Twilight's Dawn

Ten years later . . .

ONE

Pulling the collar up around her ears, Sylvia added more power to the warming spell in her coat as she followed another path through her hosts’ gardens. She needed the crisp night air and the silence. More, she needed to be away from her hosts. Was her uneasiness due to staying at an estate that bordered the Territory called Little Terreille, or was there a tangible reason she wanted to grab her sons and Tildee, catch the Winds, and flee?

Remembering the cloying, desperate civility that had surrounded her at the dinner table, she used Craft to put a shield around herself under her clothes—a subtle precaution that made her feel better. And because having that much protection did make her feel better, she stopped trying to rationalize her feelings.

There was something wrong with this place, with this family, maybe with the whole damn village.

Her son Beron had reached the age where he was allowed to attend house parties in order to become acquainted with youngsters beyond his home village. At one of those parties he had struck up a friendship with Haeze, a Warlord his own age, and had asked if his new friend could spend a few days with them at the end of Winsol. Her father had chaperoned Beron to that particular party and had voiced no objection to Haeze, so she agreed.

Haeze had been staggered by the proximity of Beron’s home to SaDiablo Hall—and even more staggered when the boys passed the Warlord Prince of Dhemlan on the street and Daemon stopped to talk to them, making it clear he took a personal interest in young Lord Beron. Add to that a couple of weapons lessons from Prince Yaslana and Haeze’s first encounter with a kindred Sceltie, and she’d seen the impact that a few days with them had on the boy. By the end of the visit, Haeze had sounded more confident and carried himself with an assurance that had been hidden by his initial shyness.

A few weeks later, Haeze extended an invitation to Beron to visit his family’s estate. Sylvia would have asked a Warlord from her Second or Third Circle to stand escort for the short visit, but the invitation had included her other son, Mikal, claiming that Haeze’s younger brother was eager to become acquainted. Making connections was an intrinsic part of the Blood’s society, not just for friendships in general, but for the kind of association that could eventually provide a young man with the opportunity to train in a specific court.

This house party hadn’t sounded like it would be any different from others Beron had attended, except that the invitation hadn’t included her, and it should have if a boy Mikal’s age was going to be visiting a family who was unknown to her. That had scratched her sense of propriety enough that she had declined the invitation on her sons’ behalf.

The next invitation from Haeze’s family arrived shortly after that, crammed with apologies and gorged with assurances that they had meant no insult. They did not have the means to entertain a Queen, since that would mean guesting her escorts as well, and they had thought she wouldn’t want to visit their small estate simply as a mother with her sons.

Having been in the position of entertaining to excess because a guest brought several unanticipated companions—and having her children grumble about the other parties they couldn’t attend after she paid the bills for that excess—she understood the dilemma Haeze’s mother faced: Pay for a visit by a District Queen that might not net enough social value to be worth the cost, or have the means to send Haeze to several parties in other villages.

Her Steward and Master of the Guard had voiced no objections to Sylvia not bringing a human escort because Tildee was coming with her. The Sceltie, who was a Summer-sky witch, poked her nose into everything that had to do with her family, especially when it came to Mikal, who was her special human.

So Sylvia had accepted the second invitation for a family visit.

She stopped walking. She’d been careful not to wander beyond the formal gardens, but she was still alone in the dark. Thinking about the invitation that brought her family here, she used Craft to create several balls of witchlight and tossed them in the air to float above her as she headed back toward the house.

There would have been room for a couple of escorts because she and her boys were the only guests—and that second invitation had given her the distinct impression the house would be crammed with guests. Haeze’s younger brother wasn’t eagerly waiting to meet Mikal as she’d been told. The boy wasn’t even here, and the excuses being made for his absence rang false.

She should have listened to Tildee when the Sceltie growled about something smelling wrong near the house. The dog had wanted to get away from this place and these people within minutes of arriving.

Thank the Darkness she had a code phrase the Sceltie promised to obey. If used, Mikal would be taken away from the danger, no matter what else might be lost.

When had a sense of something wrong turned into a conviction there was danger?

*Mother?* Beron called on a psychic thread.

*Coming,* she replied. If a son had noticed her absence and come looking for her, she had been out in the garden longer than she’d intended.

Sylvia lengthened her stride, the witchlights bobbing along with her. Hearing Beron’s voice helped her make her decision. She didn’t care if she was being rude. She didn’t care if she embarrassed her son and his friend. She was taking her boys home!

The attack came without warning. A bolt of power hit her in the chest, knocking her down, shattering the shield beneath her clothes. As she scrambled to her feet, a male figure, dressed in black, rushed toward her.

“Bitch,” he snarled. “This is your brat’s fault.”

She threw a Purple Dusk shield between them, certain the feel of power clashing would bring the men in the house running to help. The man shattered that shield and kept coming toward her, destroying the next one too as she backed away.

A hint of rotting meat in the air now, and a foulness to his psychic scent that gagged her more than the physical smell. In the moments before he struck again, she knew why Haeze’s brother wasn’t home. Since she couldn’t hold this Warlord off for long and it was clear she wasn’t going to get any help from the people in the house, she made her choice.

Everything has a price.

*Beron! Run!* she shouted on a psychic thread. *Tildee! Run now!*

As the enemy lunged at her, she wrapped shields around herself and ran, hoping to lure him away long enough for her boys to escape. She didn’t worry much about Mikal. Asking Tildee to run meant something terrible had happened, and the Sceltie would protect the boy with everything in her while getting him to a safe place. But Beron . . .

“Mother?” Beron shouted, sounding much too close. “Mother?”

*Run!* she screamed.

A blast of power hit her legs, breaking her shields and exploding her knees. She struck the ground hard and rolled, denying the pain while she twisted around to face the enemy.

“Mother!”

No time to argue with Beron about running toward her instead of running away. She blasted the enemy with everything she had in her Purple Dusk Jewel. It didn’t break his shield, but it stopped him for a moment. He was stronger, had a deeper reservoir of power than she did, and that meant he would win this fight.

She’d still make the bastard work for the kill.

Slipping on the blood and shattered bones, he fell on her and began tearing at her clothes. She tore at him with her nails, breaking through his shield long enough to rip her fingers on a protective mesh that covered his face.

He rammed a knife between her ribs. Before her body registered pain, he yanked it out.

“I’m going to give you a smile from ear to ear,” he snarled.

A blast of power knocked him off her. Leaping to his feet, he grabbed her torn clothes and used Craft to fling her far out into the garden.

As she flew through the air, in those moments before the physical death, she saw the enemy attack Beron.

Daemon followed Jaenelle into her sitting room, closed the door, then wrapped his arms around her.

“I love listening to you sing,” he said as he nuzzled her. “And so did everyone else tonight.”

“I was pleased that we had a full house.” She tipped her head to give him access to his favorite spot on her neck.

He brushed her hair back before giving that spot a delicate taste. After years of keeping her hair sleek-short or shaggy-short, depending on her mood, she had finally let it grow out. It wasn’t as long as it had been when she was twenty-five, but it now hid the spot between neck and shoulder that the Warlord Princes who served her found so intriguing.

“You always have a full house,” he said, feeling a swell of pride, among other things. She owned a music shop in Halaway and sang there twice a month, hosting Dhemlan musicians as well as musicians from many other Territories in Kaeleer—and beyond. “Since you included a couple of folk songs from Shalador Nehele, I was surprised you hadn’t asked Ranon to come here and play with you.”

Jaenelle gave him a wicked grin. “I knew better than to ask Ranon. I asked Cassidy and Shira if he could indulge me. They—and Vae—ganged up on him. He’ll be here for the next concert.”

Daemon laughed. He felt a keen sympathy for the Shalador Warlord Prince because he knew how it felt to be backed into a corner, but he laughed anyway.

Then Jaenelle kissed him with heat, and the parts of him that had swelled along with his pride responded with enthusiasm. But he eased back a little before he forgot what he’d wanted to discuss.

“You’re going to be thirty-seven this year,” he said.

“And that is significant because . . . ?”

“You’ve never been thirty-seven before. I thought we should do something special for your birthday.”

“We always do something special for my birthday.” She rocked her hips, brushing against him. “And some part of the ‘something special’ usually involves you being deliciously naked.”

The world narrowed to his need to make love with her—to play and seduce and savor until they were both boneless and satisfied. His arms tightened around her, and just as his mouth touched hers . . .

*Daemon!*

*daemondaemondaemondaemondaemon.*

He raised his head, snarling. *Go away!* One Sceltie might be cowed by the snarl traveling along the psychic link, especially when he made no effort to hide that he was aroused and wanted to mate. But cowing three of them? Wouldn’t happen.

*Daemon!*

*daemondaemondaemondaemondaemon.*

“I like Shuveen,” Daemon growled as he stepped away from Jaenelle, “but why can’t we send Boyd and Floyd back to Scelt for more . . . seasoning?”

“Ladvarian is staying here with us for a while and wanted those two with him for extra training.” She looked toward the door and frowned. “They seem upset.”

“They probably got in trouble with Mrs. Beale again.” And wouldn’t sorting that out be a fun way to end the evening?

*Daemon!* Shuveen called.

Boyd and Floyd began barking outside the door.

Swearing, Daemon strode to the door. He would tolerate them interrupting him when he was in his study working. After all, they were young, and living with him and Jaenelle was part of their training to become a working member of a household. But he wouldn’t tolerate their intrusion when he was about to make love to his wife, and that was something they also needed to learn.

Then Ladvarian passed through the wall and said, *Sylvia told Tildee to run.*

*Daemon!* Shuveen shouted.

*daemondaemondaemondaemondaemon,* Boyd and Floyd yapped.

Daemon rose to the killing edge in a heartbeat. Telling a Sceltie to run was the code Jaenelle had established between the Scelties living in Dhemlan and their human families. It meant life-threatening danger, and the dog’s task was to grab the special human friend—usually the child—and get them both out of harm’s way.

*Daemon!*

*daemondaemondaemondaemondaemon.*

He used Craft to open the door. Letting the young Scelties in was the only way to shut them up.

“Sylvia isn’t in Halaway,” Jaenelle said. “Or if she is, she’s not able to respond to a psychic call.”

*She is far,* Ladvarian said. *They are visiting. Tildee isn’t sure where.*

“Tildee has Mikal?” Jaenelle asked.

*Yes.*

*Far far far,* the youngsters yapped.

“How far can Tildee reach on a psychic thread?” Daemon asked Jaenelle.

“Not that far,” she replied.

Ladvarian said, *Tildee called. Other Scelties answered, then called to me.*

Daemon swore softly, straining to keep his temper leashed. Upsetting the youngsters wouldn’t get him the information he needed. If that call for help had traveled from Sceltie to Sceltie, Sylvia and her boys could be anywhere in Dhemlan. “Where were the other Scelties? Could you tell?”

All four Scelties spun to face the same direction.

“South,” Daemon snarled. He moved swiftly, out of the room and down the corridors. *Beale, I need a Coach on the landing web, and a driver to come with us.*

“If Tildee is running, someone is going to need a Healer,” Jaenelle said when she caught up to him.

*Rainier!* Daemon called.

*Prince?*

*Contact Sylvia’s Master of the Guard. I want to know exactly where she is and who is with her. There’s trouble. We need to find her.*

*Can you wait for Surreal?*

*Only if she can get to the Hall by the time you have the information. If not, you’ll have to tell her where to meet us.*

*We were on our way home, so I’ll stop at the Master’s house and she’ll come up to the Hall.*

When Daemon and Jaenelle reached the great hall, Beale and Holt were waiting, holding their winter coats.

“The driver will bring the Coach around in another minute or so,” Beale said. He helped Daemon into his coat while Holt helped Jaenelle into hers.

Daemon wanted to snap at the delay. There had been time to bring the Coach around to the landing web in front of the Hall. But he held his tongue. Once they caught the Winds, they would be out of touch, so they couldn’t leave until Rainier found out where Sylvia went.

“There are blankets and winter boots in the Coach,” Beale said. “Mrs. Beale is putting together a basket of food and jugs of water.”

We aren’t going on a picnic, Daemon thought. On the other hand, Tildee was running, and if whatever was happening around Sylvia was as bad as that indicated and Jaenelle was needed as a Healer, he wouldn’t want her eating or drinking anything that didn’t come from the Hall in case it had been tainted in some way.

*Prince?* Rainier called on a spear thread.

*Where is she?*

His temper turned viciously cold as Rainier gave him the information. As soon as Rainier broke the link, he turned to Jaenelle. “Let’s go. Lord Ladvarian, your presence is requested.”

The youngsters whined. Daemon pointed a finger at them, then at Holt and Beale. “You three tell them everything you know about this.” He looked at Beale. “Do whatever you can.”

Beale nodded.

Holt rushed to open the door. Daemon, Jaenelle, and Ladvarian walked out of the Hall.

Within moments of the driver setting the Coach on the landing web, a horse-drawn cab raced up to the Hall’s front doors. Surreal sprang from the cab and ran to the Coach. She didn’t say anything until they were inside and Daemon was settling into the other chair in the driver’s compartment.

*Jaenelle is going in as a Healer?* she asked on a Gray thread.

*Yes,* he replied.

*Then I’ll protect Jaenelle, and you and Ladvarian take care of the rest.*

*Agreed.*

Letting Jaenelle and Ladvarian explain the situation, Daemon lifted the Coach off the landing web, caught the Black Winds, and raced toward a village on the border of Little Terreille.

Sylvia fought her way up from a sludgy kind of sleep. Her legs were filled with a dull, draining ache, and her eyes wouldn’t open. She couldn’t remember where she was or why she felt so strange, but she knew her boys were in danger and needed her. She knew that much.

Then she remembered all of it—the attack, the pain, telling Tildee to run, and Beron coming to help her instead of running away.

Tildee would get Mikal to a safe hiding place. But Beron . . .

She couldn’t see, couldn’t hear. Her body didn’t work.

She’d died in those moments when her attacker flung her far into the garden. But that had been the body’s death. The Blood had the ability to survive beyond the physical death and become demon-dead.

How long did it usually take to make the transition? Minutes? Hours? How much time had passed?

Her vision was cloudy. Her hearing returned halfway. Was this normal?

That bastard who attacked her was demon-dead. That was why he smelled like rotting meat. Had she managed to damage him at all?

Her fingers twitched. A few moments later, she was able to fist both hands.

Blood was the living river, and through it flowed the power that made the Blood who and what they were—and it was that power that sustained the flesh after the transformation to demon-dead. Dead flesh wasn’t capable of renewing the power, which was why the demon-dead drank the blood of the living.

She had died before completely draining her Purple Dusk Jewel, but there wasn’t much power left, so her Birthright Summer-sky was sustaining her body right now. Once the power completely drained from both Jewels, the final death would occur, and her Self would become a whisper in the Darkness—and she wouldn’t be able to do anything to protect her family from a faceless enemy.

*Beron?* she whispered, not sure if the lack of response meant he was too far away to hear her or meant that he too was dead.

She felt too exposed to send out a psychic call for help that might alert the people in the house to her location. If they weren’t looking for her yet, they would be, for no other reason than to make sure she couldn’t tell anyone about what happened.

Sylvia pushed herself to a sitting position. She wasn’t sure how much power was needed to sustain dead flesh, but she didn’t think she had a lot of time.

If all she wanted to do was gasp out a last message, Halaway would be the prudent destination. But her boys had been lured to this estate in order to be that monster’s prey, so she needed the help of someone who knew the demon-dead and could help her survive long enough to destroy that nameless, faceless enemy.

She needed Saetan.

Using Craft, she floated through the gardens, keeping low to the ground, moving away from garbled sounds that might have been people shouting or dogs barking. When she found a tether line for the White Wind, she caught it and headed north, carefully shifting to a darker Wind whenever she could until she was riding the Purple Dusk Wind to the Keep.

Dropping from the Black Winds, Daemon aimed the Coach at the estate that was a couple of miles from a village on the border of Little Terreille. He didn’t intend to announce his presence until he was right on top of the problem, but since the District Queen who ruled this village didn’t live here, he reached for the males in her home village and let his voice thunder a message through a psychic spear thread: *Get here. Now.*

Once he landed the Coach and let his Black power roll over the land, they would know where to find him—and they would do everything they could to accommodate him, because they, and their Queen, wouldn’t want him looking in their direction. Not when his temper had turned cold and he was riding the killing edge.

The door to the driver’s compartment slid open. Jaenelle said, “We need to find Beron and Sylvia. Mikal should be safe with Tildee.”

*I will find Beron,* Ladvarian said. *I can run faster, and I can smell him, even if he is hiding.*

Daemon didn’t argue, since the dog was right. He wrapped the Coach in a Black sight shield as they approached the estate.

“Front door?” he asked, glancing back as Surreal moved up to join them. Both women now wore trousers, boots, and body-hugging tops that wouldn’t get in the way of fighting or healing.

“Front door,” Jaenelle agreed.

“I’m not sensing anyone in the front lower rooms,” Surreal said. “There are clusters of people in the upper rooms. We should go in fast and quiet.”

“Agreed,” Jaenelle said. “These people haven’t lived around kindred. They have no reason to think Tildee sent a message that could have reached us so fast. If Sylvia and Beron are being held, no one will be expecting us. Not this soon.”

Daemon landed on the drive, using Craft to create a blanket of air so that the Coach silently came to rest just above the gravel.

As soon as the Coach settled, Ladvarian passed through the door and disappeared.

*Sylvia,* Daemon called on a psychic thread. *Sylvia!*

No response of any kind, not even a weak effort of someone sick or injured. *Beron?*

Barely a flicker, but he thought there was some response.

Daemon stepped out of the Coach, then waited for Jaenelle and Surreal. The three of them moved up to the front door together, then passed through it one by one. Daemon took the lead while Surreal guarded their backs. As he headed up the stairs, probing and searching, Ladvarian shouted, *Jaenelle!*

Daemon leaped up the remaining stairs, moving fast to stay ahead of Jaenelle, following the sounds of barking and shouting. He burst into the room, a Black shield fanned out in front of him to protect the women behind him.

A huddle of people—several adults and the boy, Haeze. A Healer cringed near a narrow bed, her eyes on Ladvarian. The Sceltie floated on air above the bed, snapping and snarling to keep the woman away from Beron, who lay in the bed, bloody and too still.

Jaenelle rushed over to the bed. Surreal remained by the door, a knife in her hand. Ladvarian continued snarling at the Healer. And Daemon, riding the killing edge, watched everyone in the room as he assessed the stink of the adults’ psychic scents. Fear, desperation, and a petty satisfaction that it wasn’t their boy lying wounded in the bed. And something more that he couldn’t identify—yet.

“You whoring bitch.”

Planting one knee on air, Jaenelle threw herself across the bed, grabbed the Healer’s Jewel, and channeled a blast of power through cold rage.

Surreal yelped in surprise. Other people screamed, and the Healer shrieked as Jaenelle shattered the woman’s Jewels, both ranking Jewel and Birthright, breaking her back to basic Craft. Windows shattered. The walls of the room cracked in patterns that made Daemon think a violent lightning storm had been etched on the plaster.

He felt as if the Winds had turned into a funnel of speed and power that would sweep away anything in its path, and he was standing at the edge of that fury.

Then the power and fury were gone, reclaimed by the witch who had unleashed it.

Jaenelle opened her hand. The shattered pieces of the Healer’s Jewel fell to the floor, completely empty of power. Pushing against air, Jaenelle returned to the other side of the bed.

“Lady?” Daemon asked sharply.

“She was destroying Beron’s vocal cords under the guise of healing his throat,” Jaenelle snarled.

He didn’t ask how she knew or if she was certain the harm was deliberate. Jaenelle wouldn’t have broken a Healer that way unless she was certain.

Daemon looked at the adults, then at Haeze, who was curled up on the floor.

Everyone in the room had known the bitch was doing it—including the boy who was supposed to be Beron’s friend.

That was the something more he had picked up in their psychic scents—their worry that someone would find out they had stood by and allowed Beron to be harmed.

Well, someone had, and he wasn’t about to overlook or forgive anything.

While Witch’s fury shook the room, Ladvarian had pressed himself against the bed over Beron’s legs. Now he stood up, shook himself vigorously, and looked at Jaenelle. *This room has bad smells, and it is getting cold. You should take Beron to the Coach so you can heal him properly. Surreal will guard you while the Prince and I look for Lady Sylvia.*

*Why aren’t you being that bossy?* Surreal asked Daemon on a Gray thread.

*I wouldn’t have dared. Not yet, anyway,* he replied dryly.

Jaenelle looked at Beron. “Agreed.” She pulled the top sheet loose. Ladvarian jumped off the bed as she floated the boy on air and wrapped the sheet around him.

*Can you handle this?* Daemon asked Surreal.

*Do you have a problem with me burying anyone who upsets her?*

*No problem at all.*

*Then I can handle this.*

Ladvarian went with the women as they hurried to get Beron to the Coach. Daemon remained, his hands in his coat pockets, doing nothing but staring at the people huddled together. Now that Witch was out of the room, he was, once more, the dominant predator.

“Prince?”

The male voice was unfamiliar and cautious. Not surprising, since the man was coming up behind him and wouldn’t want to be mistaken for an enemy.

Looking over his shoulder, Daemon studied the Warlord wearing the badge of a Master of the Guard. “Come in.”

The Master entered the room, flanked by several other Warlords. “Someone has been hurt?”

“The Queen of Halaway’s son,” Daemon replied. “And Lady Sylvia is missing.”

“How may we be of service?” The Master’s voice turned grim.

“Lord Ladvarian and I are going to search the grounds for Lady Sylvia. Have some of your men search the house.” Daemon pointed at the Healer, then at the adults he assumed were Sylvia’s hosts. “Keep them under guard, separately, until I’m ready to have a little chat. Take the boy to his room, under protection.”

“Done,” the Master said.

Daemon walked out of the room as the Warlords swarmed around the people being detained. The Master followed him out.

“Something else?” Daemon asked, pausing at the top of the stairs.

“Does this have anything to do with the missing children?”

Cold rage swept through him, but he kept it chained. “What do you know about missing children?” And why hadn’t you shown some balls and come up to the Hall to tell me about them?

The Master licked his lips, a nervous movement. “Sometimes borders are just lines on a map. The folks living in the towns and villages on the other side of the border in Little Terreille? They’re good people. We have no quarrel with them. When children started going missing, they asked us to keep a lookout for them. Not hard to do. A child from Little Terreille isn’t going to have the looks that would blend in with Dhemlan children, so he’s easy enough to spot. Most of the time, when a youngster runs away, he’s angry or unhappy, but no one has done him real harm, if you understand me.”

“I do. And if you do suspect real harm?”

“The youngster is brought before the Queen and isn’t returned to his family unless she’s satisfied that the reason he left home wasn’t more than growing pains.”

“Do you think the missing children are runaways?”

The Master hesitated, then shook his head. “No, I don’t think so. We’ve checked the runaway houses within our Queen’s territory.”

Most small villages had at least one runaway house—a safe place an unhappy child could go to receive a hug, nutcakes, and a sympathetic ear, or be given some space to brood over some trouble at home.

“I want to know if there are any children missing from Dhemlan villages.”

“I’ll check with the village guards, but I haven’t heard of any children going missing,” the Master said. Then he finished grimly, “Which doesn’t mean there haven’t been some that have gone missing.”

“I want daily reports until this is settled,” Daemon said as he started down the stairs.

“You’ll have them.”

“And get in touch with the Province Queen’s Master and make him aware—”

*Daemon!*

The urgency in Ladvarian’s voice made him rush down the rest of the stairs and out of the house. Dim balls of witchlight hung over a spot in the garden, so it wasn’t hard to find the dog.

And it wasn’t hard to see what the Sceltie had found.

Ladvarian circled the lower halves of two severed legs. The legs were bare; the feet were still covered by ankle boots.

*These smell like Sylvia,* Ladvarian growled as he daintily walked on air to avoid leaving paw prints in the blood. *And I smell dead flesh.*

Daemon caught himself before pointing out that the severed legs were dead flesh. The dog had grown up at the Hall and had been given the same training in Protocol as any other young male who had resided there. Ladvarian wouldn’t use a disrespectful description simply because a person was demon-dead, so calling someone “dead flesh” was an indication of the dog’s contempt for the person—an indication that the scent belonged to an enemy.

“Track the dead flesh, but don’t go farther than these gardens,” Daemon said. “I’ll search for Sylvia. And stay shielded.”

*I will.* Ladvarian headed down a path that led away from the house.

Daemon put a Black shield around the legs to prevent anyone from taking them. Then he searched the ground for a blood trail. Nothing clean about the severing, so there should be plenty of blood for him to follow.

Unless the attacker had used Craft and vanished Sylvia. Those personal storage cupboards the Blood created with Craft and power couldn’t support anything that was alive. But you could move a body that way—or kill someone who was wounded.

He found blood splashed over the tops of plants, following a line where there was no trail. Stepping up on air to stand level with the tops of the plants, Daemon created a brighter ball of witchlight and followed the spray until he found a spot in the garden that looked crushed by a body—and he found pools of blood. Not as much as he’d expected, not if Sylvia had still been alive when she’d landed there, but enough to tell him where he needed to look for Halaway’s Queen.

Ladvarian trotted up to him, also balanced on air. *The dead flesh is gone, but its smells are strong in some parts of the garden.*

“Hunting here?” Daemon looked around. Sylvia had landed close to one of the garden paths. If she did make the transition ... He sighed. “She’s not here.”

*Tildee and Mikal are not here either,* Ladvarian said. *I have called Tildee. She doesn’t answer.*

“All right. Let’s take care of the living, and then we’ll see what we can do about the dead.”

They retraced their steps back to the house. As they passed the point of attack, Daemon wrapped a tight shield around the legs and vanished them.

Seeing Surreal standing near the front door, talking to the Master, Ladvarian trotted over to the Coach, then had to wait for Jaenelle to create an opening in the shields and let him in. Reassured when he saw the precautions his Lady had taken, Daemon joined Surreal and the Master.

“They didn’t find Mikal or Tildee—or Sylvia,” Surreal said.

“And no one seems to know where the younger son of the house has gone,” the Master said.

“Oh, sugar, I think they know,” Surreal replied.

Which meant there was at least one child whose disappearance had gone unreported. Either Sylvia stumbled onto something evil here or she’d been lured here to be sacrificed. Either way, none of the people he needed to talk to the most were here.

“Surreal, go get the boy,” Daemon said. “Pack up anything you can as fast as you can. We’re taking him with us.” No matter what part Haeze had played in setting this trap, Daemon wasn’t going to leave a child in this place.

“Give me ten minutes.” She opened the front door and went inside.

“Do you want us to stay?” the Master asked.

“No. You need to keep a tight watch on your own village. I’ll contact the Province Queen and have her send in some guards.”

“This village has guards,” the Master said. “Do you want me to talk to them before I go?”

“Do you think it will make any difference?” Daemon’s voice was dry, biting.

The Master stared at him, then swore. “They’re blind to what’s going on in their own village, and it may be deliberate. That’s what you’re saying?”

“That’s what I’m saying. This village is under your Queen’s hand. As her Master, these guards are under your command same as the men in her home village. Would you vouch for them?”

“A couple of months ago, I would have. Now?” The Master shook his head. “They knew about the children that had gone missing across the border. If there was any hint of something being wrong here, my Queen should have been told.”

And the Queen of Halaway should have been informed so that she wouldn’t have come to such a place without an escort, Daemon thought. If she came at all.

Unless he was totally wrong about the man standing in front of him, that mistake wouldn’t be repeated. He suspected that, by tomorrow, the Master would contact every other Master of the Guard in Dhemlan, encouraging them to insist that their Queens have an escort for any kind of visit outside the home village.

But if the other Masters weren’t informed, that would tell him something about this man too.

The front door opened. Surreal came out, one hand loosely gripping Haeze’s arm. She said nothing to the men, just escorted the boy to the Coach.

“What do you want done with the Healer and this family?” the Master asked.

He wanted to rip them all apart to find out what they knew about Sylvia’s attacker. But the prudent thing to do—the right thing—was to let the District Queen deal with the people in her territory.

And if he wasn’t satisfied with how the District Queen dealt with these people, he would take care of them. Quietly.

“Take them to your Lady,” Daemon said. “I’m sure she’ll have some questions about what happened here tonight.”

“I’m sure she will,” the Master said.

Telling himself to be satisfied with that—for now—Daemon walked over to the Coach and went in. The driver was warming some milk and talking softly to Haeze, who huddled in one corner of a short bench. The man tipped his head toward the driver’s compartment and made a face Daemon took to mean, There’s trouble in there.

More than trouble, he decided when he opened the compartment door and Surreal swiveled her chair to face him.

“Jaenelle wants to leave as soon as you’re ready,” she said. “She has Beron in the bedroom at the back of the Coach.”

He stayed in the door, assessing her temper. “Tell me.” Bad place for a fight, he thought, especially with Jaenelle doing a healing.

“There is some damage to Beron’s vision and hearing.” Surreal’s voice was low and savage. “That Healer wasn’t just destroying his ability to speak. She was destroying his ability to see and hear.”

Because she was so close to snapping, he kept his voice quiet and calm—and kept his own temper viciously leashed. “Could the loss of vision and hearing be conditions that had developed prior to—”

She shot out of the chair and stood in front of him. “There was nothing wrong with him before that bitch put her filthy hands on him. And I’m telling you now, Sadi, one way or another, she is not going to be among the living much longer.”

“We have other things to deal with first.”

He waited to see if she had any control left and was relieved when she nodded and blew out a breath.

“Yeah,” she said. “Yeah, we do.” She returned to her seat.

Daemon took off his winter coat and vanished it before closing the compartment door and taking the other seat.

They didn’t speak again until he lifted the Coach and used Craft to glide it through the air. Once they reached one of the village’s landing webs, he caught the Black Winds and headed for Halaway.

“Did you find any sign of Sylvia?” Surreal asked.

“Yes.”

She stared at him, then looked away. “Shit.”

“We take care of Beron, find out what Haeze knows about what happened and why, and figure out where Tildee took Mikal,” Daemon said.

“And Sylvia?”

He sighed. “I think the High Lord is more likely to find her before we do.”

TWO

Saetan lit the black candles on the Keep’s Dark Altar and opened the Gate between Hell and Kaeleer.

Sometimes it was damn hard not to interfere with the living, especially when children were involved.

Especially when some of them lately were arriving so mentally and emotionally damaged they couldn’t be allowed to stay on the cildru dyathe’s island, let alone be with the children now residing at the Hall in the Dark Realm. He’d given mercy to the ones who were too damaged, draining their remaining power to finish the kill, giving them what peace he could in the process.

It wasn’t his place to interfere or step in. He had held that line for thousands of years—at least most of the time. But that last mutilated child had come from Dhemlan, and he didn’t consider it interfering to inform the Warlord Prince of Dhemlan about that boy—not when the Prince was his own son.

*Saetan?*

A whisper of thought on a psychic thread, barely strong enough to reach him. But no matter how weak, he knew that voice, had loved that woman. *Sylvia? Where are you?*

*Landing web. Keep. Not sure which one.*

He left the Dark Altar and moved swiftly, straining the muscles in his bad leg as he moved through the corridors in the Keep.

*Draca,* Saetan called. *Sylvia is here. Something is wrong. We need to find her quickly.*

*I will inform Geoffrey,* Draca said. *We will look.*

It wouldn’t be just the Keep’s Seneschal and historian/librarian who would look. What guarded the Keep would be aware of Sylvia and would inform Draca. Meanwhile, he headed for the landing web most often used by people who didn’t live in Ebon Rih.

*Saetan?* Sylvia called again, her voice fading.

He found her sprawled on the landing web, trying to push herself to an upright position and too weak to do it.

He rushed over to her and dropped to his knees, lifting her enough to hold her against him. “Sylvia, what . . . ?”

Demon-dead. He knew the scent, knew the feel. How could he not know after ruling Hell for so many years? She was demon-dead and fading. Both of her Jewels, the Purple Dusk and her Birthright Summer-sky, hung around her neck and she wore both her rings. Only a drop or two of power left in each of them.

“Saetan.” Her voice was barely audible, but she still found enough strength to grab a fistful of his jacket. “I know how you feel about interfering with the living, but I’m begging you. Help me save my boys.”

He didn’t ask questions. He simply called in a small vial, flipped off the top, and closed his hand around it to give the contents a moment’s warmth. Then he pressed the vial against her lips and said, “Drink.”

She swallowed once, then tried to get away from him. He held her tight, and held the vial away from her to prevent her from knocking it out of his hand.

“Hell’s fire,” she gasped. “What is that?”

“A vial of Jaenelle’s undiluted blood,” he replied dryly. “If you think it’s bad now, you should have tried it when she wore Ebony. A couple drops of that used to feel like you swallowed lightning.”

“You’re a mean bastard.”

“And you want my help, so stop being a whiny girl. Just hold your nose and take your medicine.”

“I am not whining, you—”

He poured the rest of the blood down her throat. Since he and Geoffrey usually split one of those vials, he knew exactly what he’d done to the woman he loved—which was why he let her swear at him until she wound down enough to sound sane again.

He vanished the vial. “Let’s get you cleaned up. Then we can . . .”

That was when he realized what was wrong with her legs.

Using Craft to take part of her weight, he picked her up and headed for a guest room located near his own suite of rooms.

*Lucivar!* he called on a spear thread.

*Father?*

Jolting Lucivar awake would hone the sharp edge of an always-sharp temper, but he’d deal with that when he had to. *I need your Healer at the Keep. It’s urgent.*

*We’ll be there.* Lucivar broke the link.

Draca waited for him at the doorway of the guest room. When she saw Sylvia, she looked into the room. A marble slab appeared, heavily padded and floating on air.

*It iss more practical,* Draca said.

Nodding, he went into the room and laid Sylvia on the padding.

“All right,” he said, winding a soothing spell through his voice. “Let’s take a look at you.”

“No,” Sylvia said.

He ignored her, pulled aside the torn coat and shirt, and stared at the knife wound that had killed her. He vanished the coat and shirt, then hesitated over the brassiere. It shouldn’t matter now, but it would, so he didn’t remove it. Instead, he called in a blanket and wrapped it around her so she wouldn’t feel embarrassed when Lucivar thundered into the room.

Which Lucivar did a minute later, followed by Nurian.

“Mother Night,” Nurian said as she rushed over to the slab. She reached out, her hands hovering over Sylvia’s ruined legs. “What happened?”

Saetan put his arms around Sylvia, pressing her face against his shoulder. “You need to make a clean amputation, then force the healing to create a closed stump.”

“But she’s . . .” Nurian swallowed hard, but she met Saetan’s eyes. “I don’t think it can be done when the flesh is no longer living.”

“When it’s done within a few hours of dying, the body still remembers what it feels like to be alive and will respond.”

Nurian looked at Sylvia’s Jewels and shook her head. “It would drain her beyond surviving.”

“She’s just had fresh blood. That will sustain her and provide you with what you need to draw for the healing,” Saetan said.

“Whose blood did you give her?” Lucivar asked.

“Jaenelle’s.”

“Half a vial?”

“A whole vial.”

Lucivar looked at Nurian. “Do it. You’ve got more than enough power to work with, so tap everything you need because you only get one chance at this kind of healing. If more blood is needed, I’ll supply it.”

Holding Sylvia close, covering her face with one hand, Saetan watched Lucivar call in a small knife and efficiently cut away the trousers while Nurian began making the cleansing brews she would need.

Lucivar studied the jagged bones and torn flesh, saying nothing, but Saetan had the impression those bones told his Eyrien son a great deal.

There wouldn’t be pain, because the numbing spells would take care of that. Some discomfort, yes, because flesh so newly dead still remembered, and the potency of the blood he could provide for her would keep her close to the line that separated the dead from the living. At least for a little while.

When Nurian was ready, Lucivar shifted Sylvia’s hips, straightening the legs. He pressed his hands on her thighs, holding her in place.

She cried, and it ripped at Saetan’s heart. Lucivar’s body blocked most of her line of sight, but Saetan still covered her eyes so she wouldn’t get even a glimpse of Nurian’s work. And while he held her, he sent out a call to his other son.

*Daemon. Daemon!*

No answer.

*Jaenelle!*

No answer.

*Surreal!*

No answer. Which meant they weren’t at SaDiablo Hall or in Halaway. Or anywhere in that part of Kaeleer, for that matter. Of course, if they were riding the Winds, they couldn’t hear him.

Swallowing a snarl of impatience, Saetan continued to wrap soothing spells around Sylvia until he felt her go limp. Laying her down, he smoothed the hair away from her face.

Lucivar gave him a sharp look.

“I did that,” Saetan said. “Her mind needs to rest. Lady Nurian, can you do without us for a few minutes?”

“I’ll be fine,” Nurian said.

He and Lucivar stepped out of the room and moved a few paces down the corridor.

“A blast of power hit her knees, blowing them out and taking the lower part of her legs with them,” Lucivar said, keeping his voice low. “If she was shielded, whoever did this wore an Opal, a Green Jewel at the most.”

“How can you tell?”

Lucivar gave him an odd look. “Because I know how her legs would look if I had hit her with my Red strength.”

Of course. “Her boys are in trouble.”

Lucivar nodded. “There must have been a fight somewhere. Did she bleed out from the legs?”

Saetan shook his head. “She probably would have bled out if none of her guards survived to help her, but a knife between the ribs is what killed her.”

“What did Daemon say?”

“He’s not answering.”

“All right. You look after Nurian, and I’ll go to the Hall and find out what’s happening.” Lucivar hesitated. “Do you think her boys are going to become cildru dyathe?”

“I hope not, but I do need to talk to Daemon about some children who have become cildru dyathe in the past few weeks.”

“I’ll let him know.”

Saetan watched Lucivar walk away. His sons were strong leaders and powerful men. He would trust them to take care of the living while he took care of the dead.

THREE

Alert for anything or anyone who didn’t belong around his home, Daemon watched Jaenelle and Surreal hustle Beron and Haeze into the Hall, followed by Ladvarian. Just as he was about to go inside, he heard hooves and carriage wheels coming up the drive. He stopped and nodded to Beale, who closed the Hall’s front doors. Then he turned and waited for his visitor. Considering the hour, it didn’t surprise him when Rainier stepped out of the horse-drawn cab. What did surprise him was Lucivar’s sudden appearance on the landing web. He’d expected to see his brother, just not this soon.

*Give me a minute, Prick,* he said.

Lucivar stepped off the landing web but didn’t come closer.

“Report,” Daemon said quietly to Rainier.

“Sylvia’s court is furious,” Rainier replied. “Her Master and Steward had no reason to think any harm would come to their Queen. They had the impression that the guest rooms were already stuffed with people, which was why Lord Haeze’s family fumbled over having even one escort staying with Sylvia.”

“There were no other guests,” Daemon said.

“This was a trap set for Sylvia?” Rainier shook his head, as if answering his own question. “No. I was told the first invitation didn’t include her.”

“Unless she’s visiting close friends, a Queen usually travels with at least one escort,” Daemon said, “so Sylvia’s presence could have been inconvenient if she’d arrived with one or two of her First Circle in attendance.”

“According to the Steward, the second invitation was extended to Sylvia’s family as a family, not to a Queen and her sons. They gambled she would sympathize with another woman’s desire to reciprocate invitations without beggaring her own family.”

“Unfortunately, they gambled correctly.”

“Prince?”

He heard the alarm in Rainier’s voice, but chose to ignore the question under the word. “I brought Haeze back with us. The boy needs protection from whatever is wrong in that place. I’d like you to talk to him and find out everything you can about what’s been going on around his house and the village. You may have to circle around this, but I want to know why his younger brother wasn’t at home.”

“Done.” Rainier looked at the Hall, then at Lucivar, who was still waiting near the landing web. “Did Sylvia come back with you?”

“No,” Daemon said softly.

Rainier took a couple of slow, steady breaths. Then he approached the Hall’s doors, which opened before he could reach for the knocker. When the doors closed again, Lucivar walked up to Daemon.

“How bad?” Lucivar asked.

“Beron’s hurt, and at least half of his injuries were caused deliberately by the bitch Healer that family hired to take care of him. Jaenelle’s working on him, has been since we found him. She says he’ll be all right—and may the Darkness have mercy on that family if she can’t bring him all the way back to full health.”

“Mikal?”

“Sylvia told Tildee to run. We haven’t found her or Mikal yet.” Daemon blew out a breath and watched the white plume it made. “You’ve seen Sylvia?”

“Yes.”

“Has Father?”

Lucivar looked sad and grim. “Yes. She made the transition to demon-dead and reached the Keep before draining her Jewels completely. He poured a vial of Jaenelle’s blood down her throat.”

Daemon huffed out a pained laugh. “Well, that should give her temper plenty of scratch and kick.” The moment he said the word kick, he felt grief clog his throat. “I brought her legs. I wasn’t going to leave any part of her there. Now I’m not sure what to do with them.”

“Saetan wants to see you. He’s troubled by some cildru dyathe who have appeared in the Dark Realm recently. You can ask him what should be done.” Lucivar shifted his weight, rubbed his hands together.

“Do you want to go in?” Daemon asked.

“I figure you have a reason for standing out here in the cold.”

That simple. It usually was between him and Lucivar.

He blew out another breath just to watch it plume in the cold night air. “If you were Tildee, where would you run?”

“You already know the answer, old son.”

“I’d like confirmation that I’m thinking like a Sceltie.”

“All right. If she or Mikal are wounded, she would go to the closest Sceltie for help protecting the boy. If they got out before things turned ugly, there are four places I would look: here, their home, Manny’s cottage, and Tersa’s cottage. I would go to Tersa’s first. Mikal considers it his second home, and he’s her ‘Mikal boy.’ He’s family.”

“And Tersa is dangerous when it comes to family.”

“Yeah. Which is why I would go there to hide if I were a Sceltie running from danger with one of Tersa’s boys.” Lucivar remained silent for a minute. Then he huffed out a breath. “So are we going to go down and knock on her door, or wait until morning, or just stand here and freeze our balls?”

The Hall’s doors opened. Beale said, “Prince? The carriage will be around front in a minute.” He closed the doors.

Lucivar looked at Daemon. “Did you ask for a carriage to be brought around?”

“Apparently.”

“Did you think to ask for hot coffee and something to eat?”

Daemon said blandly, “We’ll have to find out.”

Surreal paced the corridor, guarding the guest rooms that held Beron and Haeze. At the midway point, she passed Ladvarian, who trotted in the opposite direction. At the end of the corridor, they both turned and resumed their patrol.

The restless pacing wasn’t necessary. She could have sat in one place and used a psychic probe to remain aware of everything and everyone in and around those rooms, but she needed to move.

All right, the truth was she wanted to go after the son of a whoring bitch who had hurt at least one boy she liked and a woman she considered a friend. She wanted to rip and tear and stab until the enemy was nothing more than a bloody pile of shit. Or find her prey and make the kill quietly, using one of those elegant death spells Sadi had taught her so many years ago.

So damn hard to pace and wait. Since he hadn’t been with them, Rainier would have better luck coaxing information out of Haeze, and her presence in the room would interfere with that. She was more than useless in Beron’s room while Jaenelle was working on the delicate healing needed to restore the boy’s vision, hearing, and voice.

Then Ladvarian froze. Surreal called in her favorite stiletto and stood still, listening.

*It’s Tildee,* Ladvarian said. *She is tired. Mikal is upset. They are with Tersa.*

*Sadi!* Surreal called. *Tildee and Mikal are with Tersa.*

*We’re almost at the cottage,* he replied.

*Any news about Sylvia?*

A hesitation. *She’s with the High Lord.*

He didn’t need to say more.

“The Mikal boy is upset,” Tersa said, blocking the stairs that led to the bedrooms. “The Sceltie is upset and says they must hide.”

Daemon wasn’t sure if she was asking for clarification or warning him not to push. He took her hands because sometimes physical contact helped her mind stay focused on the mundane world instead of wandering down a path in the Twisted Kingdom.

“Beron is injured, and Sylvia is dead,” he said gently. “I need to see Mikal to make sure he wasn’t harmed before Tildee got him away from that place.”

“Oh,” Tersa said softly. “He’s so young to lose his mother.”

I was younger when I was taken from you, Daemon thought as he drew her away from the stairs.

“Perhaps some warm milk?” Tersa looked at him, then at Lucivar.

“Do you need help making it?” Lucivar asked.

“No, I can warm milk.”

She walked down the hallway to the kitchen, leaving them to climb the stairs.

Mikal was in the “Mikal boy’s” bedroom, since he was Tersa’s most frequent guest. The covers were pulled out and rumpled, which Daemon found alarming, since it looked like a struggle had taken place. Then he saw part of Tildee’s head poking out from the covers at the bottom of the bed. She had done the rumpling to have a hiding place from which she could easily attack. And since Mikal was pressed against the headboard on the side of the bed farthest from the door and would draw a person’s eye first, an intruder moving toward the boy would put himself in a position to receive intimate damage from a pissed-off Sceltie with sharp teeth. Even if the intruder’s shield held against her Summer-sky, the clash of power would alert everyone nearby that there was trouble.

“Lady Tildee, please attend,” Lucivar said. “Prince Sadi needs to speak to Lord Mikal.”

Using the formal titles turned the request into a command.

Tildee wiggled out from under the covers and followed Lucivar downstairs.

Daemon sat on the edge of the bed near Mikal. “Are you hurt?” he asked quietly.

Mikal shook his head. Then he frowned and pushed up one sleeve. “Well, my arm hurts a little, but Tildee didn’t mean it. She grabbed me and said we had to run and hide. Mother said so. I wanted to find out why, but Tildee wouldn’t let go of my arm, so we left, and she wouldn’t stop, and it took a long time to ride the Winds, and then we were here, and Tildee told Tersa that something bad had happened, but she didn’t know what the bad thing was, only that we were supposed to hide.”

Daemon lightly brushed his fingertips over Mikal’s arm. The Sceltie hadn’t broken the skin, but she’d clamped down hard enough to leave bruises.

“Prince? Before Tildee caught the Winds and took us away from that house, I heard Beron yell. It sounded bad. Is he hurt?”

Daemon swallowed the lump in his throat. “Yes, he’s hurt. But Lady Angelline is doing the healing, and she’s taking good care of him.”

“Then who’s taking care of Mother? She wouldn’t have told Tildee to run unless something bad happened.”

He brushed back Mikal’s hair. The boy needed to have it cut soon. Who would remember the small things like that now? “I’m sorry, boyo. I am so sorry, but your mother is dead.”

Mikal was silent for so long, Daemon wondered if the words had been understood.

“Can’t the High Lord fix her so she can come back and live with us?” Mikal asked in a small voice. “She would have to sleep in the daytime, but that would be all right. I’d get my chores and schoolwork done before she woke up. I would.”

“It’s not that easy for someone who is demon-dead to be among the living.” Who was he to say such a thing to this child? Most of his family had been demon-dead and had lived at the Hall for years in order to be with Jaenelle. Saetan had not only been Sylvia’s lover; he’d been Mikal’s surrogate father.

“The High Lord could fix it,” Mikal insisted. There was hope and conviction in those words—and fear that it wouldn’t be true. “Can’t you ask him to fix it?”

Daemon’s eyes filled with tears. He pulled the boy close and hugged him, rocking them both for comfort. “I don’t know if he can fix this, Mikal. I don’t know if he can. But I’ll ask him. I promise that I’ll ask him.”

An hour later, Mikal and Tildee were snoring in a freshly made bed, and Daemon and Lucivar were in the carriage heading back to the Hall.

“You couldn’t have said anything else,” Lucivar told him. “Not to a boy who has rubbed elbows with our family as much as he has.”

“Sylvia is a Queen,” Daemon said wearily. “Letting a demon-dead Queen continue to rule would set a dangerous precedent, and it would be hard for her to remain anywhere near Halaway and watch another Queen rule her people—especially if she didn’t like some of the choices the new Queen made. Families and villages and Territories need to let go of the dead and move on—and the demon-dead need to let go of the living.”

“The boy doesn’t give a damn about Sylvia the Queen. Right now, he just wants the assurance that his mother will still be there to read him a story and tuck him in at night,” Lucivar said.

“I know that, Prick. I know.” Daemon pressed his fingertips against his temples and tried to ease some of the tension.

“Do you think Sylvia’s father will want the boys to live with him?” Lucivar asked.

“Maybe. What the boys want will have more weight than any adult.” A trickle of anger pushed aside the weariness. “But I’ll tell you who isn’t going to have the boys. Their sires.”

“I didn’t think either of them had been granted paternal rights—or wanted them.”

“They didn’t. But Mikal’s sire has come sniffing around a couple of times in recent months, expressing interest in his son and wanting to become acquainted.”

“Why?”

“From what I found out after the first time he came around, his service as a Consort has earned him notoriety rather than the lucrative and illustrious positions he’d envisioned would be his when he walked away from Sylvia and her little village.”

“And I thought Father was the only one who disliked her former Consorts,” Lucivar said dryly.

Daemon lowered his hands and rested his head on the back of the seat. “You will never repeat this to Jaenelle, but after that son of a whoring bitch came around a second time, I told Kaelas and Jaal that if he trespassed on any property that belonged to the family—and that included the land around Manny’s and Tersa’s cottages—they had my permission to eat him. I said it within the bastard’s hearing. I haven’t seen him since.”

Lucivar stared at him for a moment before laughing. “Hell’s fire, Bastard. You do like to dance on the knife’s edge.”

“Maybe.” Or maybe he felt fairly sure that Jaenelle wouldn’t object too strenuously if she did find out.

*Prince?*

*Rainier,* Daemon replied. *Anything to report?*

*I know why Sylvia’s family was lured down to that place, but I didn’t find out anything that will help you hunt down the bastard. If you and Prince Yaslana are coming back to the Hall, Surreal wants to go back to our house in Halaway and get some sleep. She knows she has a suite at the Hall and I have a suite too, and there’s no point in you reminding her because Beale already has—twice—but she wants to be in the village, closer to Tersa and Manny. Just in case.*

*All right. I’ll stop by in the morning before I go to the Keep.* He broke the link and closed his eyes. “Can you stay until morning?” he asked Lucivar. “I’ll be heading to the Keep after I talk to Rainier.”

“I can stay. I’ll check on Tersa and Mikal while you get Rainier’s report. Maybe between us we can give Sylvia a little peace.”

And maybe by tomorrow he would have a better idea of how to find the bastard who had ended a good Queen’s life.

FOUR

Sylvia jerked awake and tried to pull herself out of a memory-dream about Mikal and Tildee. It was during the first year Tildee had lived with them. Mikal had snitched some goody from the kitchen earlier that day and hidden it under his bed for the two of them to have as a treat late that night, not realizing that the treat would spoil if left outside the cold box on a summer day. Tildee had thought it smelled bad, but the boy assured her it was wonderful, so boy and Sceltie had gobbled up the treat.

She still remembered Mikal’s panicked yells, and running into his bedroom to discover that Tildee had vomited all over his lap. In the seconds it took her to realize the dog was extremely ill and needed healing help from someone who knew kindred, Mikal began throwing up. So there she was, very late at night, pounding on the Hall’s front door, holding a blanket-wrapped Sceltie who was covered in Mikal’s puke, while her court Healer was taking care of Mikal, and Beron was running to fetch Manny and Tersa.

Jaenelle had taken one look at Tildee, asked what she and Mikal had eaten, and then poured a tonic down the dog’s throat. An hour later, Sylvia was back home with an embarrassed, freshly bathed Sceltie, who was greeted by an equally embarrassed, freshly bathed boy. For a few years after that incident, on the days when Mikal attended the village school, Tildee went up to the Hall for her own kind of lessons.

The two of them had gotten into their share of trouble since then, but when Tildee told Mikal something was bad, the boy didn’t argue.

Why would I dream about that now? she wondered. Then she remembered she’d told Tildee to run. The boys!

Rolling over on her side, Sylvia tried to fling the covers back and push her legs over the edge of the bed, but an arm tightened around her waist.

“Easy,” Saetan said. “From now on, you have to think before you get out of bed.”

“The boys!”

“Are safe. Beron was injured, but he’s at the Hall in Jaenelle’s care. We’ll find out more when Daemon and Lucivar arrive here in a couple of hours.”

Sylvia shivered. “And Mikal?”

Saetan’s arm didn’t move from her waist, but the covers settled in place around her. “Tildee grabbed Mikal and didn’t stop running until she got them to Tersa’s cottage. They’re upset, but otherwise they’re fine.”

“Thank the Darkness.” All her strength seemed to drain away once she knew her sons were safe. She rolled onto her back—and remembered the rest.

The candle-light in the bedside lamp began to glow softly, providing just enough light for her to see the man who raised himself up on one elbow to look at her.

“You’re not under the covers,” she said. “Is it because of how my legs look?”

“My darling Sylvia, I am the High Lord of Hell. I have seen much worse than truncated legs. No, I’m above the covers because I didn’t want you to wake up alone, but you weren’t in any condition to extend an invitation to sleep with you.”

She let out a pained laugh. “You’re still going to insist on propriety?”

“Your body is dead; you are not. That being the case, I see no reason to dispense with propriety or any other courtesy,” he said with just enough bite to make her feel chastised.

No, he wouldn’t dispense with propriety or courtesy or the Blood’s Protocol or their code of honor, and she doubted the demon-dead were allowed to dispense with those things either. Not if they wanted to extend their existence a while longer after the physical death.

“Saetan . . .” She wasn’t sure what she was asking of him, wasn’t even sure if she was asking anything. But he bent his head and gave her one of those slow, thorough kisses that used to make her knees weak. When his mind surrounded hers, she felt the wave of sensuality that used to bring her an orgasm before his hands touched her.

Now it felt comforting, but it was her heart and not her body that felt that comfort.

He ended the kiss and eased back enough to look at her. “Everything has a price.”

Being demon-dead wasn’t the same as being among the living. Her Self was now encased in dead flesh. Sylvia the woman could still feel love, but her body no longer felt the pleasures of sex.

She tried to shift away from him, but he rolled just enough to pin her.

“I think you would like some answers to some questions you don’t want to ask,” Saetan said. “Can I love you when sex is no longer part of that love? Yes, I can and do. Do I still want to spend time with you and sleep with you? Yes, I do. I couldn’t remain with you when you were among the living, but there is no reason why we can’t be together now—if that’s something you want too.”

“For how long?” she asked.

“For as long as you want,” he replied. “You’ll know when it’s time to go, and I won’t ask you to stay a day longer.”

“My legs.”

“An illusion spell and some Craft to air walk can hide the loss from the eye.”

“That would be a constant drain of power.”

“Yes, it would—and not a necessary drain on most days, in my opinion.” He looked at the two pendants resting on her chest. “It looks like the dose of Jaenelle’s blood had enough power in it to fuel the healing and fill both of your Jewels’ reservoirs partway. That’s a good start.”

Good start? Oh, no. “Hell’s fire. You’re not going to make me drink more of that stuff, are you?”

“Not immediately,” he said dryly. “But it’s a simple fact that the darker the power, the less blood that’s required to sustain someone who is demon-dead.”

“Plain speaking, High Lord.”

“Once your power is restored, yarbarah will be sufficient most days. Twice a month, you’ll have a small amount of fresh human blood.”

She narrowed her eyes. “Whose blood?”

He gave her a smile that had her pressing into the bed. “That depends on whether a certain Lady thinks you look peaky. I strongly recommend not draining yourself to the point of looking peaky.”

“Mother Night.”

“And may the Darkness be merciful.” Saetan shifted so he no longer pinned her. “But as I said earlier, you should be grateful you never had Ebony-strength blood poured down your throat.” He rolled out of bed. “All right, witchling. Nurian will be back before sunup to take a look at your legs, but she already confirmed that her shields will keep everything protected so you can have a bath beforehand. I expect Daemon and Lucivar to arrive before sunup as well, since they both know you’ll need to sleep during the daylight hours. Karla’s wheeled chair was left outside the room. You can use that until we can arrange to have one built for you.”

“But you said I could air walk!” She didn’t want to be seen in a chair like that, didn’t want her sons thinking about the parts of her legs that weren’t there.

Saetan gave her a dry look. “It’s like anything else, Sylvia. There needs to be a balance between using Craft to move around and using your body. The wheeled chair is practical.” He snarled softly as he came around to her side of the bed. “You were not a vain woman when you were alive. You are not going to become vain now that you’re dead.”

Her mouth was still hanging open and her brain was still trying to think of a reply when he flung back the covers, picked her up, and took her into the bathroom.

Ignoring the breakfast breads, ham, and fruit that had been set out for him and Lucivar, Daemon poured himself a second cup of coffee and sat back.

“Let’s begin with the simple and work up to the nasty,” he said.

“Why is Sylvia glaring at me?” Lucivar asked Saetan. “It was only a few drops of Red added to the yarbarah. It’s not like I opened a vein and poured Ebon-gray down her throat. I added a few drops to your glass too, and you aren’t acting bitchy about it.”

“I’m going to overlook that poor choice of words,” Saetan replied, giving Lucivar a look that said, Say another word and I’ll kick your ass. “Prince Sadi, please report.”

“As I told you last night, Mikal is upset, but he’s fine except for the bruises Tildee’s teeth made on his arm. He and Tildee are staying with Tersa for the time being.”

“I thought my father might want to take him,” Sylvia said, her voice troubled.

Are you hoping he’ll take them, or are you hoping someone will step in and prevent that arrangement? Daemon wondered. Something wasn’t right between grandfather and grandsons, but he wasn’t going to wade into that family quarrel unless Jaenelle wanted him to. “Right now, Mikal has Tildee, Ladvarian, and Jaal protecting him. Your father might be willing to argue with two Scelties, but I don’t think he’ll want to deal with a tiger. So Mikal stays with Tersa, since her response to finding Jaal in her parlor was to send Ladvarian out to buy more milk.”

“And Beron?” Sylvia asked.

Lucivar gave her that lazy, arrogant smile. “He remembered more of his training than you did. But I guess I’ll overlook that, since you’re all weak and helpless now.”

*The Prick sure does know how to rile up women,* Daemon told Saetan as they watched Sylvia change from wounded, vulnerable woman into a pissed-off Queen. *Think she’ll go for his balls?*

*I locked the wheels on her chair after I tasted the yarbarah,* Saetan replied.

“Beron is wounded,” Daemon said. “He’ll need several days of rest and care to fully heal, but he will heal. He’ll stay at the Hall with us until this is settled. He’ll be well protected there. Nothing will get past Kaelas—or me.”

Sylvia looked at each of the men. “Why so much protection? The trouble is in the southern part of Dhemlan, not in Halaway.”

They had reached the nasty part of this report. “We brought Haeze back to the Hall last night. After talking with Rainier this morning, I’m glad I made that choice.” Daemon took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “A Warlord in Little Terreille has been preying on young boys for the past few years. There is even a story whispered in schools near Goth about No Face, a Warlord who tortures and kills boys who slip out at night instead of staying home as they should.” No Face indulged in physical, sexual, and emotional torture, but Daemon saw no reason to tell Sylvia what had been intended for her younger son.

“No Face.” Sylvia turned her hand palm up and stared at her fingers. “He had some kind of mesh covering his face. I thought my fingers were ripped up by it when I was fighting him.”

Saetan cleared his throat. “Nurian was able to heal your fingers before the flesh could no longer respond like it was still living.”

He broke his own rules in order to repair her body this much, Daemon thought. He won’t regret that decision, but he isn’t comfortable with having made that choice. “Some of No Face’s victims might have made the transition to cildru dyathe, but more likely, he used them up and made the final kill so there wouldn’t be anyone to bear witness against him.”

“Until now,” Saetan said too softly. “The cildru dyathe who have reached Hell in the past few weeks ...” He didn’t glance at Sylvia, but Daemon understood why his father chose not to continue. “The last one was a boy from Dhemlan. Something I wanted to discuss with you, Daemon.”

*Was he mutilated?* Daemon asked on a Black thread.

*Yes.*

“No Face has either grown careless or too confident,” Daemon began.

“Or bored,” Lucivar said, breaking in.

Daemon nodded. “Or bored. The bastard shifted his hunting ground to villages near the Dhemlan border. All of a sudden, village guards in Little Terreille were paying attention and responding faster when a child disappeared. More of a challenge for him, and far more exciting.”

“Then he made the mistake of straying over the border into Dhemlan.” Lucivar helped himself to one of the breakfast breads. “He sees a brown-skinned child and forgets that the Dhemlan people are a long-lived race, and that child probably has lived as many years—or more— than him. That means the child is a little more mature in some ways than other children and may not be as easy to grab. Combine that with an adolescent male who had the luck to become friends with the Queen of Halaway’s son, and the bastard has more trouble than he’s prepared to meet.”

“Haeze soaked in the weapons lessons Lucivar gave the boys, and used his spending money to buy a knife,” Daemon said. “When the District Queen makes some pointed inquiries, I suspect she’ll discover more than one child has gone missing from that village before Haeze came to visit Beron.”

“He wanted to learn to protect himself,” Saetan said.

“More likely, to protect his younger brother,” Lucivar said. “Like Beron, Haeze is too old to be of interest to No Face.”

Daemon glanced at his father. The look in Saetan’s eyes was enough to confirm the age of the children who had reached Hell.

“The invitation,” Sylvia whispered. “The house party was a ruse to bring Mikal within reach. Why lure a boy who lives in a distant village instead of hunting one within reach?”

“We think No Face blames your family for his death and the inconvenience that comes with the physical death,” Daemon said. “Haeze’s younger brother was the intended prey. But when No Face attacked, Haeze rushed in and managed to land a killing blow. Not an instant kill, since the boy was knocked out by a blast of power and his brother was taken, but he changed the battleground. No Face became demon-dead.”

“People in the border villages are going to notice if a Warlord from Little Terreille no longer goes out during daylight or sits down for a meal,” Lucivar said. “Whatever face the bastard hides behind that mesh is no longer going to go unnoticed—and people will start connecting him with the missing children.”

“So his game was spoiled,” Daemon continued. “All because Haeze went to Halaway to visit Beron.”

“Why didn’t Jaenelle’s purge get rid of that monster?” Sylvia asked.

“That witch storm was over a decade ago,” Saetan said, “and it was unleashed to purge the Realms of Dorothea’s and Hekatah’s taint, not eliminate every person who is twisted in some way. If No Face comes from Little Terreille, which sounds likely, he’s from a short-lived race. He may have been young enough then to have avoided any kind of detection, or maybe his taste for this didn’t develop until maturity, when he would have the physical strength to overpower his chosen prey. Maybe he was the one who started the story of No Face to begin with—or maybe something happened to him and he told it as a story at school to hide the truth about a real predator.”

“Do we care about why he kills boys?” Lucivar asked.

“I don’t,” Daemon replied. “I just want to find him and put him in a deep grave.”

Saetan might be willing to wonder if a boy became a monster after being brutalized by one, but he had the duty to protect the people of Dhemlan. Until No Face was contained, he had no room for pity.

Sylvia set the unfinished glass of yarbarah on a side table. “He’s going to come after my sons, isn’t he?”

“We think so,” Daemon said. “It’s another reason the boys are safer where they are. After making the transition to demon-dead, No Face snatched a servant’s child. The boy was violated and mutilated, and then sent to Haeze’s family with the demand that they convince you to allow Beron and Mikal to visit. Once he had Mikal, he would return Haeze’s brother unharmed.”

“Revenge on me and mine because Haeze fought back,” she said. “Exchanging one child’s life for another’s.”

“Yes. But he didn’t count on you and Tildee—that you would fight him and Tildee would be able to take Mikal out of his reach. He didn’t count on Beron charging in to attack.” Daemon paused. “Beron ripped off the mesh and saw the enemy’s face.”

He and Lucivar suspected that was why the Healer had been destroying Beron’s ability to communicate. From what Jaenelle had told him, the bitch had a little of the Hourglass’s skills—enough to strip Beron of even psychic communication by locking him within his own mind, which she would have done if Jaenelle hadn’t intervened. A boy like that would be at the mercy of a predator.

How many of the recent cildru dyathe had arrived in Hell in the same condition?

“Do you think Haeze’s brother is still alive?” Sylvia asked.

“No,” Daemon replied. “But having seen the servant’s child and believing their own boy was still alive, they decided to sacrifice your child instead, knowing what that bastard intended to do to Mikal.”

“They didn’t have a choice,” Sylvia said.

“Yes, they did.” Daemon’s voice held a hint of ice.

“What choice?” The fire in Sylvia’s voice challenged the ice in his.

“They could have gone to the District Queen for help. Haeze’s father could have gone to the Queen’s Master of the Guard if he didn’t think the village guards would help him. Someone could have gone to the Province Queen or come to me when the first child in that village went missing. They had other choices, Sylvia, and the choice they made resulted in Beron being injured and you being killed.” He shoved out of his chair. “Save your pity for someone who deserves it. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a butcher to hunt.”

He walked out of the room, walked out of the Keep, and caught the Black Winds that would take him home.

Sylvia watched Lucivar fill up a plate with breakfast foods before wandering out of the room. He made it look casual, but it wasn’t. She didn’t think Saetan had caught up with Daemon before Sadi left the Keep, but Yaslana was getting off the battlefield before the High Lord returned.

Moments after Lucivar left, Saetan came back into the room. He walked over to the table beside her wheeled chair, picked up her glass of yarbarah, and warmed it over a tongue of witchfire before handing it to her.

“Finish that,” he said.

She bristled at the disapproving chill in his voice. “I’m entitled to an opinion.”

“And we’re entitled to think you’re being a softhearted ass for having that opinion,” he snapped.

“You’re not a mother!”

“No, but I am a father, and I am the High Lord of Hell. I’ve seen that bastard’s victims, Sylvia, and I gave mercy to some of them because they were so damaged that was the only thing I could do.”

“Haeze’s mother was just trying to save her son!”

“He’s dead!” Saetan roared. “No Face was never going to give her back a living boy. He was dead before you arrived for that visit.”

Sylvia shrank back in her chair, trembling. “You can’t be sure of that.”

“Oh, but I am sure of that. And before you say Daemon and I don’t have a personal stake in your sons, I suggest you consider how our families are connected.” He walked out of the room, slamming the door behind him.

She didn’t need to consider or think. She knew all about the connections.

When Jaenelle was fifteen and had tried attending school with other children, Beron had been her friend. Even now, when he was still an adolescent and she was a grown woman married for more than a decade, they were still friends, and he told Jaenelle things he wouldn’t think to tell anyone else. Mikal spent as much time with Tersa as he did at home, and because of that, Daemon was the adult male he had the most contact with outside of Sylvia’s own First Circle.

Many years ago, her father had come to Halaway to find work and a wife. He’d found both, and he’d been enormously proud of his daughter, the Queen. He was a good man, and he loved her as much as she loved him. But their love had been strained by her love of another good man—because that man was the High Lord of Hell and the patriarch of the SaDiablo family. Her father saw things one way; Saetan saw things another. Neither was wrong, and both cared deeply for family, but it had scraped against her father’s pride that her sons had found the SaDiablo way of thinking more appealing, even though its rules and code of honor were more demanding.

Having a man so old and powerful and lethal as her lover and her sons’ surrogate father had not sat well with the man who had raised her. Of course, he had thought the two Consorts who had sired her sons were great fellows because they fit into the social circles that minor aristos like her father found comfortable, and she suspected he’d been behind the interest Mikal’s sire had been showing in his offspring recently.

Daemon and Jaenelle would make room for her father and brother because they were her family, but whether her blood relatives liked it or not, her sons had become absorbed into the SaDiablo family, and the SaDiablos took care of their own.

She drained the glass of yarbarah and set it aside. Then she pulled up the long skirt and looked at what remained of her legs.

The SaDiablos took care of their own. Would Saetan have given anyone else a vial of Jaenelle’s blood so that a Healer could shape shattered bone and ripped flesh into clean stumps? Or heal her fingertips so that she could have full use of her hands? She knew enough about the restrictions he placed on the demon-dead to understand that he’d bent many of his own rules to give her this much.

If another woman had come to the Keep asking for his help, most likely he would have summoned his sons or trusted demon-dead Warlords to save the children, and he would have provided the blood that would have given the woman enough sustenance to keep the Self inside the flesh until she had the reassurance that her children were safe. What would have happened to her after that? Most likely, in a few days or weeks, that woman’s power would have faded and she would have become a whisper in the Darkness. Saetan was realistic. He had to be. Hundreds of Blood died every day. He couldn’t take care of all of them personally.

But he could, and did, protect the living from the dead. And wasn’t that part of Saetan’s—and Daemon’s—anger? No Face was demon-dead and was still hunting in a living Realm, was hunting now in Dhemlan.

Instead of recognizing the rage growing in two Warlord Princes, she had remained focused on another woman’s fear as if it were her own—even though she knew that woman’s choice would not have been hers. She would have gone to the District Queen or the Province Queen or broken down the door at SaDiablo Hall if that was what it took to get help. She wouldn’t have sacrificed another woman’s child, even at the cost of her own.

Sylvia lowered the skirt and carefully arranged the folds. She was a spectator now, nothing more. As hard as it was to wait, she had to trust the living to take care of the living.

FIVE

Beron walked along Halaway’s streets, looking into shop windows and wishing he’d brought along a few coins so he could suggest buying dishes of flavored ice.

“I have money,” Jaenelle said.

He looked at her. Long golden hair and sapphire eyes, wearing one of those peculiar outfits that were too big for her. Only fifteen years old, but her eyes were ancient.

Fifteen? “You’re older now,” he told her.

“I can be,” she replied cheerfully as she held up a silver mark. “It’s your dream. But at either age, I still have enough money for two bowls of flavored ice.”

He laughed. It made his throat hurt enough that he really wanted that ice.

“It’s bad out there,” he said. “But you know that. You knew that before the rest of us did.”

“There are also strong men out there who will defend and protect,” she said. “They won’t let you come to harm.”

“I’ve seen his face.”

“Show me. Let him take shape here.”

Beron shook his head. “If I show you, you’ll be in danger too.”

Something brushed against him, muscle and fur hidden within a sight shield. More movement and soft sounds all around them.

“We won’t be the ones in danger,” Jaenelle said softly.

The face of the enemy floated in the air before them.

“He’s rather pretty, isn’t he?” she said. “You would never guess what was hidden under the skin. No matter. Now he doesn’t have any masks to hide behind.”

Beron opened his eyes. The room looked cloudy, and his ears felt plugged. His heart jumped when someone sat on the bed. He struggled to make his eyes work.

*Don’t push it,* Jaenelle said on a psychic thread. *Your vision and hearing will improve daily unless you disobey your Healer, being me, and do something stupid, which will give you swollen balls.*

*Why?* he asked.

*Because I will kick them.*

Of course she would. Jaenelle the Healer didn’t tolerate any nonsense or sass.

*Can you sit up?* she asked.

*I think so.* She helped him sit up, and being closer helped clear his vision enough to know he was looking at Jaenelle as she was now rather than the girl in the dream.

*There.* She settled herself on the side of the bed and reached for the two bowls of flavored ice floating on air. She handed him one. *Raspberry. Your favorite.*

He grinned. *It’s as if you knew I wanted some.*

She grinned in return. *Imagine that.*

A voice full of lightning and caverns and midnight skies floated through the Darkness, winding its way through sleep and dreams.

We know your face, the voice whispered.

For most, whether they were demon-dead or living, there was a kind of comfort in hearing the words, in being known by that voice.

We know your face.

But one man opened his eyes and shivered with fear, knowing his time was running out.

SIX

Daemon tucked his hands in his trousers pockets. Then, remembering the gesture didn’t belong to the boy whose face he now wore, he withdrew them and asked, “How do I look?”

Tersa studied him, looking confused in a way that worried him. The mundane world was a fragile thing for his mother, more like an illusion she could interact with than solid ground and living people. For Tersa, the roads of the Twisted Kingdom were far more real.

“You look shorter,” she finally said.

Did she see the illusion Jaenelle had made or did she see right past the illusion to a memory of the boy he had been?

*Are you sleepy? I am sleepy. It is time for bed now.*

Daemon looked at the shadow, the complex illusion that Jaenelle had made using Tildee as the template. “Hush.”

The Sceltie looked at him. Then she sneezed.

“Jaenelle talked to you about this,” he said to Tersa. “Remember? I’m pretending to be Mikal to catch the man who hurt Beron and Sylvia.”

Tersa nodded. “Yes. You have to catch him so that the Mikal boy can stay with me again.”

“That’s right.”

She frowned. “And I am supposed to pretend to be a weak female who is no threat to him.”

“Yes.” He stepped up to her and took her hands. “Darling, he is going to come here, to your cottage. When he does, don’t get in his way. Let him come up here, to the Mikal boy’s room. I’ll be here, pretending to be Mikal, and I will deal with him. Do you understand?”

She nodded. “I will let him come up and see the Mikal boy.”

*Are you sleepy? I am sleepy. It is time for bed now.*

“I’ll warm up some milk for you,” Tersa said. “You shouldn’t have a nutcake so late at night, but it’s all right if it’s a special treat.” She walked out of the bedroom.

*Are you sleepy? I am sleepy. It is time for bed now.*

“Shut up,” Daemon growled.

The Sceltie growled back.

Rolling his eyes, he reached for the mind of the woman who meant more to him than anything else in the Realms. *If you had to stick me with a shadow Sceltie, did you have to make it so realistic?*

Her laughter rippled through the psychic thread. *Problem?*

*The dog is so damn bossy! If she bites me for not going to bed . . .*

More laughter. *I’m making a sacrifice too.*

*And that would be?*

*It’s winter. You’re not here at night. My feet are cold.*

He blinked. *You’re sleeping with a fuzzy, eight-hundred-pound cat. Put your feet on him.*

*I do, but he whines about it. You don’t.*

Kaelas came from Arceria, one of the northernmost Territories, and lived in a den made out of snow. Why in the name of Hell would he whine about Jaenelle’s feet? He should be happy to have a cool spot since he’d grown his winter coat and was staying in a room that was much too warm for him.

Of course, sometimes Jaenelle’s feet were breathtakingly cold during the deep part of winter.

*Is everything all right there?* he asked.

*Yes. Beron is asleep and has Shuveen, Boyd, and Floyd with him.*

Shuveen was sensible and would wake Jaenelle if Beron needed a Healer’s help. Boyd and Floyd, on the other hand, were younger and pretty brainless most of the time. However, those two could make enough noise to wake the entire Hall if a stranger walked into Beron’s room.

*Get some sleep, love,* he said. *I’ll see you in the morning.*

The psychic thread faded.

*Are you sleepy? I am sleepy. It is time for bed now.*

“Tersa is bringing up warm milk and nutcakes. We’ll have our snack, and then go to bed.”

*Snack?* The shadow wagged her tail.

Ignoring the illusion that could fool the eye and, sometimes, even fool the sense of touch, Daemon went to the window and studied the ground in Tersa’s backyard. The snow was all churned up from the play of boy and dog, but he didn’t think there were any fresh tracks.

Lucivar would know.

Jaenelle had taken Beron’s memory of his attacker and brought it into a tangled web of illusions. From there, she’d created a basic shadow—an illusion that was a stationary imitation of a person. An artist came from Amdarh and made a sketch of the shadow, and that was taken to a printer. By the end of that first day, every village in the southern part of Dhemlan had a copy of that sketch, and Daemon hadn’t asked if some of those copies had found their way across the border to worried men in Little Terreille.

He had sent an official letter and a copy of the sketch to Little Terreille’s Queen. She wasn’t a personal friend of Jaenelle’s, but his Lady didn’t consider her an enemy either. So he’d given the Queen the courtesy of sharing the information they had because there were families around Goth who were also grieving the loss of children.

We know your face. Witch’s voice had whispered through the Darkness that first night. For the three nights since then, Daemon had spent the hours between sunset and sunrise in Tersa’s cottage, waiting, wrapped in a strong illusion that would make even a demon-dead predator’s eyes see Mikal, the chosen prey.

*Are you sleepy? I am sleepy. It is time for bed now.*

Daemon sighed. It could have been worse. If Jaenelle had made a shadow that had Tildee’s real personality, he and the dog would be in a relentless argument about bedtime by now—and he’d be on the losing end of that argument, since the shadow wouldn’t see past the illusion spell Jaenelle had created for him.

*Snack?* the shadow asked.

He turned away from the window, frowning. Why was it taking so long to warm up some milk?

Tersa carefully poured the warm milk into a mug and a small bowl. Her boy would make sure the Mikal boy would be allowed to live with her. The tangled web she’d woven after Sylvia left the living Realms had told her that much. The grandfather was a good man, and he had been a good father for the daughter. But he was not the right man for her sons. Lives would be soured, and the love that existed now would die if the grandfather took the sons. So the Mikal boy and Tildee would live with her, and Beron . . . Witch knew best what to do for Beron. She’d seen that too in her web.

She rinsed out the pot and left it in the sink to wash later with the mug and bowl. As she turned to get a plate for the nutcake, she saw the stranger in her kitchen, standing close enough to touch.

She shrank back, a response to the foulness of his psychic scent rather than fear of his physical presence.

He grabbed her wrist, squeezing until she flinched in pain. “Where is the boy?” he snarled.

The boy? Wasn’t he supposed to ask her about the Mikal boy? “The boy is upstairs.”

“Show me.” He dragged her out of the kitchen and down the hallway. Then he released her wrist and gave her a hard shove toward the stairs. “Show me.”

She had promised Witch that she would play out this game so that all the boys would be safe. But something wasn’t right because this foulness was supposed to ask about the Mikal boy, not her boy.

Her boy would understand this confusion. He was playing Witch’s game too.

“Show me where he is,” the foulness whispered as it followed close behind her.

Tersa climbed the stairs and led him to the bedroom where her boy waited.

It took all the control Daemon had to stand still when that bastard shoved Tersa into the bedroom. The shadow Sceltie began barking, but Jaenelle had deliberately left out any commands to attack.

“You brat!” The Warlord’s voice sounded hoarse, as if his vocal cords had been damaged at some point and didn’t heal correctly.

Daemon stepped back, drawing the Warlord farther into the room and away from Tersa.

“You brat! When I’m through with you, even your own brother won’t recognize you!”

Tersa jerked as if struck, but Daemon didn’t have time to wonder why because the Warlord lunged, his hand reaching for where a boy’s arm would be.

Instead of scrambling back, Daemon stepped forward and clamped a hand around the Warlord’s wrist. As Jaenelle intended, contact with another male broke the illusion spell around Daemon. The release of her power in the spell also broke the illusion around the Warlord.

Scars on the throat. Hideous scars on the face. One cloudy eye.

A monster had begotten a monster. As Daemon looked into the man’s clear eye, he felt a stir of pity—enough pity that he decided it would be a swift execution rather than the slow one a monster deserved.

“You came to hurt the boy,” Tersa said, taking a step toward them.

Daemon glanced up and saw rage and a terrible kind of clarity in his mother’s eyes. “It’s done now.”

“You want to hurt my boy.”

“Tersa . . .” He was Black-shielded. There was nothing the Warlord could do to him and nothing the man could do to break free of him. But Tersa might still get hurt, especially now that she was standing directly behind the bastard.

“Jaenelle says it is like deboning chicken,” Tersa said in a singsong voice. “Just hook two fingers around the spine and pull.”

No time to say anything or do anything. One moment the Warlord was standing in front of him, caught in a bone-breaking grip. The next . . .

He felt the sharp tingle of Craft as the bones of hand and fingers passed under his grip. He tightened his hand to hold on to the man’s wrist, but there was nothing but soft flesh, and the Warlord’s hand swelled like a sausage casing when it gets squeezed.

Passing the bones through flesh and skin, Tersa whipped the skeleton free. Then witchfire, fueled by her fury, took the bones, charring them black.

For that moment, the blackened skeleton hung intact from her upraised arm. For that moment, the Warlord stood there, his good eye filled with horror and disbelief. Then the bones rained down on the floor like black hailstones, and the muscles and organs collapsed in on themselves, contained by a shapeless sack of skin.

Daemon stood there, holding one wrist, too stunned to let go.

The eyes lay on top of the fleshy sack, still staring at him.

He’s demon-dead, so he’s still in there, Daemon thought as his gorge rose. His Self is still in there and his mind is still aware.

Tersa dropped the spine on top of the rest of the bones and frowned. “Jaenelle doesn’t cook. Why would she know about deboning a chicken?”

Daemon looked at his mother. Then he released his hold on the Warlord’s wrist and ran for the bathroom.

“I’m sorry,” Daemon stammered. “I didn’t know what to do with it except bring it to you.”

Saetan stared at the skin sack filled with organs and muscles—and the brain. Daemon had thought to put a bubble shield around the sack before bringing it to the Keep. That was fortunate because the contents were starting to drain from the orifices.

Considering what the Warlord had done to his victims, it shouldn’t matter if the bastard heard them or not, but the man’s mind had broken under the horror of the punishment, so Saetan added an aural shield over Daemon’s bubble shield, and then hid it all in a mist so that neither of them had to look at it.

“I’ve walked the Realms for over fifty thousand years, and I’ve never seen this before,” he said as he walked over to the end of the courtyard where Daemon stood.

“He told Tersa to show him the boy, not the Mikal boy.” Daemon swallowed hard. “To her mind, he threatened me, not the illusion.”

“And she reacted.”

Daemon nodded.

“And Jaenelle told her how to do this?”

Another nod.

His boy was looking glassy-eyed and green, which matched how he was feeling. The speed with which it happened and the grotesque result would have unsettled both of them under any circumstances, but the feral natures and the tempers of the women involved scared the shit out of him. No matter what she’d told Tersa, Jaenelle had not learned to do this by deboning a chicken.

If the Darkness was merciful, he would never learn why or how his daughter had acquired this particular piece of Craft—and he hoped with all his heart that Daemon never learned why or how either.

“What do we do now?”

Linking his arm through Daemon’s, he led his son back into the Keep. “You’re going to go home, take a sedative, and get some sleep.”

“Maybe I should—”

“You’re the Warlord Prince of Dhemlan, not the High Lord of Hell.” Saetan put enough bite in his voice to clear the glassy look from Daemon’s eyes. “You did your part in this, Prince. Now it’s time for me to do mine.”

“And your part is?”

“To sift through what is left of his mind for the names of his victims before releasing him to the final death. I’ll send you the list. I’m sure you’ll know how to quietly pass on the information to the people who need it.”

“What happens after that?”

“He is demon-dead,” Saetan said gently. “After his Self returns to the Darkness, the meat will be left for the flora and fauna of Hell.”

SEVEN

A week after No Face had been destroyed, Saetan walked into the sitting room where Sylvia was reading, and sat down in a ladderback chair next to her wheeled chair.

“It’s time for us to talk,” he said.

She marked the page in her book and set it aside. She’d known this was coming, but she hadn’t expected it to come this soon. Even with the heartache and worry about her sons, there had been comfort in his presence. She felt the drag of daylight as soon as the sun rose, and went to bed to avoid the drain in her power. She would wake for a moment when he joined her later in the morning, and then sleep again, cradled in his arms, until they both rose at sunset.

“It’s hard for the living to let go of the dead, and it’s hard for the dead to let go of the living. That’s why my rules about interaction between the living and the demon-dead are so strict, and that’s why I’m so harsh when those rules are broken.”

“Did you live by your own rules, Saetan?” She knew the man, so she already guessed the answer.

“Everything has a price,” he said softly. “When I became a Guardian, I made a choice. It wasn’t prudent to let some things, like Dhemlan Kaeleer, leave my control, but the personal things ...” He sighed. “I never met Mephis’s wife. I never knew his children. I never held them or played with them or read them stories. I straddled the line between living and dead, so I didn’t belong with them. I had contact with Mephis only here at the Keep. He was a grown man, and it was necessary because we were all waiting for the promised dream to become flesh. But I kept my distance from his family, asking no less of myself than I required of the other citizens of Hell.”

“But you know Daemonar,” she said.

He let out a pained laugh. “Yes. Well, Lucivar is not Mephis. When I gave Mephis an order, he obeyed it. When I give Lucivar an order, half the time he ignores it and pisses on my foot. When Daemonar was born, Lucivar told me he didn’t give a damn about my rules. The boy was going to know his grandfather.” He paused, then added, “And things changed after Jaenelle came into our lives. The boundaries didn’t exist with the people she touched. That’s why I know that while the rules I’ve set for the citizens of Hell must be strictly enforced most of the time, there can be exceptions.”

She felt a zing that had nothing to do with her body and everything to do with her heart. “I can see my boys one more time?”

“If that’s what you want,” he replied. He leaned forward and took her hands, rubbing his thumbs over her knuckles. “Prince Sadi denied your father custody of your sons.”

“Why?”

“For one thing, your father doesn’t feel it’s appropriate for the boys to see you anymore. You’re dead. They need to accept that and rebuild their lives without you. Normally I would agree with him, but not this time. You are strong enough to let them go—and they will go, Sylvia. The day will come when they need you to be nothing more than a good memory. But for now, Daemon and I are willing to sanction, and chaperon, a visit twice a month here at the Keep in Kaeleer. You, Beron, and Mikal can spend the evening together. You’ll have the reassurance that they’re being taken care of.”

By whom? she wondered. “Everything has a price.”

“And this is no exception.”

“What is your price, High Lord?”

“I want to show you something.”

Using Craft, he floated her above the chair. She straightened her legs so that her long skirt just brushed the floor. Linking her arm through his, she floated beside him as he made his way through the Keep’s corridors until they reached the Dark Altar. After he opened the Gate, he led her to a landing web, wrapped a shield around her, and caught the Black Winds.

When they dropped from the Winds to another landing web, she looked around. “This is SaDiablo Hall, but it’s . . .”

“In the Dark Realm. At one time, I ruled in all three Realms, so I built the Hall in all three Realms.”

“Mother Night.” She couldn’t imagine what it had cost to build one of the Halls, let alone three.

She’d expected the place to be empty. It was a hive of activity. She saw caution in every eye when the demon-dead spotted the High Lord, but there were also smiles and pleasantries. He held what was left of their lives in his hands, and they didn’t forget that.

Just as he now held hers.

“Most of the demon-dead remain near the Gate closest to where they lived,” Saetan said quietly. “Some go to specific territories that have been claimed by a particular group, like the Harpies or the cildru dyathe. And some have unfinished business—the novel they never found time to write or the dream of learning to paint that they gave up out of duty to family. Some want to learn to play a musical instrument. Unfinished business. Not with the living; with themselves. I provide a place for them to live, a modest amount of yarbarah for sustenance, and the materials they need. In turn, they take care of this place, and the stronger look after the weaker when it’s needed.”

“It’s a community of artists,” she said, wishing he would slow down so she could get a better look at the paintings. Some were hung out of kindness. Others were stunning and beautiful.

“This is what I wanted you to see.” He opened a door and guided her inside.

The room was divided in half. There were scribbles and colored handprints and primitive drawings covering the set of folding panels that separated the room.

*It’s less frustrating than trying to clean the walls all the time,* Saetan said.

Since he was clearly moving to keep them out of sight of whoever was on the other side of the panels, she stifled a laugh.

“It’s a pretty nice place,” a young male voice said. “There are toys and games and lots of books to read for fun. There are also chores and studies, but those are interesting too. Some of the time.”

Sylvia smiled. That sounded so much like Mikal.

Saetan slipped his arm out of hers. After making sure she was steady, he stepped back. *Go ahead. Take a look.*

Taking hold of the edge of the panel, she eased herself into a position to see the room.

Thirty children, if not more. None of them had reached adolescence, whatever their race. Among them was a Dhemlan boy sitting on the floor, hugging a stuffed toy.

Sylvia looked back at Saetan. *Is that . . . ?*

*Haeze’s brother? Yes.*

She listened for a minute as the boy in charge explained the rules everyone had to follow in order to be a resident of the Hall.

Pushing against the panel, she floated back to Saetan. *Who is the Keeper of the Rules?*

*The first cildru dyathe to choose to live here instead of on their island. Daemon rescued him from the spooky house several years ago and brought him to me. In his way, he’s made the same choice another cildru dyathe made long ago—to be the leader of this band of children and help the others adjust and survive and let go when they’re ready.*

She caught something the boy said, and looked more closely at the man. *You can’t help the ones who don’t trust adults enough to accept help, but you help these children, don’t you? You’re the one who comes to read them stories or listen to them or give them a hug. Aren’t you?*

*Some came from loving homes. Others never knew the comfort of a hug. Not from a father or a mother.*

Everything has a price. Suddenly she knew what he was asking of her in exchange for spending time with her own sons—to be a maternal presence for the children who had never known any. To help them with their unfinished business. To give them a sense of family. With him.

Linking her arm with his, she tipped her head toward the door. He took them out of the room, then waited for her to indicate a direction. Instead she just looked at him.

“I asked you once, and I understand better now why you gave me the answer you did,” she said. “But everything has changed, so I’m going to ask again. Will you marry me, Saetan?”

She saw shock in his eyes, swiftly followed by joy, which was just as swiftly followed by caution.

“Can you promise me that you won’t stay one day longer than you truly want to?” he asked.

“I promise you that.”

“Then I will be honored to be your husband for all the days that come before that day.”

She threw her arms around him and held him as tightly as he held her.

“What kind of wedding would you like?” he asked.

She eased back enough to look at him. “A fast one.”

EIGHT

Sylvia had to wait a week for her wedding because Jaenelle wouldn’t allow Beron to travel to the Keep until every tiny part of his ears, eyes, and throat had healed completely. She chafed about the delay, but approved of the reason.

The Priestess from Riada came to the Keep to perform the marriage ceremony. The food for the living guests had been provided by Mrs. Beale from the Hall and Merry from The Tavern.

Sylvia’s father and brother had been invited. They weren’t able to smudge that line between the living and the dead and had refused to attend. But her sons were there, along with Marian and Lucivar, Daemonar, Jillian and Nurian, Tersa and Manny, Surreal and Rainier, Daemon and Jaenelle, and plenty of kindred who were also members of this pieced-together family.

Saetan slipped an arm around her waist and held out a ravenglass goblet of yarbarah. “How are you doing, Lady Sylvia?”

Accepting the goblet, she narrowed her eyes. “Mikal and Daemonar are about to get into some mischief. They’ve got that look.”

“You think so?” he asked, laughing softly.

The boys had barely taken a step before they were flanked by Scelties and blocked by Kaelas. In that moment, Sylvia saw three male heads turn in that direction—Daemon, Lucivar, and Rainier.

She pressed her lips together to keep from laughing aloud, since Mikal looked so annoyed at having his fun stopped before it started.

She took a sip of the yarbarah, then handed back the goblet. “I appreciate the sentiment, and the dress is gorgeous, but Jaenelle shouldn’t have harassed the dressmakers to get it made for the wedding.” The wedding ring, a square-cut ruby with flanking diamonds, had come from Banard’s shop. It wasn’t custom-made like the dress, but it had been chosen with care.

“My darling, Jaenelle would never harass a dressmaker or be as demanding about fit and style.”

Sylvia brushed a hand over the rich red fabric. “Then who ... ?”

“Daemon, however, makes up for being demanding by knowing exactly what he wants—and being a very generous patron of some of Amdarh’s more exclusive establishments.”

She felt the room tip a little when she considered the rest of the wedding gift. “The lingerie? Jaenelle or Surreal chose that. Didn’t they?”

Saetan just looked at her.

“Oh, Hell’s fire.”

“Has it occurred to you yet that Daemon and Lucivar are now your stepsons?”

“Don’t threaten me on my wedding day, SaDiablo.”

He burst out laughing.

A minute later, Jaenelle came up to them and gave Sylvia a bright smile that would have scared her right down to her toes if she’d still had any.

“I need to borrow your wife,” Jaenelle told Saetan. “Lady Sylvia and I need to have a little chat.”

NINE

Daemon picked up the first letter from the thick stack on his desk and swore softly. The swearing became more vigorous and creative as he worked his way through the stack. By the time Rainier walked into the study to go over the week’s assignments, Daemon was one wrong word away from exploding.

“What in the name of Hell are these?” he roared, dropping the letters on the blackwood desk.

Rainier winced. “Ah. I was hoping to get here before you saw those.”

“And they are?”

“Just what they seem—offers from District Queens all around Dhemlan to become the new Queen of Halaway. And the same offer from a few young Queens from other Territories.”

“I know who rules in my Territory, Rainier. Some of these women rule towns or cities that are larger—and more profitable—than a small village, and others already rule a handful of villages. They’re going to give up that income to rule Halaway?”

Rainier looked uncomfortable. “You read the letters? Of course you did.”

“So I know that the letters addressed to the Province Queen, of which there are few, are sincere offers to add Halaway to the villages under the Ladies’ rule because every village needs to be held by someone. But most of these . . .”

He stopped. Even after more than a decade of marriage, he still felt the raw fury of a vulnerable man whose reputation could be compromised. But that was his state of mind, and he had no right to whip Rainier with that fury.

“Why did we get these at all?” he asked through gritted teeth. “Shouldn’t a committee from the village or the Province Queen sort through these and present me with a short list for final approval?”

“Normally it would be done that way,” Rainier said. “But, Prince, your reaction to these letters—and they are only letters—is exactly why no one else is willing to make a choice. No one wants to be held responsible for whatever Queen ends up living on your doorstep—especially if she proves to be too friendly a neighbor.”

Daemon took in a deep breath and blew it out.

“If I were you, I would put those aside,” Rainier said. “When I spoke with Sylvia’s First Circle yesterday, they said they had been talking to a particular Lady about becoming Halaway’s Queen and were hopeful that she would accept. She’s supposed to give them her answer today.”

“She’s one of these?” He pointed to the stack of letters.

“I don’t know, but judging by how much care they were taking in what they said, they want this particular Queen.”

“If they feel that strongly, I’ll certainly make an effort not to interfere, as long as the Lady doesn’t think ruling Halaway means having access to my bed,” Daemon said as the study door opened and Jaenelle walked in.

“That might be a problem,” she said cheerfully. “Rainier, the Prince and I need to talk.”

Rainier looked at her, then at Daemon, and limped out of the room as fast as he could, closing the door behind him.

Jaenelle settled in the visitor’s chair and smiled at Daemon. “Sit down, Prince.”

His stomach clenched, but he obeyed.

“Sylvia’s First Circle asked me to take her place as the Queen of Halaway,” Jaenelle said. “This morning I accepted and signed a five-year contract.”

Daemon’s jaw dropped. “But ... you don’t want to rule. I don’t know how many times I’ve heard you say that over the years.”

She looked embarrassed. “Apparently, what I say and what I do are not the same things, and I’ve been the only one who hasn’t noticed that.”

Oh, shit. Who was the fool who told her?

“Ladvarian says that Scelties and Queens are meant to herd. It is our nature, and denying our nature is foolish. When I ruled Kaeleer, that was a heavy burden, even with all the other Queens to help me. And after I was hurt, it took me a long time to heal, and my becoming well was the most important thing. And I had a mate, and it was also important that I spend a lot of time with him and play. But now it’s time for me to work again, and officially ruling the small village right next to my home won’t be much different from what I already do. Or so says the Sceltie.”

He couldn’t think of one thing he dared to say.

“As much as I’d like to kick his furry ass for what he said, Ladvarian was right. It’s time for me to have my own flock again.”

“A new court?” he asked.

She shook her head. “Sylvia’s First Circle doesn’t belong to me in the truest sense, but they’re good men who are committed to Halaway, and we’ll work well together to take care of the village and its people.” She hesitated. “And they’re willing to accommodate the things Sylvia and I want for Mikal and Beron.”

Ah. Now he was hearing a reason that made sense. Then he remembered something about Sylvia’s First Circle that made him brace involuntarily for pain. Jaenelle was a Queen—and no matter who their husbands might be, Queens had privileges.

“Consort?” he asked.

She gave him a sharp look. Her voice was equally sharp. “The Warlord Prince of Dhemlan does not become the Consort of a District Queen and serve in her court—no matter who she is. Hopefully my husband will be willing to escort me to formal functions when required.”

“Which will leave an opening in the Queen’s Triangle.” There would be plenty of men who would come sniffing around once Jaenelle became Queen, for ambition’s sake if for nothing else.

She fluffed her hair. “I was thinking of asking Rainier to stand as First Escort to fill that side of the Triangle. I didn’t think you would object, since you already treat him as your stand-in when you can’t accompany me to an event.”

He felt his face heat even as he felt the ache around his heart ease. “It’s not that I don’t trust you.”

She smiled. “I know. For all the strength and power of your caste, Warlord Princes have their weak spots. On occasion, because you love so deeply, you will feel insecure. That is as much a part of your nature as ruling is a part of mine. As long as you remember that I love you, we’ll be fine.”

He nodded and searched for a way to step back from discussing her new court. “What about Mikal and Beron?”

“Ah. Mikal is easy. We’re doing a little decorating of the guest bedroom in Tersa’s cottage so that it will be Mikal’s room.”

“And Tildee’s,” he added.

“And Tildee’s. In exchange for being allowed to live with Tersa, Mikal has promised to do his assigned chores and his schoolwork and not try to smudge the truth with Tersa the way he sometimes did with his mother, because doing that would upset Tersa’s hold on the mundane world. Since you are the patriarch of the family and he is now officially family, he answers to you, and any discipline that may be required comes from you.”

“Good to know,” he muttered. “And Beron?”

“That’s trickier,” she hedged.

“Why? He can live here with us. There is plenty of room.”

“He doesn’t want to live here with us.”

Daemon sat back, crossed his legs at the knees, steepled his fingers, and raised one eyebrow in polite query.

“I see,” Jaenelle said. “The nervous husband is gone, and the Prince is back.”

He waited.

“The Queen’s residence is Beron’s home. He doesn’t want to leave it. Not yet. And there are advantages to letting him stay there. For one, I won’t be living there—not most of the time, although I will have a suite of rooms and will stay overnight on occasion. With my husband.”

Daemon’s lips twitched.

“Having Beron stay there also means that I’ll be able to justify keeping on the whole staff, since there will be someone in residence.”

“A boy his age living alone? I don’t think so.”

“He’s not a boy. He’s an adolescent youth who is almost old enough to attend school on his own.”

“Almost old enough isn’t old enough.”

She narrowed those sapphire eyes.

He tapped a finger against his chest. “Patriarch of the family, remember?”

“He’ll be old enough in five years,” she said tightly.

Which explained the length of her contract.

“Jaenelle . . .”

“The next five years will be a proving ground. The three of us will work out the rules and restrictions. If Beron violates any of the big rules, he’ll be packed up and will have to live here with us and be held to a short leash. Since Surreal and Rainier live in the village half of the time, they can drop by and check on him, day or night.”

“Not to mention that the court will be working in the other half of the residence most days.” Daemon nodded.

“If he acts like a responsible young man, at the end of that five years, he’ll be allowed to go to Amdarh and train in the work of his choice.”

“Which is?”

She studied him, as if trying to judge how he would respond even before she said the words.

“He wants to be an actor. He wants to perform onstage. He’s had a passion for it since the first time he was given a part in a school play. He’s talked about this for as long as I’ve known him. It’s what he wants to do, Daemon. A life dream.”

That explained her fury when Jaenelle discovered how the Healer had damaged Beron, and why she had been so fierce about restoring his voice, hearing, and vision to exactly what they had been before the damage.

And it explained something else. “His grandfather disapproves?”

“It’s not a profession suitable for a Queen’s son. Beron should be training to serve in a court or apprentice for some other suitable occupation.”

“Which is nothing Beron wants.”

“No. That disapproval has caused a strain in the relationship between grandfather and grandson. While Sylvia was alive, she supported Beron’s choice, encouraging him to audition for the plays performed in the village. With her gone, there would have been no buffer, especially if he had gone to live with Sylvia’s father. Beron doesn’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings, but he wouldn’t have backed down from what he wants. Eventually he would have rebelled and chosen a reckless path that would have done him irreparable harm.”

Daemon sat forward. She sounded too certain, which meant she’d seen something in a tangled web. “Couldn’t you have told me some of that when you asked me to deny Sylvia’s father custody of her sons?”

“Did I need to?” Witch asked.

No. As wife or Queen, he was hers to command. “So I guess we’re all settled.”

“I guess we are.” Jaenelle stood up, walked around the desk, and gave him a kiss that narrowed his focus to just one thing: sex.

“I’m going to talk to Rainier and explain his new duties,” she said. “Why don’t you apply yourself to the paperwork so that we can take a long nap after the midday meal? You can warm up my feet.”

“I’ll warm up anything you want,” he purred.

Laughing, she eased back and picked up the stack of letters. “I’ll answer these for you. Just to save you some time.”

“You do that.”

When she closed the study door, he blew out a breath. “Get your mind out of your pants, boyo,” he muttered. Although his pants weren’t exactly where his mind was fixed right now. It was more on the things he wanted to taste. . . .

He shifted in his chair and pulled a stack of reports to the center of his desk. Before he’d read the first page, there was an enthusiastic scratching on the door.

*Daemon?*

*daemondaemondaemondaemondaemon.*

Sighing, he used Craft to open the door. Shuveen, Boyd, and Floyd rushed over to him. Shuveen was the first to jump into his lap, giving him time to put a shield over his crotch before Boyd and Floyd scrambled to join her. One Sceltie on his lap, he could handle. Three Scelties? Someone was going to plant a paw on his balls.

Easy enough to tell them he had to work and they needed to leave him alone—and he almost did. Then he thought about family. What would have happened to Mikal if Tildee hadn’t been with the boy, hadn’t received her training here at the Hall?

There was no black-haired, blue-eyed daughter to climb in his lap and ask for a story, but he and Jaenelle had raised quite a few kindred youngsters over the past few years, and now there were Beron and Mikal, who would need help and guidance and love.

He looked at the three Scelties, at the brown eyes filled with happy expectation. Whose lives would they change one day because of what he and Jaenelle taught them?

“One story,” he said. “Then I have to work.”

He waited for them to carefully turn around so they were all facing the desk. Then he put his arms around them, called in the storybook, and began reading Sceltie Saves the Day.