her back under the covers. Resting her head on his shoulder, she said, “Maybe the servants and I were a bit too enthusiastic creating Lady Dumm’s faults. Maybe crude manners and bad behavior gave someone the idea for going further and doing actual harm.”

“Maybe,” Raine agreed. “But if they did, the tendency to do harm was already there, and the person suggesting a Queen do that harm puts a whole court at risk, to say nothing of the damage done to the people under that Queen’s hand.”

“But what happened in the middle of the night to have Prince Sadi locking the Hall?”

Raine kissed her. “We’ll find out in a few hours.”