The Shadow Queen

CHAPTER 13

All women look the same in the dark.

Did you really think I was excited about being with you? I worked damn hard in your bed, Cassidy, and thank the Darkness you never wanted a ride in daylight.

All women look the same in the dark.

Five years when you were all I could have. At least with Lady Kermilla I won’t need a drug to keep myself hard in order to fulfill my duties.

All women look the same in the dark. All women. All women.

Dreams. Memories. Lashed by words spoken by her previous Consort on the day he left her court and by Theran last night, Cassidy headed for the gardens as soon as there was enough light. She couldn’t stay in the house, couldn’t breathe in the house.

It hurt to think, hurt to feel, hurt to remember.

Theran didn’t want her, wasn’t even supposed to make that kind of offer. A First Escort wasn’t a Consort. She didn’t want a Consort. Didn’t want another man telling her she wasn’t good enough, pretty enough, hot enough, arousing enough, whatever enough she wasn’t, because she could only be who she was, and she didn’t want to be hurt like that. Not ever again.

And even now, when she should have been free of that kind of pain because no man here was required to warm her bed, Theran had shoved that truth in her face.

She was good enough when bedding her could be used to feed ambition or provide relief, but she would never be wanted for herself.

“No tools,” she muttered. “Need tools.”

She entered the big stone shed as quietly as possible, but the clunk of shovels was enough to have Gray pulling aside the old blanket that served as a door to his room.

“Cassidy?”

Couldn’t talk to him now. Couldn’t talk to anyone. “Go back to sleep, Gray. It’s early. I just needed to get some tools.” Shovel, hoe, rake, short-handled claw.

“You’re going to start weeding now?”

“Yes.” Hard to hold all of them. Easier to vanish them and call them back in when she got to the bed where she planned to work. But she didn’t want easier. Not today. Easier wouldn’t help her run from the words.

“Okay,” Gray said. “I’ll just—”

“No.” Cassidy tried to hold back anger, hurt, all the feelings that wanted to lash out at someone, anyone. “I need to work alone. You need to leave me alone.”

She ran from the shed and stopped at a part of the garden that looked like it hadn’t been touched in years. The ground here wasn’t soft like the bed she’d been working on with Gray. This ground would require muscle, sweat, even pain.

Nothing easy. Not here.

All women look the same in the dark.

Did you really think I was excited about being with you?

She had to move. Had to. Work. Move. Keep moving. Don’t think. Because if she let the words keep ripping at her heart, she’d simply lie down and not get up again.

Lucivar closed the door of the sitting room, took a moment to get a feel for what kind of temper he was about to meet, and didn’t like the answer. Didn’t like it at all.

“Draca told me you were here,” he said.

Daemon turned away from the windows. “I received the first report from Cassidy.”

“Is she doing all right?”

Daemon smiled dryly. “Hard to say. I think she was nervous about writing the report and was trying hard not to say anything negative, so it’s a bit lean on information. However, she did say that her Master of the Guard is a Sapphire-Jeweled Warlord Prince who is demon-dead. Since yarbarah isn’t a vintage known in Dena Nehele, she requested that some bottles be sent to her, paid for by the Queen’s gift.”

“You’re taking care of those bills, aren’t you?”

“I am. And since at least half of the yarbarah made in Kaeleer comes from our family’s vineyards, I decided to deliver a couple of cases personally.”

“You mean deliver them personally as far as the Keep here in Kaeleer. You can’t go to Terreille.”

Daemon stiffened. His eyes began to glaze. “Are you giving me orders, Prick?” he asked too softly.

“I’m telling you I’ll help you follow our Queen’s command, even if that means we’ll both need a Healer by the time the discussion is done.”

Daemon looked away. “Did Father tell you what happened?”

“He told me dealing with Theran Grayhaven opened up some old wounds,” Lucivar replied. Saetan had told him more than that, and what their father hadn’t said he could guess.

“Did he tell you I attacked Jaenelle?”

Mother Night. Lucivar blew out a breath, not sure how to answer that.

“Did he tell you the Sadist was in bed with her?”

Oh, now. That he knew how to deal with. “The way I heard it, Daemon attacked Jaenelle while caught in an old, bad memory, and the Sadist enjoyed a snuggle that included a lot of moaning and several climaxes.”

“What?”

Hell’s fire, he’s fragile.

“The Sadist uses sex as a weapon,” Lucivar said, “but the Sadist rises out of temper, not desire. Usually.”

Daemon swayed—and Lucivar had the queer sense of circling around a memory . . . about another time and place when Daemon had come to him, already mentally fragile, and he had lashed out with words that had created a wound that would never fully heal. Even now.

“Old son, Daemon makes love to Jaenelle, but the Sadist dances with Witch,” Lucivar said gently. “Not out of hate or temper; he dances with her out of desire. But this time, for whatever reason, she didn’t make that transition with you—and it scared you.”

“Wouldn’t it scare you?”

“Tch. You scare the shit out of me when you’re the Sadist. But you don’t scare her. You don’t scare Jaenelle.”

“I did scare her.”

“Yeah, well, not as much as you think. And I figure scaring her once in a while helps her remember what you’re feeling when she does something that scares you. Which, you have to admit, she does on a regular basis.”

Daemon’s response was a brief, reluctant smile to acknowledge that particular truth. Then the smile faded. “Have you ever ... ?”

Pain there. Fear there. And too damn close to one of those emotional scars that created a line Daemon couldn’t cross anymore. Not without paying too high a price.

“Just say it,” Lucivar said.

“Do you ever feel possessive about Marian?”

Lucivar sat back on air, as if he were sitting on a stool. “Most of the time, I think of myself as Marian’s husband, or I think of her as an independent woman who lives with me and is the mother of my son. But when Marian and I first became lovers, she moved into my bedroom—and into my bed. So there’s not a night that goes by that I’m not saying ‘Mine.’ ”

Daemon turned to look at him. Lucivar couldn’t tell what was going on in his brother’s mind or heart, but he knew what he said here and now would matter. Really matter. So he took a moment to choose his words.

“Marian comes to my bed every night, but some nights it feels different. Occasionally I’m in bed before her, and when I see her walking toward the bed, watch her get into bed, I feel . . . different. I don’t have the words for it, Daemon. I just feel different. More . . . dangerous. It’s not like the rut. When this happens, I’m still there. My brain is still there. But something changes inside me, and I don’t see her the same way.

“I don’t know what she sees in my face, in my eyes. Sometimes when she gets into bed, she’s nervous but excited. Aroused. And sometimes she’s scared. Of me. Of whatever I am when that feeling fills me.”

Their eyes met. Held.

“What do you do?” Daemon asked softly.

“On the nights when she’s nervous and excited, the sex is . . . more. It has a flavor it doesn’t have any other time.”

“And on the other nights?”

“I’ll kiss her once, because I need to. And I’ll hold her while she sleeps. But I won’t have sex with her. Even if I’m ready to burst and she says she’s willing, I won’t have sex with her when I can smell her fear.”

Lucivar took a breath and blew it out. Not an easy thing to talk about, even with a brother he loved.

Not something he’d ever admitted to anyone before.

“Want some advice?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“Some night soon, when nothing is riding you, when you’re feeling easy, invite Jaenelle to your bed. To the bed that’s yours, not hers.”

“To prove that the Sadist won’t always be there?”

“Oh, no. No, Daemon, the Sadist will rise in a heartbeat to defend your most private bit of territory. But I don’t think he’ll hurt Jaenelle. He’ll play games. That’s what he does. But he won’t hurt her.”

He felt a change inside Daemon, pieces that would never be completely whole settling back into place.

“I’ll take the yarbarah to Dena Nehele,” he said. “I’d like to get a look around, and this is a good excuse. And I’d like to get a look at this demon-dead Warlord Prince.”

“Which means you won’t be back until later tonight.”

“I’ll let you know when I get back to the Keep.”

“All right. Anything I can do here?”

Lucivar gave Daemon a lazy, arrogant smile. “You feeling brave?”

Daemon groaned.

“It’s market day. I was going to entertain the little beast for a couple of hours so Marian could go down to Riada alone.”

Daemon groaned louder, but this groan sounded less sincere.

“Fine. All right,” Daemon said. “For Marian.”

“Of course.”

Daemon laughed, and the sound had Lucivar breathing easy again.

“Will you be all right going to Terreille?” Daemon asked.

“I’ll be fine.”

Daemon hesitated. “You’ll shield?”

Lucivar vanished the two boxes of yarbarah. “Of course. I have to set a good example.” Slipping the hunting knife out of its sheath, he studied the blade for a moment before deciding it was a sufficient weapon to wear openly. “Is Surreal still pissed off at me for chewing on her because she didn’t shield before she went into that spooky house?”

“She doesn’t automatically swear anymore when she hears your name, so I think she’s getting over it.”

Lucivar grinned. “In that case, it’s time to get some other woman riled up.”

She had to move. Had to work. Move. Work. Keep moving.

Whenever she stopped for a moment, her hands throbbed in time with her heart, and she knew that wasn’t good. But the words were there, waiting to cut, jab, tear. The pain in her back, arms, shoulders, and hands kept the words at bay. Formed a wall that the other hurt couldn’t breach.

So she kept working, kept moving, kept the words at bay.

“How long can she keep that up?” Ranon asked, sounding worried.

Theran shook his head as he watched Cassidy. As they all watched Cassidy. Since early this morning, the First Circle had been gathering on the terrace to watch their Queen tear into the gardens.

So she got up feeling pissy. If she hadn’t been eavesdropping, she would have had a good ride last night and would have been feeling just fine this morning.

But she was out there digging in that damn garden so everyone would know little Cassidy was feeling pouty.

She’d snapped at Ranon when he’d gone out to talk to her, told him flat out to leave her alone. And when he, Theran, had approached her, she had screamed at him. Screamed. Scared Gray so much the boy had been hovering around the terrace ever since.

She’ll stop when she gets tired of playing the wounded party, Theran thought. Hell’s fire, it’s not like I actually did anything.

“What in the name of Hell is going on here?”

Theran spun around and stared at the Red-Jeweled Eyrien standing in the doorway. A Warlord Prince whose glazed gold eyes were a warning that the man was standing close to the killing edge, if he wasn’t already dancing on it.

Ranon shifted into a fighting stance.

The Eyrien stepped out on the terrace, ignoring Ranon, his eyes fixed on Cassidy.

“You don’t want to start a pissing contest with me,” the Eyrien said to Ranon. “You really don’t.” He turned his head, and Theran felt the punch of power as those gold eyes stared at him.

He was looking at death. This man was a stranger who had walked into his home and should be challenged, but he knew, with absolute certainty, that he was looking at death.

Then the Eyrien fixed his eyes on Gray. “You do anything to piss her off?” he asked mildly.

Gray shook his head.

“Then get me two large buckets of cold water, and put them over there.” He pointed to a spot near the stairs leading down to the lawn. “Do it now.”

Gray bolted.

“What are you going to do?” Theran asked.

“What you should have done,” the Eyrien replied. “Take care of your Queen.”

“She ordered us to leave her alone,” Ranon said.

The Eyrien snorted. “And you let her get away with that? Well, she knows better than to say that to me.”

As soon as Gray returned with the buckets of water, the Eyrien headed for Cassidy. When he got close to her, he whistled sharply.

Her head came up—and the hoe came up like a weapon. The Eyrien simply grabbed the wood between her hands and tugged. She yanked back. He tugged. Then he yanked, lifting her off her feet for a moment before he turned and walked back to the terrace, dragging her with him.

Her feet kept trying to find purchase, but she skimmed along the top of the grass while the Eyrien ignored her increasingly shrill demands.

“It’s my hoe!” Cassidy yelled, still fighting the Eyrien as he yanked her up high enough to clear the terrace steps. “Let go! It’s mine!”

“Uh-huh.” The Eyrien set her down in front of the buckets.

“Mine!”

A fast twist of his wrist, and the length of the hoe handle between Cassidy’s hands snapped off cleanly. He tossed it off the terrace.

“You broke my hoe!” Cassidy wailed. “You broke my hoe!”

As she threw down the broken pieces, the buckets rose up behind her and doused her with cold water.

Her shriek had all of them jumping back. Except the Eyrien.

“Have I got your attention now, witchling?” the Eyrien asked.

“You—” Cassidy blinked. Stared at the man.

“Yeah. Remember me?”

“Oh, shit.” Her eyes skipped over Theran and settled on Ranon and the others before coming back to the Eyrien.

“Listen up, Cassie, because I’ll only tell you this once,” the Eyrien said. “If you have a problem with your court, you deal with your court. And if they end up with a few bruises because of it, so be it.”

“A Queen doesn’t do that to her court,” Cassidy said.

The Eyrien grabbed her wrists and turned her hands palms up. “And a woman doesn’t do this to herself.”

Theran looked at Cassidy’s hands and felt his stomach roll. How could she have done that? Why didn’t she stop?

She looked at her hands—and grew pale.

“You ever do anything like this again, I’ll haul you back to Kaeleer,” the Eyrien said. “And I’ll bury anyone who tries to stop me.”

“You have no right to—”

“You do anything like this again, I will haul you back to Kaeleer, and you can explain to your father why you did this to his daughter.”

Kick in the gut. Her lower lip quivered. Her eyes filled with tears. The damn Eyrien knew right where to hit her to take all the fight out of her.

Bastard.

“Do you have a Healer?” the Eyrien asked.

“Yes,” Cassidy said.

“Then you call her, and you get those hands fixed. I’ll look in on you in a little while. We’ve got some things to talk about.”

She stumbled a little when she headed for the door, and she flinched away from him when Theran reached out to give her a little support through the doorway.

He waited until he was sure she was out of sight and hearing before he looked at the Eyrien. “Who do you—”

His back slammed into the house. The Eyrien’s forearm pressed against his chest, holding him in place.

Hell’s fire. He hadn’t even seen the man move.

“The only reason a woman does that to herself is because she’s running from pain that hurts a lot more,” the Eyrien snarled. “And in my experience, the source of that kind of pain is usually attached to a cock. I’m guessing you’re the reason she was out there this morning. Whatever the problem is, you’d better fix it. Because if I ever find her in that shape again, boyo, I will skin you alive.”

The Eyrien stepped back. Theran sagged against the wall.

The Eyrien looked at Ranon, who stiffened but offered no challenge. “Does the Master of the Guard live in this house?”

“Yes,” Ranon replied. “But he’s not available until sundown.”

“I’m aware of that. I have a delivery for him. And a few things to discuss.”

The Eyrien walked into the house. No one asked him where he was going.

“Mother Night,” Ranon said. Then he looked at Theran. “You all right?”

“Bruises. Nothing more.” Except he had looked at death.

The Eyrien wasn’t bluffing about skinning him alive.

Cassidy walked into the healing room Shira had set up in the wing that held the working rooms for the court.

“What’s going on?” Shira said. “Ranon keeps calling me on a psychic thread, telling me to get to the healing room as fast as I can, and I’ve never heard him sound so nervous. What’s . . . ?”

Cassidy held out her hands.

“Mother Night!”

Shira hurried around the table where she mixed her tonics and healing brews. Her hands hovered around Cassidy’s but didn’t touch.

Cassidy kept her eyes fixed on a spot over Shira’s left shoulder. “Can you fix them?”

Shira let out a quivering sigh. “I think so. It’s going to take a while just to clean them out and see how bad it really is, but I think so.” She led Cassidy to a chair at one end of the table.

Cassidy sat quietly, cocooned in pain. She didn’t pay attention as Shira hustled around the healing room, gathering supplies and starting a series of different brews to cleanse and heal. But she did look over when Shira placed a basin on the table.

“What’s that for?” she asked.

Shira gave her a long look. “This isn’t going to be easy, and I’m thinking one or both of us is going to need to puke in that basin before this is done.”

Gray followed the Eyrien who had dared to dump cold water over Cassie. Who had yelled at Cassie.

Bastard.

Why didn’t Theran or Ranon say anything? Why did they let him do that?

The bastard had no right. He—“had no right!”

The Eyrien stopped and turned his head just enough to indicate he knew someone was behind him. Had probably known all along.

The man was power and temper like he’d never felt before, but he would have his say.

“She’s our Queen!” Gray shouted. “Ours! You had no right to be scolding her or getting her wet.”

The Eyrien turned to look at him. “Your Queen,” he said quietly. “Why didn’t you stop her?”

His eyes filled with frustrated tears. “She wouldn’t let me. She ordered me to stay away, to leave her alone. And she got hurt.” His shoulders sagged. “She got hurt.”

The Eyrien took a step closer. “The first law is not obedience. The first law is to honor, cherish, and protect. The second is to serve. The third is to obey.”

“But if you don’t obey, you get punished.”

The Eyrien studied him. “Everything has a price. You take a chance of being punished, even killed, for challenging a Queen even if you’re doing it to protect her, but you accept that risk and do what you should. If the Queen is truly worthy of your loyalty, she’ll understand the reason for the challenge and back down. Doesn’t mean she’ll like it or be happy with the man, but she’ll back down.”

“She told everyone to leave her alone.” It had been so painful to watch her, to know she was hurting and not be able to stop her.

“Someone hurt her and—”

“Who?” Gray felt something in him stir. “Who hurt Cassie?”

“I don’t know, and that’s healthier for everyone,” the Eyrien said. “I do know she was hurting before she went out into the garden, and she was trying to sweat out some of the hurt and temper. Her First Escort should have given her an hour; then he should have used Protocol to stop her. And if that didn’t work, he should have fought her into the ground.”

Gray frowned. “Protocol? But those are just words.”

“Yeah. And one sentence that used the right words could have stopped this.”

He’d gotten a glimpse of Cassie’s hands. One sentence could have stopped that?

The Eyrien made a sound. Annoyance? Disgust? “This court is supposed to be learning the Old Ways. I know Lady Cassidy brought books of Protocol with her. Haven’t any of you looked at them?”

“Don’t know.” Gray rubbed his nose with the back of his hand. “If I had said the sentence, she would have stopped before she got hurt?”

It was the way the Eyrien looked at him that made Gray wonder what the man saw.

“A Queen doesn’t like having a man set his heels down and get ready to fight her about something, so if you use Protocol to stop her, she’ll probably swear at you. A lot.”

“That’s it? She’ll swear at me?” He wouldn’t like it, but that didn’t sound so bad. “Will she hit?”

“Depends on the woman. I’ve gotten slugged in the arm more than once because I annoyed a witch who needed to be protected from herself.” The Eyrien shrugged. “I can take a bruised muscle a lot easier than I can take watching someone I care about get hurt.”

If he learned the Protocol, then . . .

Gray looked around and realized where he was. He’d been so focused on catching up to the Eyrien and yelling at the man for dumping water on Cassie, he hadn’t paid attention.

“Nothing is going to come at you,” the Eyrien said, “because there is nothing here that can get past me.”

He knew. Somehow this stranger knew.

“Who are you?” Gray whispered. He wanted to curl up and hide, wanted to run.

“Lucivar. And you?”

“Gray.” His body shook with the effort to stand there and not run, not hide, not scream out the old fear until his voice was gone.

The other Queen never stopped the pain until his voice was gone.

“I’m not . . . right,” Gray said. That was the reason he couldn’t serve in the court. Talon and Theran had both told him that. Not that he’d wanted to serve in the court. At least, not until he’d met Cassie.

“No, you’re not,” Lucivar said quietly. “You have scars, Gray, and they run deep. I can feel them in you. When a man has scars like that, there are boundaries he can’t cross, lines he has to draw to keep himself whole. But those boundaries aren’t as small as you might think, and a man can choose to live safe or he can choose to live right up to those lines. He might slip over a line every now and then, and that will hurt like a wicked bitch, but he might decide that what he gains will be worth the price.”

“Do you have scars?” Gray asked.

Lucivar nodded. “I have scars. And sometimes they still bleed.”

Gray studied Lucivar. This man didn’t know him, didn’t know about the times when he was so scared he couldn’t take care of himself, when his body seized up so badly he couldn’t move. And yet there was a message underneath the words, a message that had been there since Lucivar had first turned and looked at him.

“I’m not a warrior,” Gray said.

“Yes, you are.” Lucivar smiled grimly. “Just because you fought on a different kind of battlefield doesn’t make you less a warrior.”

Something stirred, shifted, fit into place.

“You get a copy of those books of Protocol and you study them,” Lucivar said. “Next time you won’t have to stand back if Cassidy does something foolish.”

“The first law is not obedience,” Gray said.

Lucivar grinned. “That was the best rule I ever learned.”

Gray grinned in reply. Then the grin faded as he looked at the walls that seemed to be closing in around him.

“Do you want me to walk you out of here?” Lucivar asked.

Gray hesitated. “Can those boundaries you talked about change?”

“Up to a point. The challenge is to learn which ones are still fluid and which ones are made of stone. I’m guessing you entered what had been the enemy’s lair. That’s pushing the boundaries plenty for one day.”

Gray nodded. Then he pointed to a door on the right. “That room has the fastest way out from here. Not a door, just a window, but there’s nothing in the way under it.”

“Let’s go.”

When Gray had the window open and one leg over the sill, he realized what was missing from Lucivar’s psychic scent that was there in all the other Warlord Princes’ scents. Even Theran’s and Talon’s.

“You don’t pity me,” Gray said.

Lucivar gave him one of those long, assessing looks. “A lot of us have scars, boyo. The biggest difference between you and the rest of us is you haven’t learned to live with yours yet.”