1 / Hell

“That gutter son of a whore is up to something. I can feel it.” Deciding it was better to say nothing, Greer sat back in the patched chair and watched Hekatah pace.

“For two glorious years he’s barely been felt, let alone seen in Hell or Kaeleer. His strength was waning. I know it was. Now he’s back, residing at the Hall in Kaeleer. Residing. Do you know how long it’s been since he’s made his presence felt in one of the living Realms?”

“Seventeen hundred years?” Greer replied.

Hekatah stopped pacing and nodded. “Seventeen hundred years. Ever since Daemon Sadi and Lucivar Yaslana were taken away from him.” She closed her gold eyes and smiled maliciously. “How he must have howled when Dorothea denied him paternity at Sadi’s Birthright Ceremony, but there was nothing he could do without sacrificing his precious honor. So he slunk away like a whipped dog, consoling himself that he still had the child Hayll’s Black Widows couldn’t claim.” She opened her eyes and hugged herself. “But Prythian had already gotten to the boy’s mother and told her all those wonderful half-truths one can tell the ignorant about Guardians. It was one of the few things that winged sow has ever done right.” Her pleasure faded. “So why is he back?”

“Could—” Greer considered, shook his head.

Hekatah tapped her fingertips against her chin. “Has he found another darling to replace his little pet? Or has he finally decided to turn Dhemlan into a feeding ground? Or is it something else?”

She walked toward him, her swaying hips and coquettish smile making him wish he’d known her when he could have done more than just appreciate what her movements implied.

“Greer,” she crooned as she slipped her arms around his neck and pressed her breasts against him. “I want a little favor.”

Greer waited, wary.

Hekatah’s coquettish smile hardened. “Have your balls shriveled up so quickly, darling?”

Anger flashed in Greer’s eyes. He hid it quickly. “You want me to go to the Hall in Kaeleer?”

“And risk losing you?” Hekatah pouted. “No, darling, there’s no need for you to go to that nasty Hall. We have a loyal ally living in Halaway. He’s wonderful at sifting out tidbits of information. Talk to him.” Balancing on her toes, she lightly kissed Greer’s lips. “I think you’ll like him. You’re two of a kind.”

2 / Kaeleer

Beale opened the study door. “Lady Sylvia,” he announced as he respectfully stepped aside for Halaway’s Queen.

Meeting her in the middle of the room, Saetan offered both hands, palms down. “Lady.”

“High Lord,” she replied, placing her hands beneath his, palms up in formal greeting, leaving wrists vulnerable to nails.

Saetan kept his expression neutral, but he approved of the slight pressure pushing his hands upward, the subtle reminder of a Queen’s strength. There were some Queens who deeply resented having to live with the bargain that the Dhemlan Queens in Terreille and Kaeleer had made with him thousands of years ago in order to protect the Dhemlan Territory in Terreille from Hayll’s encroachment, who deeply resented being ruled by a male. There were some who had never understood that, in his own way, he had always served a Queen, that he had always served Witch.

Fortunately, Sylvia wasn’t one of them.

She was the first Queen born in Halaway since her great-grandmother had ruled, and she was the pride of the village. The day after she had formed her court, she had come to the Hall and had informed him with forceful politeness that, while Halaway might exist to serve the Hall, it was her territory and they were her people, and if there was anything he wanted from her village she would do her utmost to honor his request—provided it was reasonable.

Saetan now offered her a warm but cautious smile as he led her to the half of his study that was furnished for less formal discussions.

After watching her perch on the edge of one of the overstuffed chairs, he took a seat on the black leather couch, putting the width of the low blackwood table between them. He picked up the decanter of yarbarah, filled one of the ravenglass goblets, and warmed it slowly over a tongue of witchfire before offering it to her.

As soon as she took the glass, he busily prepared one for himself so that he wouldn’t insult her by laughing at her expression. She probably had the same look when one of her sons tried to hand her a large, ugly bug that only a small boy could find delightful.

“It’s lamb’s blood,” he said mildly as he leaned back and crossed his legs at the knee.

“Oh.” She smiled weakly. “Is that good?”

Her voice got husky when she was nervous, he noted with amusement.

“Yes, that’s good. And probably far more to your liking than the human blood you feared was mixed with the wine.”

She took a sip, trying hard not to gag.

“It’s an acquired taste,” Saetan said blandly. Had Jaenelle tasted the blood wine yet? If not, he’d have to correct that omission soon. “You’ve piqued my curiosity.” He altered his deep voice so that it was coaxing, soothing. “Very few Queens would willingly have an audience with me at midnight, let alone request one.”

Sylvia carefully set her goblet on the table before pressing her hands against her legs. “I wanted a private meeting, High Lord.”

“Why?”

Sylvia licked her lips, took a deep breath, and looked him in the eye. “Something’s wrong in Halaway. Something subtle. I feel…” She frowned and shook her head, deeply troubled.

Saetan wanted to reach out and smooth away the sharp vertical line that appeared between her eyebrows. “What do you feel?”

Sylvia closed her eyes. “Ice on the river in the middle of summer. Earth leeched of its richness. Crops withering in the fields. The wind brings a smell of fear, but I can’t trace the source.” She opened her eyes and smiled self-consciously. “I apologize, High Lord. My former Consort used to say I made no sense when I explained things.”

“Really?” Saetan replied too softly. “Perhaps you had the wrong Consort, Lady. Because I understand you all too well.” He drained his goblet and set it on the table with exaggerated care. “Who among your people is being harmed the most?”

Sylvia took a deep breath. “The children.”

A vicious snarl filled the room. It was only when Sylvia nervously glanced toward the door that Saetan realized the sound was coming from him. He stopped it abruptly, but the cold, sweet rage was still there. Taking a shuddering breath, he backed away from the killing edge.

“Excuse me.” Giving her no time to make excuses to leave, Saetan walked out of his study, ordered refreshments, and then spent several minutes pacing the great hall until he had repaired the frayed leash that kept his temper in check. By the time he rejoined her, Beale had brought the tea and a plate of small, thin sandwiches.

She politely refused the sandwiches and didn’t touch the tea he poured for her. Her uneasiness scraped at his temper. Hell’s fire, he hated seeing that look in a woman’s eyes.

Sylvia licked her lips. Her voice was very husky. “I’m their Queen. It’s my problem. I shouldn’t have troubled you with it.”

He slammed the cup and saucer down on the table so hard the saucer broke in half. Then he put some distance between them, giving himself room to pace but always staying close enough so that she couldn’t reach the door before he did.

It shouldn’t matter. He should be used to it. If she’d been afraid of him from the moment she stepped into the room, he could have handled it. But she hadn’t been afraid. Damn her, she hadn’t been afraid.

He spun around, keeping the couch and the table between them. “I have never harmed you or your people,” he snarled. “I’ve used my strength, my Craft, my Jewels, and, yes, my temper to protect Dhemlan. Even when I wasn’t visible, I still looked after you. There are many services—including highly personal services—that I could have required of you or any other Queen in this Territory, but I’ve never made those kinds of demands. I’ve accepted the responsibilities of ruling Dhemlan, and, damn you, I have never abused my position or my power.”

Sylvia’s brown skin was bleached of its warm, healthy color. Her hand shook when she lifted her cup to take a sip of tea. She set the cup down, lifted her chin, and squared her shoulders. “I met your daughter recently. I asked her if she found it difficult living with your temper. She looked genuinely baffled, and said, ‘What temper?’”

Saetan stared at her for a moment, then the anger drained away. He rubbed the back of his neck, and said dryly, “Jaenelle has a unique way of looking at a great many things.”

Before he could summon Beale, the teapot and used cups vanished. A moment later a fresh pot of tea appeared on the table, along with clean cups and saucers and a plate of pastries.

Saetan gave the door a speculative look before returning to the couch. He poured another cup of tea for Sylvia and one for himself.

“He didn’t bring them in,” Sylvia said quietly.

“I noticed,” Saetan replied—and wondered just how close his butler was standing to the study door. He put an aural shield around the room.

“Maybe he felt intimidated.”

Saetan snorted. “Any man who is happily married to Mrs. Beale isn’t intimidated by anyone—including me.”

“I see your point.” Sylvia picked up a sandwich and took a bite.

Relieved that her color was back and she was no longer afraid, he picked up his tea and leaned back. “I’ll find out what’s happening in Halaway. And I’ll stop it.” He sipped his tea to cover his hesitation, but the question had to be asked. “When did it start?”

Sylvia looked at him sharply. “Your daughter isn’t the cause, High Lord. I met her only briefly one afternoon when Mikal, my youngest son, and I were out walking; but I know she isn’t the cause.” She fiddled with her cup, nervous again. “But she may be the catalyst. Maybe it’s fairer to say that it’s her presence that has made me aware of it.”

Saetan held his breath, waiting. Coaxing Jaenelle to try the Halaway school for the last few weeks before summer had been difficult. He’d hoped reconnecting with other children might stir her interest in contacting her old friends. Instead, she’d become more withdrawn, more elusive. And the politely phrased queries from Lord Menzar about her formal education—or lack of it—had dismayed him because, except for the Craft he had taught her, he had no idea how her education had been structured. But with each day since they’d come to the Hall, he had seen the threads he was trying to weave between himself and her unravel as fast as he could weave them, and he had had no idea, no clue as to why that was so. Until now.

“Why?”

Sylvia, lost in her own thoughts, stared at him, puzzled.

“Why is she the catalyst?” Saetan repeated.

“Oh.” The vertical line between Sylvia’s eyebrows reappeared as she concentrated. “She’s…different.”

Don’t lash out at her, Saetan reminded himself. Just listen.

“Beron, my older son, has some classes with her, and we’ve talked. Not that your household is fodder for gossip, but she puzzles him so he asks me things.”

“Why does she puzzle him?”

She nibbled on a sandwich, considering. “Beron says she’s very shy, but if you can get her to talk, she says the most amazing things.”

“I can believe that,” Saetan said dryly.

“Sometimes when she’s talking to someone or giving an answer in class, she’ll stop in mid-sentence and cock her head, as if she’s listening intensely to something no one else can hear. Sometimes when that happens, she’ll pick up the sentence where she left off. Sometimes she’ll withdraw into herself and won’t speak for the rest of the day.”

What voices did Jaenelle hear? Who—or what—called to her?

“Sometimes during a rest break, she’ll walk away from the other children and not return until the next morning,” Sylvia said.

She didn’t return to the Hall, or he would have known about this before now. And she wasn’t riding the Winds. He would have felt her absence if she had traveled beyond easy awareness. Mother Night, where did she go? Back into the abyss?

The possibility terrified him.

Sylvia took a deep breath. Took another. “Yesterday, the older students went on a trip to Marasten Gardens. Do you know it?”

“It’s a large estate near the border of Dhemlan and Little Terreille. It has some of the finest gardens in Dhemlan.”

“Yes.” Sylvia had trouble swallowing the last bite of her sandwich. She carefully wiped her fingers on the linen napkin. “According to Beron, Jaenelle got separated from the others, although no one noticed until it was time to leave. He went back to look for her and…he found her kneeling beside a tree, weeping. She’d been digging, and her hands were scratched and bleeding.” Sylvia stared at the teapot, breathing quickly. “Beron helped her up and reminded her that they weren’t supposed to dig up the plants. And she said, ‘I was planting it.’ When he asked her why, she said, ‘For remembrance.’”

The cold made Saetan’s muscles ache, made his blood sluggish. This wasn’t the searing, cleansing cold of rage. This was fear. “Did Beron recognize the plant?”

“Yes. I had shown it to him only last year and explained what it was. None of it, thank the Darkness, grows in Halaway.” Sylvia looked at him, deeply troubled. “High Lord, she was planting witchblood.”

Why hadn’t Jaenelle told him? “If the witchblood blooms…”

Sylvia looked horrified. “It won’t unless…It mustn’t!”

Saetan spaced his words carefully, feeling too fragile to have even words collide. “I’ll have that area investigated. Discreetly. And I’ll take care of the problem in Halaway.”

“Thank you.” Sylvia fussed with the folds of her dress.

Saetan waited, forcing himself to be patient. He wanted to be alone, wanted time to think. But Sylvia obviously had something else on her mind. “What?”

“It’s trivial in comparison.”

“But?”

In one swift glance, Sylvia examined him from head to toe. “You have very good taste in clothes, High Lord.”

Saetan rubbed his forehead, trying to find a connection. “Thank you.” Hell’s fire! How did women make these mental jumps so easily? Why did they make them?

“But you’re probably not aware of what is considered fashionable for a young woman these days.” It wasn’t quite a question.

“If that’s your way of telling me that Jaenelle looks like she got her wardrobe from an attic, then you’re right. I think the Seneschal of the Keep opened every old trunk that was left there and let my wayward child pick and choose.” It was a small subject, a safe subject. He became happily grumpy. “I wouldn’t mind so much if any of them fit—that’s not true, I would mind. She should have new clothes.”

“Then why don’t you take her shopping in Amdarh, or one of the nearby towns, or even Halaway?”

“Do you think I haven’t tried?” he growled.

Sylvia made no comment for several moments. “I have two sons. They’re very good boys—for boys—but they’re not much fun to go shopping with.” She gave him a twinkling little smile. “Perhaps if it was just two women having lunch and then looking around…”

Saetan called in a leather wallet and handed it to Sylvia. “Is that enough?”

Sylvia opened the wallet, riffled through the gold marks, and laughed. “I think we can get a decent wardrobe or three out of this.”

He liked her laugh, liked the finely etched lines around her eyes. “You’ll spend some of that on yourself, of course.”

Sylvia gave him her best Queen stare. “I didn’t suggest this with the expectation of being paid for helping a young Sister.”

“I didn’t offer it as payment, but if you feel uncomfortable about using some of it to please yourself, then do it to please me.” He watched her expression change from anger to uneasiness, and he wondered who the fool had been who had made her unhappy. “Besides,” he added gently, “you should set a proper example.”

Sylvia vanished the wallet and stood up. “I will, naturally, provide you with receipts for all of the purchases.”

“Naturally.”

Saetan escorted her to the great hall. Taking her cape from Beale, he settled it carefully over her shoulders.

As they slowly walked to the door, Sylvia studied the carved wooden moldings that ran along the top of each wall. “I’ve only been here half a dozen times, if that. I never noticed the carvings before.

“Whoever carved these was very talented,” she said. “Did he also make the sketches for all these creatures?”

“No.” He heard the defensiveness in his voice and winced.

“You made the sketches.” She studied the carvings with more interest, then muffled a laugh. “I think the wood-carver played a little with one of your sketches, High Lord. That little beasty has his eyes crossed and is sticking his tongue out—and he’s placed just about where someone would stop after walking in. Apparently the beasty doesn’t think much of your guests.” She paused and studied him with as much interest as she’d just given the carving. “The wood-carver didn’t play with your sketch, did he?”

Saetan felt his face heat. He bit back a growl. “No.”

“I see,” Sylvia said after a long moment. “It’s been an interesting evening, High Lord.”

Not sure how to interpret that remark, he escorted her into her carriage with a bit more haste than was proper.

When he could no longer hear the carriage wheels, he turned toward the open front door, wishing he could postpone the next conversation. But Jaenelle was more attuned to him during the dark hours, more revealing when hidden in shadows, more—

The sound snapped his thoughts. Holding his breath, Saetan looked toward the north woods that bordered the Hall’s lawns and formal gardens. He waited, but the sound didn’t come again.

“Did you hear it?” he asked Beale when he reached the door.

“Hear what, High Lord?”

Saetan shook his head. “Nothing. Probably a village dog strayed too far from home.”

She was still awake, walking in the garden below her rooms.

Saetan drifted toward the waterfall and small pool in the center of the garden, letting her feel his presence without intruding on her silence. It was a good place to talk because the lights from her rooms on the second floor didn’t quite reach the pool.

He settled comfortably on the edge of the pool and let the peace of a soft, early summer night and the murmur of water soothe him. While he waited for her, he idly stirred the water with his fingers and smiled.

He’d told her to landscape this inner garden for her own pleasure. The formal fountain had been the first thing to go. As he studied the water lilies, water celery, and dwarf cattails she’d planted in the pool and the ferns she’d planted around it, he wondered again if she had just wanted something that looked more natural or if she had been trying to re-create a place she had known.

“Do you think it’s inappropriate?” Jaenelle asked, her voice drifting out of the shadows.

Saetan dipped his hand into the pool and raised the cupped palm, watching the water trickle through his fingers. “No, I was wishing I’d thought of it myself.” He flicked drops of water from his fingers and finally looked at her.

The dark-colored dress she was wearing faded into the surrounding shadows, giving him the impression that her face, one bare shoulder, and the golden hair were rising up out of the night itself.

He looked away, focusing on a water lily but intensely aware of her.

“I like the sound of water singing over stone,” Jaenelle said, coming a little closer. “It’s restful.”

But not restful enough. How many things haunt you, witch-child?

Saetan listened to the water. He pitched his voice to blend with it. “Have you planted witchblood before?”

She was silent so long he didn’t think she would answer, but when she did, her voice had that midnight, sepulchral quality that always produced a shiver up his spine. “I’ve planted it before.”

Sensing her brittleness, he knew he was getting too close to a soul-wound—and secrets. “Will it bloom in Marasten Gardens?” he asked quietly, once more moving his fingers slowly through the water.

Another long silence. “It will bloom.”

Which meant a witch who had died violently was buried there.

Tread softly, he cautioned himself. This was dangerous ground. He looked at her, needing to see what those ancient, haunted eyes would tell him. “Will we have to plant it in Halaway?”

Jaenelle turned away. Her profile was all angles and shadows, an exotic face carved out of marble. “I don’t know.” She stood very still. “Do you trust your instincts, Saetan?”

“Yes. But I trust yours more.”

She had the strangest expression, but it was gone so swiftly he didn’t know what it meant. “Perhaps you shouldn’t.” She laced her fingers together, pressing and pressing until dark beads of blood dotted her hands where her nails pierced her skin. “When I lived in Beldon Mor, I was often…ill. Hospitalized for weeks, sometimes months at a time.” Then she added, “I wasn’t physically ill, High Lord.”

Breathe, damn you, breathe. Don’t freeze up now. “Why didn’t you ever mention this?”

Jaenelle laughed softly. The bitterness in it tore him apart. “I was afraid to tell you, afraid you wouldn’t be my friend anymore, afraid you wouldn’t teach me Craft if you knew.” Her voice was low and pained. “And I was afraid you were just another manifestation of the illness, like the unicorns and the dragons and…the others.”

Saetan swallowed his pain, his fear, his rage. There was no outlet for those feelings on a soft night like this. “I’m not part of a dreamscape, witch-child. If you take my hand, flesh will touch flesh. The Shadow Realm, and all who reside in it, are real.” He saw her eyes fill with tears, but he couldn’t tell if they were tears of pain or relief. While she had lived in Beldon Mor, her instincts had been brutalized until she no longer trusted them. She had recognized the danger in Halaway before Sylvia had, but she had doubted herself so much she hadn’t been willing to admit it—just in case someone told her it wasn’t real.

“Jaenelle,” he said softly, “I won’t act until I’ve verified what you tell me, but please, for the sake of those who are too young to protect themselves, tell me what you can.”

Jaenelle walked away, her head down, her golden hair a veil around her face. Saetan turned around, giving her privacy without actually leaving. The stones he sat on felt cold and hard now. He gritted his teeth against the physical discomfort, knowing instinctively that if he moved she wouldn’t be able to find the words he needed.

“Do you know a witch called the Dark Priestess?” Jaenelle whispered from the nearby shadows.

Saetan bared his teeth but kept his voice low and calm. “Yes.”

“So does Lord Menzar.”

Saetan stared at nothing, pressing his hands against the stones, relishing the pain of skin against rough edges. He didn’t move, did nothing more than breathe until he heard Jaenelle climb the stairs that led to the balcony outside her rooms, heard the quiet click when she closed the glass door. He still didn’t move except to raise his golden eyes and watch the candle-lights dim one by one.

The last light in Jaenelle’s room went out.

He sat beneath the night sky and listened to water sing over stone. “Games and lies,” he whispered. “Well, I, too, know how to play games. You shouldn’t have forgotten that, Hekatah. I don’t like them, but you’ve just made the stakes high enough.” He smiled, but it was too soft, too gentle. “And I know how to be patient. But someday I’m going to have a talk with Jaenelle’s foolish Chaillot relatives, and then it will be blood and not water that will be singing over stone in a very…private…garden.”

“Lock it.”

Mephis SaDiablo reluctantly turned the key in the door of Saetan’s private study deep beneath the Hall, the High Lord’s chosen place for very private conversations. He took a moment to remind himself that he had done nothing wrong, that the man who had summoned him was his father as well as the Warlord Prince he served.

“Prince SaDiablo.”

The deep voice pulled him toward the man sitting behind the desk.

It was a terrible face that watched him cross the room, so still, so expressionless, so contained. The silver in Saetan’s thick black hair formed two graceful triangles at the temples, drawing one’s gaze to the golden eyes. Those eyes now burned with an emotion so intense words like “hate” and “rage” were inadequate. There was only one way to describe the High Lord of Hell: cold.

Centuries of training helped Mephis take the last few necessary steps. Centuries and memories. As a boy, he had feared provoking his father’s temper, but he’d never feared the man. The man had sung to him, laughed with him, listened seriously to childhood troubles, respected him. It wasn’t until he was grown that he understood why the High Lord should be feared—and it wasn’t until he was much older that he came to appreciate when the High Lord should be feared.

Like now.

“Sit.” Saetan’s voice had that singsong croon that was usually the last thing a man ever heard—except his own screams.

Mephis tried to find a comfortable position in the chair. The large blackwood desk that separated them offered little comfort. Saetan didn’t need to touch a man to destroy him.

A little flicker of irritation leaped into Saetan’s eyes. “Have some yarbarah.” The decanter lifted from the desk, neatly pouring the blood wine into two glasses. Two tongues of witchfire popped into existence. The glasses tilted, traveled upward, and began turning slowly above the fires. When the yarbarah was warmed, one glass floated to Mephis while the other cradled itself in Saetan’s waiting hand. “Rest easy, Mephis. I require your skills, nothing more.”

Mephis sipped the yarbarah. “My skills, High Lord?”

Saetan smiled. It made him look vicious. “You are meticulous, you are thorough, and, most of all, I trust you.” He paused. “I want you to find out everything you can about Lord Menzar, the administrator of Halaway’s school.”

“Am I looking for something in particular?”

The cold in the room intensified. “Let your instincts guide you.” Saetan bared his teeth in a snarl. “But this is just between you and me, Mephis. I want no one asking questions about what you’re seeking.”

Mephis almost asked who would dare question the High Lord, but he already knew the answer. Hekatah. This had to do with Hekatah.

Mephis drained his glass and set it carefully on the blackwood desk. “Then with your permission, I’d like to begin now.”

3 / Kaeleer

Luthvian hunched her shoulders against the intrusion and vigorously pounded the pestle into the mortar, ignoring the girl hovering in the doorway. If they didn’t stop pestering her with their inane questions, she’d never get these tonics made.

“Finished your Craft lesson so soon?” Luthvian asked without turning around.

“No, Lady, but—”

“Then why are you bothering me?” Luthvian snapped, flinging the pestle into the mortar before advancing on the girl.

The girl cowered in the doorway but looked confused rather than frightened. “There’s a man to see you.”

Hell’s fire, you’d think the girl had never seen a man before. “Is he bleeding all over the floor?”

“No, Lady, but—”

“Then put him in the healing room while I finish this.”

“He’s not here for a healing, Lady.”

Luthvian ground her teeth. She was an Eyrien Black Widow and Healer. It grated her pride to have to teach Craft to these Rihlan girls. If she still lived in Terreille, they would have been her servants, not her pupils. Of course, if she still lived in Terreille, she would still be bartering her healing skills for a stringy rabbit or a loaf of stale bread. “If he’s not here for—”

She shuddered. If she hadn’t closed her inner barriers so tightly in order to shut out the frustrated bleating of her students, she would have felt him the moment he walked into her house. His dark scent was unmistakable.

Luthvian fought to keep her voice steady and unconcerned. “Tell the High Lord I’ll be with him shortly.”

The girl’s eyes widened. She bolted down the hallway, caught a friend by the arm, and began whispering excitedly.

Luthvian quietly closed the door of her workroom. She let out a whimpering laugh and thrust her shaking hands into her work apron’s pockets. That little two-legged sheep was trembling with excitement at the prospect of mouthing practiced courtesies to the High Lord of Hell. She was trembling too, but for a very different reason.

Oh, Tersa, in your madness perhaps you didn’t know or care what spear was slipped into your sheath. I was young and frightened, but I wasn’t mad. He made my body sing, and I thought…I thought…

Even after so many centuries, the truth still left a bitter taste in her mouth.

Luthvian removed her apron and smoothed out the wrinkles in her old dress as best she could. A hearth-witch would have known some little spell to make it look crisply ironed. A witch in personal service would have known some little spell to smooth and rebraid her long black hair in seconds. She was neither, and it was beneath a Healer’s dignity to learn such mundane Craft. It was beneath a Black Widow’s dignity to care whether a man—any man—expressed approval of how she dressed.

After locking her workroom and vanishing the key, Luthvian squared her shoulders and lifted her chin. There was only one way to find out why he was here.

As she walked down the main hallway that divided the lower floor of her house, Luthvian kept her pace slow and dignified as befitted a Sister of the Hourglass. Her workroom, healing room, dining room, kitchen, and storerooms took up the back part of the lower floor. Student workroom, study room, Craft library, and the parlor took up the front. Baths and bedrooms for her boarders were on the second floor. Her suite of rooms and a smaller suite for special guests filled the third floor.

She didn’t keep live-in servants. Doun was just around the bend in the road, so her hired help went home each night to their own families.

Luthvian paused, not yet willing to open the parlor door. She was an Eyrien exiled among Rihlanders—an Eyrien who had been born without the wings that would have been an unspoken reminder that she came from the warrior race who ruled the mountains. So she snapped and snarled, never allowing the Rihlanders to become overly familiar. But that didn’t mean she wanted to leave, that she didn’t take some satisfaction in her work. She enjoyed the deference paid to her because she was a good Healer and a Black Widow. She had influence in Doun.

But her house didn’t belong to her, and the land, like all the land in Ebon Rih, belonged to the Keep. Oh, the house had been built for her, to her specifications, but that didn’t mean the owner couldn’t show her the front door and lock it behind him.

Was that why he was here, to call in the debt and pay her back?

Taking a deep breath, Luthvian opened the parlor door, not fully prepared to meet her former lover.

He was surrounded by her students, the whole giggling, flirting, lash-batting lot of them. He didn’t look bored or desperate to be rid of them, nor was he preening as a young buck might when faced with so much undiluted feminine attention. He was as he’d always been, a courteous listener who wouldn’t interrupt inane chatter unless it was absolutely necessary, a man who could skillfully phrase a refusal.

She knew so well how skillfully he could phrase a refusal.

He saw her then. There was no anger in his gold eyes. There was also no warm smile of greeting. That told her enough. Whatever business he had with her was personal but not personal.

It made her furious, and a Black Widow in a temper wasn’t a woman to tamper with. He saw the shift in her mood, acknowledged it with a slight lift of one eyebrow, and finally interrupted the girls’ chatter.

“Ladies,” he said in that deep, caressing voice, “I thank you for making my wait so delightful, but I mustn’t keep you from your studies any longer.” Without raising his voice, he managed to silence their vigorous protests. “Besides, Lady Luthvian’s time is valuable.”

Luthvian stepped away from the door just enough for them to scurry past her. Roxie, her oldest student, stopped in the doorway, looked over her shoulder, and fluttered her eyelashes at the High Lord.

Luthvian slammed the door in her face.

She waited for him to approach her with the cautious respect a male who serves the Hourglass always displays when approaching a Black Widow. When he didn’t move, she blushed at the silent reminder that he didn’t serve the Hourglass. He was still the High Priest, a Black Widow who outranked her.

She moved with studied casualness, as if getting close to him had no importance, but stopped with half the length of the room between them. Close enough. “How could you stand listening to that drivel?”

“I found it interesting—and highly educational,” he added dryly.

“Ah,” Luthvian said. “Did Roxie give you her tasteful or her colorfully detailed version of her Virgin Night? She’s the only one old enough to have gone through the ceremony, and she primps and preens and explains to the other girls that she’s really too tired for morning lessons these days because her lover’s soooo demanding.”

“She’s very young,” Saetan said quietly, “and—”

“She’s vulgar,” Luthvian snapped.

“—young girls can be foolish.”

Tears pricked Luthvian’s eyes. She wouldn’t cry in front of him. Not again. “Is that what you thought of me?”

“No,” Saetan said gently. “You were a natural Black Widow, driven by your intense need to express your Craft, and driven even harder by your need to survive. You were far from foolish.”

“I was foolish enough to trust you!”

There was no expression in his golden eyes. “I told you who, and what, I was before I got into bed with you. I was there as an experienced consort to see a young witch through her Virgin Night so that when she woke in the morning the only thing broken was a membrane—not her mind, not her Jewels, not her spirit. It was a role I’d played many times before when I ruled the Dhemlan Territory in both Realms. I understood and honored the rules of that ceremony.”

Luthvian grabbed a vase from a side table and flung it at his head. “Was impregnating her part of the understood rules?” she screamed.

Saetan caught the vase easily, then opened his hand and let it smash on the bare wood floor. His eyes blazed, and his voice roughened. “I truly didn’t think I was still fertile. I didn’t expect the spell’s effects to last that long. And if you’ll excuse an old man’s memory, I distinctly remember asking if you’d been drinking the witch’s brew to prevent pregnancy and I distinctly remember you saying that you had.”

“What was I supposed to say?” Luthvian cried. “Every hour put me at risk of ending up destroyed under one of Dorothea’s butchers. You were my only chance of survival. I knew I was close to my fertile time, but I had to take that risk!”

Saetan didn’t move, didn’t speak for a long time. “You knew there was a risk, you knew you’d done nothing to prevent it, you deliberately lied to me when I asked you, and you still dare to blame me?”

“Not for that,” she screamed at him, “but for what came after.” There was no understanding in his eyes. “You only cared about the baby. You didn’t w-want to b-be with me anymore.”

Saetan sighed and wandered over to the picture window, fixing his gaze on the low stone wall that surrounded the property. “Luthvian,” he said wearily, “the man who guides a witch through her Virgin Night isn’t meant to become her lover. That only happens when there’s a strong bond between them beforehand, when they’re already lovers in all but the physical sense. Most of the time—”

“You don’t have to recite the rules, High Lord,” Luthvian snapped.

“—after he rises from the bed, he may become a valued friend or no more than a soft memory. He cares about her—he has to care in order to keep her safe—but there can be a very big difference between caring and loving.” He looked over his shoulder. “I cared about you, Luthvian. I gave you what I could. It just wasn’t enough.”

Luthvian hugged herself and wondered if she’d ever stop feeling the bitterness and disappointment. “No, it wasn’t enough.”

“You could have chosen another man. You should have. I told you that, even encouraged it.”

Luthvian stared at him. Hurt, damn you, hurt as much as I have. “And how eager do you think those men were once they realized my son had been sired by the High Lord of Hell?”

The thrust went home, but the hurt and sorrow she saw in his eyes didn’t make her feel better.

“I would have taken him, raised him. You knew that, too.”

The old rage, the old uncertainties exploded out of her. “Raised him for what? For fodder? To have a steady supply of strong, fresh blood? When you found out he was half Eyrien, you wanted to kill him!”

Saetan’s eyes glittered. “You wanted to cut off his wings.”

“So he’d have a chance at a decent life! Without them he would have passed for Dhemlan. He could have managed one of your estates. He could have been respected.”

“Do you really think that would have been a fair trade? Living a lie of respectability against his never knowing about his Eyrien bloodline, never understanding the hunger in his soul when he felt the wind in his face, always wondering about longings that made no sense—until the day he looked at his firstborn and saw the wings. Or were you intending to clip each generation?”

“The wings would have been a throwback, an aberration.”

Saetan was very, very still. “I will tell you again what I told you at his birth. He is Eyrien in his soul and that had to be honored above all else. If you had cut off his wings, then yes, I would have slit his throat in the cradle. Not because I wasn’t prepared for it, which I wasn’t since you took such pains not to tell me, but because he would have suffered too much.”

Luthvian honed her temper to a cutting edge. “And you think he hasn’t suffered? You don’t know much about Lucivar, Saetan.”

“And why didn’t he grow up under my care, Luthvian?” he said too softly. “Who was responsible for that?”

The tears were back. The memories, the anguish, the guilt. “You didn’t love me, and you didn’t love him.”

“Half right, my dear.”

Luthvian gulped back a sob. She stared at the ceiling.

Saetan shook his head and sighed. “Even after all these years, trying to talk to each other is pointless. I’d better leave.”

Luthvian wiped away the single tear that had escaped her self-control. “You haven’t said why you came here.” For the first time, she looked at him without the past blurring the present. He looked older, weighed down by something.

“It would probably be too difficult for all of us.”

She waited. His uneasiness, his unwillingness to broach the subject filled her with apprehension—and curiosity.

“I wanted to hire you as a Craft tutor for a young Queen who is also a natural Black Widow and Healer. She’s very gifted, but her education has been quite…erratic. The lessons would have to be private and held at SaDiablo Hall.”

“No,” Luthvian said sharply. “Here. If I’m going to teach her, it will have to be here.”

“If she came here, she would have to be escorted. Since you’ve always found Andulvar and Prothvar too Eyrien to tolerate, it would have to be me.”

Luthvian tapped a finger against her lips. A Queen who was also a Healer and a Black Widow? What a potentially deadly combination of strengths. Truly a challenge worthy of her skills. “She would apprentice with me for the healing and Hourglass training?”

“No. She still has difficulty with much of the Craft we consider basic, and that’s what I wanted her to work on with you. I’d be willing to extend her training with you to the healing Craft as well, if that’s of interest to you, but I’ll take care of the Hourglass’s Craft.”

Pride demanded a challenge. “Just who is this witch who requires a Black-Jeweled mentor?”

The Prince of the Darkness, the High Lord of Hell studied her, weighing, judging, and finally replied, “My daughter.”

4 / Hell

Mephis dropped the file on the desk in Saetan’s private study and began rubbing his hands as if to clean away some filth.

Saetan turned his hand in an opening gesture. The file opened, revealing several sheets of Mephis’s tightly packed writing.

“We’re going to do something about him, aren’t we?” Mephis snarled.

Saetan called in his half-moon glasses, settled them carefully on the bridge of his nose, and picked up the first sheet. “Let me read.”

Mephis slammed his hands on the desk. “He’s an obscenity!”

Saetan looked over his glasses at his eldest son, betraying none of the anger beginning to bloom. “Let me read, Mephis.”

Mephis sprang away from the desk with a snarl and started pacing.

Saetan read the report and then read it again. Finally, he closed the file, vanished the glasses, and waited for Mephis to settle down.

Obscene was an inadequate word for Lord Menzar, the administrator of Halaway’s school. Unfortunate accidents or illnesses had allowed Menzar to step into a position of authority at schools in several Districts in Dhemlan—accidents he couldn’t be linked to, that had no scent of him. He always showed just enough deference to please, just enough self-assurance to convince others of his ability. And there he would be, carefully undercutting the ancient code of honor and snipping away at the fragile web of trust that bound men and women of the Blood.

What would happen to the Blood once that trust was destroyed? All one had to do was look at Terreille to see the answer.

Mephis stood before the desk, his hands clenched. “What are we going to do?”

“I’ll take care of it, Mephis,” Saetan said too softly. “If Menzar has been free to spread his poison this long, it’s because I wasn’t vigilant enough to detect him.”

“What about all the Queens and their First Circles who also weren’t vigilant enough to detect him when he was in their territories? You didn’t ignore a warning that had been sent, you never got any warning until Sylvia came to you.”

“The responsibility is still mine, Mephis.” When Mephis started to protest, Saetan cut him off. “What would you have me do? Give this information to the Queens now? Show them the evidence of how they’d been manipulated by a man? Do you want them to call in the debt?”

Mephis shuddered. “No, I don’t want that. Their rage would burn for a long time over this.”

“And would burn more than the man responsible for it.” Saetan forced his voice to be gentle. “There are young witches—Queens, Black Widows, and Priestesses among them—coming of age in Dhemlan who bear the scars of what he’s done. We’ll have to tell some of the stronger males in those Districts what’s happened so they’ll be prepared and then do what we can to help them rebuild the trust Menzar destroyed.” He shook his head sadly. “No, Mephis, if I’m not willing to accept the responsibilities then I should relinquish my claim to this land.”

“His blood shouldn’t be on your hands alone,” Mephis said quietly.

Thank you, Mephis. I do thank you for that. “A formal execution never has more than one executioner.” He paused, then asked, “Is there anyone dependent upon him?”

Mephis nodded. “He has a sister who looks after his house.”

“A hearth-witch?”

Mephis’s eyes were yellow stones. “Not by training or inclination from what I could determine. It seems he lets her live with him on sufferance—she, according to village gossip no doubt seeded by him, not having the wit or wisdom to be self-sufficient—and lets her pay for her room and board with all manner of domestic services.” His voice left no doubt about what kind of services Menzar required.

“Do you think she has the wit and wisdom to be self-sufficient?”

Mephis shrugged. “I doubt she’s ever had the chance to try. She doesn’t wear Jewels. Whether she never had the potential or had it stripped from her…it’s difficult to say at this point.”

Hekatah, you train your servants well. “Use some of the family income to quietly provide her with an allowance equal to Menzar’s wages. The house is leased? Pay the lease for a five-year period.”

Mephis crossed his arms. “Without the rent to pay, it will be more money than she’s ever had at her disposal.”

“It’ll give her the time and the means to rest. There’s no reason she should pay for her brother’s crimes. If her wits have been buried beneath Menzar’s manipulation, they’ll surface. If she’s truly incapable of taking care of herself, we’ll make other arrangements.”

Mephis looked troubled. “About the execution…”

“I’ll take care of it, Mephis.” Saetan came around the desk and brushed his shoulder against his son’s. “Besides, there’s something else I want you to do.” He waited until Mephis looked at him. “You still have the town house in Amdarh?”

“You know I do.”

“And you still enjoy the theater?”

“Very much,” Mephis said, puzzled. “I rent a box each season.”

“Are there any plays that might intrigue a fifteen-year-old girl?”

Mephis smiled in understanding. “A couple of them next week.”

Saetan’s answering smile was chilling. “Well-timed, I think. An outing to Dhemlan’s capital with her elder brother before her new tutors begin making demands on her time will suit our plans very well.”

5 / Terreille

Lucivar’s legs quivered from exhaustion and pain. Chained facing the back wall of his cell, he tried to rest his chest against it to lessen the strain on his legs, tried to ignore the tension in his shoulders and neck.

The tears came, slow and silent at first, then building into rib-squeezing, racking sobs of pent-up grief.

The surly guard had performed the beating. Not his back this time but his legs. Not a whip to cut, but a thick leather strap to pound against muscle stretched tight. Working to a slow drum rhythm, the guard had applied the strap with care, making each stroke overlap the one before so that no flesh was missed. Down and back, down and back. Except for the breath hissing between his teeth, Lucivar had made no sound. When it was finally done, he’d been hauled to his feet—feet too brutalized to take his weight—and fitted with Zuultah’s latest toy: a metal chastity belt. It locked tight around his waist but the metal loop between his legs wasn’t tight enough to cause discomfort. He’d puzzled over it for a moment before being forced to walk to his cell. There wasn’t room for anything but the pain after that. And when he got to the cell, he understood only too well what was supposed to happen.

There was a new, thick-linked chain attached to the back wall. The bottom loop of the belt was pulled through a slot in the band around his waist, and the chain was locked to it. The chain wasn’t long enough for him to do anything but stand, and if his legs buckled, it wouldn’t be his waist absorbing his weight. No doubt Zuultah was being oiled and massaged while she waited for his scream of agony.

That wasn’t reason enough to cry.

Slime mold had begun forming on his wings. Without a cleansing by a Healer, it would spread and spread until his wings were nothing more than greasy strings of membranous skin hanging from the frame. He couldn’t spread his wings in the salt mine without being whipped, and now his hands were chained behind his back each night, locking his wings tight against a body coated with salt dust and dripping with sweat.

He’d told Daemon once he would rather lose his balls than his wings, and he had meant it.

But that wasn’t reason enough to cry.

He hadn’t seen the sun in over a year. Except for the few precious minutes each day when he was led from his cell to the salt mines and back again, he hadn’t breathed clean air or felt a breeze against his skin. His world had become two dark, stinking holes—and a covered courtyard where he was stretched out on the stones and regularly beaten.

But that wasn’t reason enough to cry.

He’d been punished before, beaten before, whipped before, locked in dark cells before. He’d been sold into service to cruel, twisted witches before. He’d always responded by fighting with all the savagery within him, becoming such a destructive force they’d send him back to Askavi in order to survive.

He hadn’t once tried to escape from Pruul, hadn’t once unleashed his volatile temper to rend and tear and destroy. Not that many years ago, Zuultah’s and the guards’ blood would have been splashed over the walls of this place and he would have stood in the rubble filling the night with an Eyrien battle cry of victory.

But that was when he’d still believed in the myth, the dream. That was when he’d still believed that one day he would meet the Queen who would accept him, understand him, value him. Meeting her had been his dream, a sweet, ever-blooming flower in his soul. The Lady of the Black Mountain. The Queen of Ebon Askavi. Witch.

Then the dream became flesh—and Daemon killed her.

That was reason to grieve. For the loss of the Lady he’d ached to serve, for the loss of the one man he thought he could trust.

Now there was only an emptiness, a despair so deep it covered his soul like the slime mold was covering his wings.

There was only one dream left.

The ache in his chest finally eased. Lucivar swallowed the last sob and opened his eyes.

He’d always known where he wanted to die and how he wanted to die. And it wasn’t in the salt mines of Pruul.

Lucivar’s legs vibrated from the strain. He sank his teeth into his lower lip until it bled. A couple more hours and the guards would release him to take him to the salt mines. More pain, more suffering.

He would whimper a little, cringe a little. Next week he would cringe a little more when a guard approached. Little by little they would forget what should never be forgotten about him. And then…

Lucivar smiled, his lips smeared with blood.

There was still a reason to live.

6 / Terreille

Dorothea SaDiablo stared at her Master of the Guard. “What do you mean you’ve called off the search?”

“He’s not in Hayll, Priestess,” Lord Valrik replied. “My men and I have searched every barn, every cottage, every Blood and landen village. We’ve been down every alley in every city. Daemon Sadi is not in Hayll, has not been in Hayll. I would stake my career on it.”

Then you’ve lost. “You called off the search without my consent.”

“Priestess, I’d give my life for you, but we’ve been chasing shadows. No one has seen him, Blood or landens. The men are weary. They need to be home with their families for a while.”

“And ten months from now an army of mewling brats will be testimony to how weary your men are.”

Valrik didn’t answer.

Dorothea paced, tapping her fingertips against her chin. “So he isn’t in Hayll. Start searching the neighboring Territories and—”

“We’ve no right to make such a search in another Territory.”

“All those Territories stand in Hayll’s shadow. The Queens wouldn’t dare deny you access to their lands.”

“The authority of the Queens ruling those Territories is weak as it is. We can’t afford to undermine it.”

Dorothea turned away from him. He was right, damn him. But she had to get him to do something. “Then you leave me at the mercy of the Sadist,” she said with a tearful quiver in her voice.

“No, Priestess,” Valrik said strenuously. “I’ve talked to the Masters of the Guard in all the neighboring Territories, made them aware of his bestial nature. They understand their own young are at risk. If they find him in their Territory, he won’t get out alive.”

Dorothea spun around. “I never gave you permission to kill him.”

“He’s a Warlord Prince. It’s the only way we’ll—”

“You must not kill him.”

Dorothea swayed, pleased when Valrik put his arms around her and guided her to a chair. Wrapping her arms around his neck, she pulled his head down until their foreheads touched. “His death would have repercussions for all of us. He must be brought back to Hayll alive. You must at least supervise the search in the other Territories.”

Valrik hesitated, then sighed. “I can’t. For your sake and the sake of Hayll…I can’t.”

A good man. Older, experienced, respected, honorable.

Dorothea slid her right hand down his neck in a sensuous caress before driving her nails into his flesh and pumping all of her venom through the snake tooth.

Valrik pulled back, shocked, his hand clamped against his neck. “Priestess…” His eyes glazed. He stumbled back a step.

Dorothea daintily licked the blood from her fingers and smiled at him. “You said you would give your life for me. Now you have.” She studied her nails, ignoring Valrik as he staggered out of the room, dying. Calling in a nail file, she smoothed a rough edge.

A pity to lose such an excellent Master of the Guard and a bother to have to replace him. She vanished the nail file and smiled. But at least Valrik, by example, would teach his successor a very necessary lesson: too much honor could get a man killed.

7 / Kaeleer

Saetan balled the freshly ironed shirt in his hands, massaging it into a mass of wrinkles. He shook it out, grimly satisfied with the results, and slipped it on.

He hated this. He had always hated this.

His black trousers and tunic jacket received the same treatment as the shirt. As he buttoned the jacket, he smiled wryly. Just as well he’d insisted that Helene and the rest of the staff take the evening off. If his prim housekeeper saw him dressed like this, she’d consider it a personal insult.

A strange thing, feelings. He was preparing for an execution and all he felt was relief that his appearance wouldn’t bruise his housekeeper’s pride.

No, not all. There was anger at the necessity and a simmering anxiety that, because of what he was about to do, he might look into sapphire eyes and see condemnation and disgust instead of warmth and love.

But she was with Mephis in Amdarh. She’d never know about tonight.

Saetan called in the cane he had put aside a few weeks ago.

Of course Jaenelle would know. She was too astute not to understand the meaning behind Menzar’s sudden disappearance. But what would she think of him? What would it mean to her?

He had hoped—such a bittersweet thing!—that he could live here quietly and not give people reason to remember too sharply who and what he was. He had hoped to be just a father raising a Queen daughter.

It had never been that simple. Not for him.

No one had ever asked him why he’d been willing to fight on Dhemlan Terreille’s behalf when Hayll had threatened that quiet land all of those long centuries ago. Both sides had assumed that ambition had been the driving force within him. But what had driven him had been far more seductive and far simpler: he had wanted a place to call home.

He had wanted land to care for, people to care for, children—his own and others—to fill his house with their laughter and exuberance. He had dreamed of a simple life where he would use his Craft to enrich, not destroy.

But a Black-Jeweled, Black Widow Warlord Prince who was already called the High Lord of Hell couldn’t slip into the quiet life of a small village. So he’d named a price worthy of his strength, built SaDiablo Hall in all three Realms, ruled with an iron will and a compassionate heart, and yearned for the day when he would meet a woman whose love for him was stronger than her fear of him.

Instead, he had met and married Hekatah.

For a while, a very short while, he’d thought his dream had come true—until Mephis was born and she was sure he wouldn’t walk away, wouldn’t forsake his child. Even then, having pledged himself to her, he had tried to be a good husband, had tried even harder to be a good father. When she conceived a second time, he’d dared to hope again that she cared for him, wanted to build a life with him. But Hekatah had been in love only with her ambitions, and children were her payment for his support. It wasn’t until she carried their third child that she finally understood he would never use his power to make her the undisputed High Priestess of all the Realms.

He never saw his third son. Only pieces.

Saetan closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and cast the small spell tied to a tangled web of illusions that he’d created earlier in the day. His leg muscles trembled. He opened his eyes and studied hands that now looked gnarled and had a slight but noticeable shake. “I hate this.” He smiled slowly. He sounded like a querulous old man.

By the time he made his way to the public reception room, his back ached from being unnaturally hunched and his legs began to burn from the tension. But if Menzar was smart enough to suspect a trap, the physical discomfort would help hide the web’s illusions.

Saetan stepped into the great hall and hissed softly at the man standing silently by the door. “I told you to take the evening off.” There was no power in his voice, no soft thunder.

“It would not be appropriate for you to open the door when your guest arrives, High Lord,” Beale replied.

“What guest? I’m not expecting anyone tonight.”

“Mrs. Beale is visiting with her younger sister in Halaway. I will join them after your guest arrives, and we will dine out.”

Saetan rested both hands on the cane and raised an eyebrow. “Mrs. Beale dines out?”

Beale’s lips curved up a tiny bit. “On occasion. With reluctance.”

Saetan’s answering smile faded. “Join your lady, Lord Beale.”

“After your guest has arrived.”

“I’m not expect—”

“My nieces attend the Halaway school.” The Red Jewel flared beneath Beale’s white shirt.

Saetan sucked air through his teeth. This had to be done quietly. There was nothing the Dark Council could do to him directly, but if whispers of this reached them…. He stared at his Red-Jeweled Warlord butler. “How many know?”

“Know what, High Lord?” Beale replied gently.

Saetan continued to stare. Was he mistaken? No. For just a moment, there had been a wild, fierce satisfaction in Beale’s eyes. The Beales would say nothing. Nothing at all. But they would celebrate.

“You’ll be in your public study?” Beale asked.

Accepting his dismissal, Saetan retreated to his study. As he poured and warmed a glass of yarbarah, he noticed that his hands were shaking from more than the spell he’d cast.

Hayllian by birth, he had served in Terreillean courts, and had ruled, for the most part, in Terreille and then Hell. Despite his claim to the Dhemlan Territory in Kaeleer, he had been more like an absentee landlord, a visitor who only saw what visitors were allowed to see.

He knew what Terreille had thought of the High Lord. But this was Kaeleer, the Shadow Realm, a fiercer, wilder land that embraced a magic darker and stronger than Terreille could ever know.

Thank you, Beale, for the warning, the reminder. I won’t forget again what ground I stand on. I won’t forget what you’ve just shown me lies beneath the thin cloak of Protocol and civilized behavior. I won’t forget…because this is the Blood that is drawn to Jaenelle.

Lord Menzar reached for the knocker but snatched his hand away at the last second. The bronze dragon head tucked tight against a thick, curving neck stared down at him, its green glass eyes glittering eerily in the torchlight. The knocker directly beneath it was a detailed, taloned foot curved around a smooth ball.

The Dark Priestess should have warned me.

Grabbing the foot with a sweaty hand, he pounded on the door once, twice, thrice before stepping back and glancing around. The torches created ever-changing shape-filled shadows, and he wished, again, that this meeting could have been held in the daylight hours.

He waved his hand to erase the useless thought and reached for the knocker again just as the door suddenly swung open. He almost stepped back from the large man blocking the doorway until he recognized the black suit and waistcoat that was a butler’s uniform.

“You may tell the High Lord I’m here.”

The butler didn’t move, didn’t speak.

Menzar surreptitiously chewed on his lower lip. The man was alive, wasn’t he? Since he knew that many of Halaway’s people worked for the Hall in one way or another, it hadn’t occurred to him that the staff might be very different once the sun went down. Surely not with that girl here—although that might explain her eccentricities.

The butler finally stepped aside. “The High Lord is expecting you.”

Menzar’s relief at coming inside was short-lived. As shadow-filled as the outer steps, the great hall held a silence that was pregnant with interrupted rustling. He followed the butler to the end of the hall, disturbed by the lack of people. Where were the servants? In another wing, perhaps, or taking their supper? A place this size…half the village could be here and their presence would be swallowed up.

The butler opened the last right-hand door and announced him.

It was an interior room with no windows and no other visible door. Shaped like a reversed L, the long side had large chairs, a low blackwood table, a black leather couch, a Dharo carpet, candle-lights held in variously shaped wrought-iron holders, and powerful, somewhat disturbing paintings. The short leg…

Menzar gasped when he finally noticed the golden eyes shining out of the dark. A candle-light in the far corner began to glow softly. The short leg held a large blackwood desk. Behind it were floor-to-ceiling bookshelves. The walls on either side were covered with dark-red velvet. It felt different from the rest of the room. It felt dangerous.

The candle-lights brightened, chasing the shadows into the corners.

“Come where I can see you,” said a querulous voice.

Menzar slowly approached the desk and almost laughed with relief. This was the High Lord? This shrunken, shaking, grizzled old man? This was the man whose name everyone feared to whisper?

Menzar bowed. “High Lord. It was kind of you to invite me to—”

“Kind? Bah! Didn’t see any reason why I should torture my old bones when there’s nothing wrong with your legs.” Saetan waved a shaking hand toward the chair in front of the desk. “Sit down. Sit down. Tires me just to watch you stand there.” While Menzar made himself comfortable, Saetan muttered and gestured to no one. Finally focusing on his guest, he snapped, “Well? What’s she done now?”

Tamping down his jubilation, Menzar pretended to consider the question. “She hasn’t been in school this week,” he said politely. “I understand she’ll be tutored from now on. I must point out that socializing with children her own age—”

“Tutors?” Saetan sputtered, thumping his cane on the floor. “Tutors?” Thump. Thump. “Why should I waste my coin on tutors? She’s got all the teaching she needs to perform her duties.”

“Duties?”

Saetan’s mouth curved in a leering smile. “Her mind’s a bit queered up and she’s not much to look at, but in the dark she’s sweet enough.”

Menzar tried not to stare. The Dark Priestess’s friend had hinted, but…. He’d seen no bite marks on the girl’s neck. Well, there were other veins. What else might Saetan be doing—or what might she be required to do for him while he supped from a vein? Menzar could imagine several things. They all disgusted him. They all excited him.

Menzar clamped one hand over the other to keep them still. “What about the tutors?”

Saetan waved his hand, dismissing the words. “Had to say something when that bitch Sylvia came sniffing around asking about the girl.” He narrowed his eyes. “You strike me as a very discerning man, Lord Menzar. Would you like to see my special room?”

Menzar’s heart smashed against his chest. If he invites you to his private study, make an excuse, any excuse to leave. “Special room?”

“My special, special room. Where the girl and I…play.”

Menzar was about to refuse, but the doubts and the warnings melted away. The High Lord was just a lecherous old man. But no doubt a connoisseur of things Menzar had only read about. “I’d like that.”

The walk through the corridors was painfully slow. Saetan went down flights of stairs crabwise, muttering and cursing. Every time Menzar became uneasy about their descent, a leering grin and a highly erotic tidbit vanished the doubts again.

They finally arrived at a thick wooden door with a lock as big as a man’s fist. Menzar waited restlessly while Saetan’s shaking hand fit the key into the lock, and then he had to help the High Lord push the heavy door open. Who helped the High Lord at other times? That butler? Did the girl follow him into the room like a well-trained pet or was she restrained? Did Saetan require assistance? Did that butler watch while he…Menzar licked his lips. The bed must be like…he couldn’t even begin to imagine what the bed in this playroom would be like.

“Come in, come in,” Saetan said querulously.

The torchlight from the corridor didn’t penetrate the room. Standing at the doorway, once more uncertain, Menzar strained his eyes to see the furnishings, but the room was filled with a thick, full darkness, a waiting darkness, something more than the absence of light.

Menzar couldn’t decide whether to step back or step forward. Then he felt a phantom something whisper past him, leaving a mist so fine it almost wasn’t there. But that mist was full of many things, and in his mind he saw a bouquet of young faces, the faces of all the witches whose spirits he had so carefully pruned. He’d always considered himself a subtle gardener, but this room offered more. Much, much more.

He stepped inside, drawn toward the center of the room by small phantom hands. Some playfully tugged, some caressed. The last one pressed firmly against his chest, stopping him from taking another step, before sliding down his belly and disappearing just before it reached his expectation.

His disappointment was as sharp as the sound of the lock snapping into place.

Cold. Dark. Silent.

“H-High Lord?”

“Yes, Lord Menzar,” said a deep voice that rolled through the room like soft thunder. A seductive voice, caressing in the dark.

Menzar licked his lips. “I must be going now.”

“That isn’t possible.”

“I have another appointment.”

Slowly the darkness changed, lessened. A cold, silver light spread along the stone walls, floor, and ceiling, following the radial and tether lines of an immense web. On the back wall hung a huge, black metal spider, its hourglass made of faceted rubies. Attached to the silver web embedded in the stone were knives of every shape and size.

The only other thing in the room was a table.

Menzar’s sphincter muscles tightened.

The table had a high lip and channels running to small holes in the corners. Glass tubing ran from the holes to glass jars.

Stop this. Stop it. He was letting his own fear beat him. He was letting this room intimidate him. That old man certainly wasn’t intimidating. He could easily brush aside that doddering old fool.

Menzar turned around, ready to insist on leaving.

It took him a long moment to recognize the man leaning against the door, waiting.

“Everything has a price, Lord Menzar,” Saetan crooned. “It’s time to pay the debt.”

The water swirling into the drain finally ran clear. Saetan twisted the dials to stop the hard spray that had been pounding him. He held on to the dials for balance, resting his head on his forearm.

It wasn’t over. There were still the last details to attend to.

He toweled himself briskly, dropped the towel on the narrow bed as he passed through the small bedroom adjoining his private study deep beneath the Hall in the Dark Realm. A carafe of yarbarah waited for him on the large blackwood desk. He reached for it, hesitated, then called in a decanter of brandy. He filled a glass almost to the rim and drank it down. The brandy would give him a fierce headache, but it would also soften the edges, blur the memories and twisted fantasies that had burst from Menzar’s mind like pus from a boil.

Brandy also didn’t taste like blood, and the taste, the smell of blood wasn’t something he could tolerate tonight.

He poured his second glass and stood naked in front of the unlit hearth, staring at Dujae’s painting Descent into Hell. A gifted artist to have captured in ambiguous shapes that mixture of terror and joy the Blood felt when first entering the Dark Realm.

He poured his third glass. He had burned the clothes he’d worn. He had never been able to tolerate keeping the clothing worn for an execution. Some part of the fear and the pain always seemed to weave itself into the cloth. To be assaulted by it afterward…

The glass shattered in his hand. Snarling, he vanished the broken glass before returning to the small bedroom and hurriedly dressing in fresh clothes.

He had scrubbed Menzar off his body, but would he ever be able to cleanse Menzar’s thoughts from his mind?

“You understand what to do?”

Two demons, once Halaway men, eyed the large, ornate wooden chest. “Yes, High Lord. It will be done precisely as you asked.”

Saetan handed each of them a small bottle. “For your trouble.”

“It’s no trouble,” one said. He pulled the cork from the bottle and sniffed. His eyes widened. “It’s—”

“Payment.”

The demon corked the bottle and smiled.

“The cildru dyathe don’t want this.”

Saetan set the small bottle on a flat rock that served as a table. He had distributed all the others. This was the last. “I’m not offering it to the rest of the cildru dyathe. Only you.”

Char shifted his feet, uneasy. “We wait to fade into the Darkness,” he said, but his blackened tongue licked what was left of his lips as he eyed the bottle.

“It’s not the same for you,” Saetan said. His stomach churned. Thin needles of pain speared his temples. “You care for the others, help them adjust and make the transitions. You fight to stay here, to give them a place. And I know when offerings are made in remembrance of a child who has gone, you don’t refuse them.” Saetan picked up the bottle and held it out to the boy. “It’s appropriate for you to take this. More than you know.”

Char slowly reached for the bottle, uncorked it, and sniffed. He took a tiny sip and gasped, delighted. “This is undiluted blood.”

Saetan clamped his teeth tight against the nausea and pain. He stared at the bottle, hating it. “No. This is restitution.”

8 / Hell

Hekatah stared at the large, ornate wooden chest and tapped the small piece of folded white paper against her chin.

Beautifully decorated with precious woods and gold inlay, the chest reeked of wealth, a sharp reminder of the way she’d once lived and the kind of luxury she believed was her due.

Using Craft, Hekatah probed the interior of the chest for the fifth time in an hour. Still nothing. Perhaps there was nothing more.

Opening the paper, she studied the elegant masculine script.

Hekatah,

Here is a token of my regard.

Saetan

There must be something more. This was just the wrapping, no matter how expensive. Perhaps Saetan had finally realized how much he needed her. Perhaps he was tired of playing the beneficent patriarch and ready to claim what he—what they—should have claimed so long ago. Perhaps his damnable honor had been sufficiently tarnished by playing with the girl-pet he’d acquired in Kaeleer to take Jaenelle’s place.

She’d savor those thoughts after she opened her present.

The brass key was still in the envelope. She shook it into her hand, knelt by the chest, and opened the brass lock.

Hekatah lifted the lid and frowned. Fragrant wood shavings filled the chest. She stared for a moment, then smiled indulgently. Packing, of course. With an excited little squeal, she plunged one hand into the shavings, rummaging for her gift.

The first thing she pulled out was a hand.

Dropping it, she scrambled away from the chest. Her throat worked convulsively as she stared at the hand now lying palm up, its fingers slightly curled. Finally curiosity overrode fear. On hands and knees, she inched forward.

Porcelain or marble would have shattered on the stone floor.

Flesh then.

For a moment, she was grateful it was a normal-looking hand, not maimed or misshaped.

Breathing harshly, Hekatah got to her feet and stared once more at the open chest. She waved her hand back and forth. Lifted by the Craft wind, the shavings spilled onto the floor.

Another hand. Forearms. Upper arms. Feet. Lower legs. Upper legs. Genitals. Torso. And in the corner, staring at her with empty eyes, was Lord Menzar’s head.

Hekatah screamed, but even she couldn’t say if it was from fear or rage. She stopped abruptly.

One warning. That was all he ever gave. But why?

Hekatah hugged herself and smiled. Through his work at the Halaway school, Menzar must have gotten a little too close to the High Lord’s new choice little morsel.

Then she sighed. Saetan could be so possessive. Since Menzar had been careless enough to provoke him into an execution, it was doubtful the girl would be allowed outside SaDiablo Hall without a handpicked escort. And she knew from experience that anyone handpicked by Saetan for a particular duty wasn’t amenable to bribes of any kind. So…

Hekatah sighed again. It would take a fair amount of persuasion to convince Greer to slip into the Hall to see the High Lord’s new pet.

It was a good thing the girl whining in the next room was such a choice little tidbit.

9 / Terreille

Surreal strolled down the quiet, backwater street where no one asked questions. Men and women sat on front stoops, savoring the light breeze that made the sticky afternoon bearable. They didn’t speak to her, and she, having spent two years of her childhood on a street like this, gave them the courtesy of walking by as if they weren’t there.

As she reached the building where she had a top-floor flat, Surreal noticed the eyes that met hers for a brief moment. She casually shifted the heavy carry-basket from her right hand to her left while she watched one man cross the street and approach her cautiously.

Not the stiletto for this one, she decided. A slashing knife, if necessary. From the way he moved, he might still be healing from a deep wound on his left side. He’d try to protect it. But maybe not, if he was a Warlord experienced in fighting.

The man stopped a body length away. “Lady.”

“Warlord.”

She saw a tremor of fear in his eyes before he masked it. That she could identify his caste so easily, despite his efforts to hide it, told him that she was strong enough to win any dispute with him.

“That basket looks heavy,” he said, still cautious.

“A couple of novels and tonight’s dinner.”

“I could carry it up for you…in a few minutes.”

She understood the warning. Someone was waiting for her. If she survived the meeting, the Warlord would bring up the basket. If she didn’t, he would divide the spoils among a select few in his building, thus buying a little help if he should need it in the future.

Surreal set the basket on the sidewalk and stepped back. “Ten minutes.” When he nodded, she swiftly climbed the building’s front steps. Then she paused long enough to put two Gray protective shields around herself and a Green shield over them. Hopefully whoever was waiting for her would respond to the lesser Green shield first. She also called in her largest hunting knife. If the attack was physical, the knife’s blade would give her a little extra reach.

With her hand on the doorknob, she made a quick psychic probe of the entryway. No one. Nothing unusual.

A fast twist of the knob and she was inside, turning toward the back of the door. She kicked the door shut, keeping her back against a wall pocked with rusty letter boxes. Her large, gold-green eyes adjusted quickly to the gloomy entryway and equally dim stairwell. No sounds. And no obvious feel of danger.

Up the stairs quickly, keeping her mind open to eddies of mood or thought that might slip from an enemy’s mind.

Up to the third floor, the fourth. Finally to the fifth.

Pressed in the opposite corner from her own door, Surreal probed once more—and finally felt it.

A dark psychic scent. Muted, altered somehow, but familiar.

Relieved—and a little annoyed—that there wouldn’t be a fight, Surreal vanished the knife, unlocked her door, and went inside.

She hadn’t seen him since he’d left Deje’s Red Moon house more than two years ago. It didn’t look like they’d been easy years. His black hair was long and raggedly cut. His clothes were dirty and torn. When he didn’t respond to her briskly closing the door and just continued to stare at the sketch she’d recently purchased, she began to feel uneasy.

That lack of response was wrong. Very wrong. Reaching back, Surreal opened the door just enough not to have to fumble with locks.

“Sadi?”

He finally turned around. The golden eyes held no recognition, but they held something else that was familiar, if only she could remember where she’d seen that look before.

“Daemon?”

He continued to stare at her, as if he were struggling to remember. Then his expression cleared. “It’s little Surreal.” His voice—that beautiful, deep, seductive voice—was hoarse, rusty.

Little Surreal?

“You’re not here alone, are you?” Daemon asked uneasily.

Starting across the room, she said sharply, “Of course I’m here alone. Who else would be here?”

“Where’s your mother?”

Surreal froze. “My mother?”

“You’re too young to be here alone.”

Titian had been dead for centuries. He knew that. It was centuries ago that he and Tersa…

Tersa’s eyes. Eyes that strained to make out the ghostly, gray shapes of reality through the mist of the Twisted Kingdom.

Mother Night, what had happened to him?

Keeping his distance, Daemon began edging toward the door. “I can’t stay here. Not without your mother. I won’t…I can’t…”

“Daemon, wait.” Surreal leaped between him and the door. Panic flashed in his eyes. “Mother had to go away for a few days with…with Tersa. I’d…I’d feel safer if you stayed.”

Daemon tensed. “Has anyone tried to hurt you, Surreal?”

Hell’s fire, not that tone of voice. Not with that Warlord coming up the stairs any minute with the basket.

“No,” she said, hoping she sounded young but convincing. “But you and Tersa are as close as we have to family and I’m…lonely.”

Daemon stared at the carpet.

“Besides,” she added, wrinkling her nose, “you need a bath.”

His head snapped up. He stared at her with such transparent hope and hunger it scared her. “Lady?” he whispered, reaching for her. “Lady?” He studied the hair entwined around his fingers and shook his head. “Black. It’s not supposed to be black.”

If she lied, would it help him? Would he know the difference? She closed her eyes, not sure she could stand the anguish she felt in him. “Daemon,” she said gently, “I’m Surreal.”

He stepped away from her, keening softly.

She led him to a chair, unable to think of anything else to do.

“So. You’re a friend.”

Surreal spun toward the door, feet braced in a fighting stance, the hunting knife back in her hand.

The Warlord stood in the doorway, the carry-basket at his feet.

“I’m a friend,” Surreal said. “What are you?”

“Not an enemy.” The Warlord eyed the knife. “Don’t suppose you could put that away.”

“Don’t suppose I could.”

He sighed. “He healed me and helped me get here.”

“Are you going to complain about services rendered?”

“Hell’s fire, no,” the Warlord snapped. “He told me before he started that he wasn’t sure he knew enough healing Craft to mend the damage. But I wasn’t going to survive without help, and a Healer would have turned me in.” He ran a hand through his short brown hair. “And even if he killed me, it would have been better than what my Lady would have done to me for leaving her service so abruptly.” He gestured toward Daemon, who was curled in the chair, still keening softly. “I didn’t realize he was…”

Surreal vanished the knife. The Warlord immediately picked up the basket, pressing his left hand to his side and grimacing.

“Asshole,” Surreal snapped, hurrying to take the basket. “You shouldn’t carry something this heavy while you’re still healing.”

She tugged. When he wouldn’t let go of the basket, she snarled at him. “Idiot. Fool. At least use Craft to lighten the weight.”

“Don’t be a bitch.” Clenching his teeth, the Warlord carried the basket to the table in the kitchen area. He turned to leave, then hesitated. “The story going around is that he killed a child.”

Blood. So much blood. “He didn’t.”

“He thinks he did.”

She couldn’t see Daemon, but she could still hear him. “Damn.”

“Do you think he’ll ever come out of the Twisted Kingdom?”

Surreal stared at the basket. “No one ever has.”

“Daemon.” When she got no response, Surreal chewed her lower lip. Maybe she should let him sleep, if he was actually sleeping. No, the potatoes were baking, the steaks ready to broil, the salad made. He needed food as much as rest. Touch him? There was no telling what he might be seeing in the Twisted Kingdom, how he might interpret a gentle shake. She tried again, putting some snap in her voice. “Daemon.”

Daemon opened his eyes. After a long minute, he reached for her. “Surreal,” he said hoarsely.

She gripped his hand, wishing she knew some way to help him. When his grip loosened, she tightened hers and tugged. “Up. You need a shower before dinner.”

He got to his feet with much of his fluid, feline grace, but when she led him into the bathroom, he stared at the fixtures as if he’d never seen them before. She lifted the toilet seat, hoping he remembered how to use that at least. When he still didn’t move, she tugged him out of the jacket and shirt. It had never bothered her when Tersa displayed this childlike passivity. His lack of response frayed her temper. But when she reached for his belt, he snarled at her, his hand squeezing her wrist until she was sure the bones would break.

She snarled back. “Do it yourself then.”

She saw the inward crumbling, the despair.

Loosening his hold on her wrist, he raised her hand and pressed his lips against it. “I’m sorry. I’m—” Releasing her, he looked beaten as he unbuckled the belt and began fumbling with his trousers.

Surreal fled.

A few minutes later the water pipes rattled and wheezed as he turned on the shower.

As she set the table, she wondered if he’d actually removed all his clothes. How long had he been like this? If this was what was left of a once-brilliant mind, how had he been able to heal that man?

Surreal paused, a plate half-resting on the table. Tersa had always had her islands of lucidity, usually around Craft. Once when the mad Black Widow had healed a deep gash in Surreal’s leg, she’d responded to Titian’s worry by saying, “One doesn’t forget the basics.” When the healing was done, however, Tersa couldn’t even remember her own name.

A few minutes later, she was hovering in the hallway when she heard the muffled yelp that indicated the hot water had run out. The pipes rattled and wheezed as he shut off the water.

No other sound.

Swearing under her breath, Surreal pushed the bathroom door open. Daemon just stood in the tub, his head down.

“Dry yourself,” Surreal said.

Flinching, he reached for a towel.

Struggling to keep her voice firm but quiet, she added, “I put out some clean clothes for you. When you’ve dried off, go put them on.”

She retreated to the kitchen and busied herself with cooking the steaks while listening to the movements in the bedroom. She was putting the meat on their plates when Daemon appeared, properly dressed.

Surreal smiled her approval. “Now you look more like yourself.”

“Jaenelle is dead,” he said, his voice hard and flat.

She braced her hands on the table and absorbed the words that were worse than a physical blow. “How do you know?”

“Lucivar told me.”

How could Lucivar, who was in Pruul, be sure of something she and Daemon couldn’t be sure of? And who was there to ask? Cassandra had never returned to the Altar after that night, and Surreal didn’t know who the Priest was, let alone where to start looking for him.

She cut the potatoes and fluffed them open. “I don’t believe him.” She looked up in time to see a lucid, arrested look in his eyes. Then it faded. He shook his head.

“She’s dead.”

“Maybe he was wrong.” She took two servings of salad from the bowl and dressed them before sitting down and cutting into her steak. “Eat.”

He took his place at the table. “He wouldn’t lie to me.”

Surreal plopped soured cream onto Daemon’s baked potato and gritted her teeth. “I didn’t say he lied. I said maybe he was wrong.”

Daemon closed his eyes. After a couple of minutes, he opened them and stared at the meal before him. “You fixed dinner.”

Gone. Turned down another path in that shattered inner landscape.

“Yes, Daemon,” Surreal said quietly, willing herself not to cry. “I fixed dinner. So let’s eat it while it’s hot.”

He helped her with the dishes.

As they worked, Surreal realized Daemon’s madness was confined to emotions, to people, to that single tragedy he couldn’t face. It was as if Titian had never died, as if Surreal hadn’t spent three years whoring in back alleys before Daemon found her again and arranged for a proper education in a Red Moon house. He thought she was still a child, and he continued to fret about Titian’s absence. But when she mentioned a book she was reading, he made a dry observation about her eclectic taste and proceeded to tell her about other books that might be of interest. It was the same with music, with art. They posed no threat to him, had no time frame, weren’t part of the nightmare of Jaenelle bleeding on that Dark Altar.

Still, it was a strain to pretend to be a young girl, to pretend she didn’t see the uncertainty and torment in his golden eyes. It was still early in the evening when she suggested they get some sleep.

She settled into bed with a sigh. Maybe Daemon was as relieved to be away from her as she was from him. On some level he knew she wasn’t a child. Just as he knew she’d been with him at Cassandra’s Altar.

Mist. Blood. So much blood. Shattered crystal chalices.

You are my instrument.

Words lie. Blood doesn’t.

She walks among the cildru dyathe.

Maybe he was wrong.

He turned round and round.

Maybe he was wrong.

The mist opened, revealing a narrow path heading upward. He stared at it and shuddered. The path was lined with jagged rock that pointed sideways and down like great stone teeth. Anyone going down the path would brush against the smooth downward sides. Anyone going up…

He started to climb, leaving a little more of himself on each hungry point. A quarter of the way up, he finally noticed the sound, the roar of fast water. He looked up to see it burst over the high cliff above the path, come rushing toward him.

Not water. Blood. So much blood.

No room to turn. He scrambled backward, but the red flood caught him, smashed him against the stone words that had battered his mind for so long. Tumbling and lost, he caught a glimpse of calm land rising above the flood. He fought his way to that one small island of safety, grabbed at the long, sharp grass, and hauled himself up onto the crumbling ground. Shuddering, he held on to the island of maybe.

When the rush and roar finally stopped, he found himself lying on a tiny, phallic-shaped island in the middle of a vast sea of blood.

Even before she was fully awake, Surreal called in her stiletto.

A soft, stealthy sound.

She slipped out of bed and opened her door a crack, listening.

Nothing.

Maybe it was only Daemon groping in the bathroom.

Gray, predawn light filled the short hallway. Keeping close to the wall, Surreal inspected the other rooms.

The bathroom was empty. So was Daemon’s bedroom.

Swearing softly, Surreal examined his room. The bed looked like it had been through a storm, but the rest of the room was untouched. The only clothes missing were the ones she’d given him last night.

Nothing missing from the living area. Nothing missing—damn it!—from the kitchen.

Surreal vanished the stiletto before putting the kettle on for tea.

Tersa used to vanish for days, months, sometimes years before showing up at one of these hideaways. Surreal had intended to move on soon, but what if Daemon returned in a few days and found her gone? Would he remember her as a child and worry? Would he try to find her?

She made the tea and some toast. Taking them into the front room, she curled up on the couch with one of the thick novels she’d bought.

She would wait a few weeks before deciding. There was no hurry. There were plenty of men like the ones who had used Briarwood that she could hunt in this part of Terreille.

10 / Kaeleer

Stubbornly ignoring the steady stream of servants flowing past his study door toward the front rooms, Saetan reached for the next report.

They were only halfway up the drive. It would be another quarter hour before the carriage pulled up to the steps. What had Mephis been thinking of when he’d decided to use the landing web at Halaway instead of the one a few yards from the Hall’s front door?

Grinding his teeth, he flipped through the report, seeing nothing.

He was the Warlord Prince of Dhemlan, the High Lord of Hell. He should set an example, should act with dignity.

He dropped the report on his desk and left his study.

Screw dignity.

He crossed his arms and leaned against the wall at a point that was midway between his study and the front door. From there he could comfortably watch everything without being stepped on. Maybe.

Fighting to keep a straight face, Saetan listened to Beale accept one implausible excuse after another for why this footman or that maid just had to be in the great hall at that moment.

Intent on their busy chaos and excuses, no one noticed the front door open until a very rumpled Mephis said, “Beale, could you—Never mind, the footmen are already here. There are some packages—”

Mephis glared at the footmen scrambling out the door before he spotted Saetan. Weaving his way through the maids, Mephis walked over to Saetan, braced himself against the wall, and sighed wearily. “She’ll be here in a minute. She pounced on Tarl as soon as the carriage stopped to consult him on the state of her garden.”

“Lucky Tarl,” Saetan murmured. When Mephis snorted, he studied his rumpled son. “A difficult trip?”

Mephis snorted again. “I never realized one young girl could turn an entire city upside down in just five days.” He puffed his cheeks. “Fortunately, I’ll only have to help with the paperwork. The negotiations will fall squarely into your lap…where they belong.”

Saetan’s eyebrow snapped up. “What negotiations? Mephis, what—”

A few footmen returned, carrying Jaenelle’s luggage. The others…

Saetan watched with growing interest as smiling footmen brought in armloads of brown-paper packages and headed for the labyrinth of corridors that would eventually take them to Jaenelle’s suite.

“They aren’t what you think,” Mephis grumbled.

Since Mephis knew he’d been hoping Jaenelle would buy more clothes, Saetan growled in disappointment. Sylvia’s idea of appropriate girl clothes hadn’t included a single dress, and the only concession she and Jaenelle had made to his insistence that everyone at the Hall dress for dinner was one long black skirt and two blouses. When he had pointed out—and very reasonably, too—that trousers, shirts, and long sweaters weren’t exactly feminine, Sylvia had given him a scalding lecture, the gist of it being that whatever a woman enjoyed wearing was feminine and anything she didn’t enjoy wearing wasn’t, and if he was too stubborn and old-fashioned to understand that, he could go soak his head in a bucket of cold water. He hadn’t quite forgiven her yet for saying they would have to look hard to find a bucket big enough to fit his head into, but he admired the sass behind the remark.

Then Jaenelle bounded through the open door, dazzling Beale and the rest of the staff with a smile before politely asking Helene if she could have a sandwich and a glass of fruit juice sent to her suite.

She looks happy, Saetan thought, forgetting about everything else.

After Helene hurried off to the kitchen and Beale herded the remaining staff back to their duties, Saetan pushed away from the wall, opened his arms…and fought the sudden nausea as Menzar’s fantasies and memories flooded his mind. He cringed at the thought of touching Jaenelle, of somehow dirtying the warmth and high spirits that flowed from her. He started to lower his arms, but she walked into them, gave him a rib-squeezing hug, and said, “Hello, Papa.”

He held her tightly, breathing in her physical scent as well as the dark psychic scent he’d missed so keenly during the last few days.

For a moment, that dark scent became swift and penetrating. But when she leaned back to look at him, her sapphire eyes told him nothing. He shivered with apprehension.

Jaenelle kissed his cheek. “I’m going to unpack. Mephis needs to talk.” She turned to Mephis, who was still leaning wearily against the wall. “Thank you, Mephis. I had a grand time, and I’m sorry I caused you so much trouble.”

Mephis gave her a warm hug. “It was a unique experience. Next time I’ll be a little more prepared.”

Jaenelle laughed. “You’d take me back to Amdarh?”

“Wouldn’t dare let you go alone,” Mephis grumped.

As soon as she was gone, Saetan slid an arm around Mephis’s shoulders. “Come to my study. You could use a glass of yarbarah.”

“I could use a year’s sleep,” Mephis grumbled.

Saetan led his eldest son to the leather couch and warmed a glass of yarbarah for him. Sitting on a footstool, Saetan rested Mephis’s right foot on his thigh, removed the shoe and sock, and began a soothing foot massage. After a few silent minutes, Mephis roused enough to remember the yarbarah and take a sip.

Continuing his massage, Saetan said quietly, “So tell me.”

“Where do you want me to start?”

Good question. “Do any of those packages contain clothes?” He couldn’t keep the wistful note out of his voice.

Mephis’s eyes gleamed wickedly. “One. She bought you a sweater.” Then he yelped.

“Sorry,” Saetan muttered, gently rubbing the just-squeezed toes while the mutter turned into a snarl. “I don’t wear sweaters. I also don’t wear nightshirts.” He flinched as the words released more memories. Carefully setting Mephis’s right foot down, he stripped off the left shoe and sock and began massaging that foot.

“It was difficult, wasn’t it?” Mephis asked softly.

“It was difficult. But the debt’s been paid.” Saetan worked silently for another minute. “Why a sweater?”

Mephis sipped the yarbarah, letting the question hang. “She said you needed to slouch more, both physically and mentally.”

Saetan’s eyebrow snapped up.

“She said you’d never sprawl on the couch and take a nap if you were always dressed so formally.”

Oh, Mother Night. “I’m not sure I know how to sprawl.”

“Well, I heartily suggest you learn.” Mephis sent the empty glass skimming through the air until it slid neatly onto a nearby table.

“You’ve got a mean streak in your nature, Mephis,” Saetan growled. “What’s in the damn packages?”

“Mostly books.”

Saetan remembered not to squeeze the toes. “Books? Perhaps my old wits have gone begging, but I was under the impression we have a very large room full of books. Several, in fact. They’re called libraries.”

“Apparently not these kinds of books.”

Saetan’s stomach was full of butterflies. “What kind?”

“How should I know?” Mephis grumbled. “I didn’t see most of them. I just paid for them. However…”

Saetan groaned.

“…at every bookseller’s shop—and we went to every one in Amdarh—the waif would ask for books about Tigrelan or Sceval or Pandar or Centauran, and when the booksellers showed her legends and myths about those places that were written by Dhemlan authors, she would politely—she was always polite, by the way—tell them she wasn’t interested in books of legends unless they came directly from those people. Naturally the booksellers, and the crowd of customers that gathered during these discussions, would explain that those Territories were inaccessible places no one traded with. She would thank them for their help, and they, wanting to stay in her good graces and have continued access to my bank account, would say, ‘Who is to say what is real and what is not? Who has seen these places?’ And she would say, ‘I have,’ and pick up the books she’d already purchased and be out the door before the bookseller and customers could pick their jaws up from the floor.”

Saetan groaned again.

“Want to hear about the music?”

Saetan released Mephis’s foot and braced his head in his hands. “What about the music?”

“Dhemlan music stores don’t have Scelt folk music or Pandar pipe music or…”

“Enough, Mephis.” Saetan moaned. “They’re all going to be on my doorstep wanting to know what kind of trade agreements might be possible with those Territories, aren’t they?”

Mephis sighed, content. “I’m surprised we beat them here.”

Saetan glared at his eldest son. “Did anything go as expected?”

“We had a delightful time at the theater. At least I’ll be able to go back there without being snarled at.” Mephis leaned forward. “One other thing. About music.” He clasped his hands and hesitated. “Have you ever heard Jaenelle sing?”

Saetan probed his memory and finally shook his head. “She’s got a lovely speaking voice so I just assumed…. Don’t tell me she’s tone-deaf or sings off-key.”

“No.” There was a strange expression in Mephis’s eyes. “She doesn’t sing off-key. She…When you hear her, you’ll understand.”

“Please, Mephis, no more surprises tonight.”

Mephis sighed. “She sings witchsongs…in the Old Tongue.”

Saetan raised his head. “Authentic witchsongs?”

Mephis’s eyes were teary bright. “Not like I’ve ever heard them sung before, but yes, authentic witchsongs.”

“But how—” Pointless to ask how Jaenelle knew what she knew. “I think it’s time I went up to see our wayward child.”

Mephis rose stiffly. He yawned and stretched. “If you find out what all that stuff is that I paid for, I’d like to know.”

Saetan rubbed his temples and sighed.

“I bought you something. Did Mephis warn you?”

“He mentioned something,” Saetan replied cautiously.

Her sapphire eyes twinkled as she solemnly handed him the box.

Saetan opened it and held up the sweater. Soft, thick, black with deep pockets. He stripped off his jacket and shrugged into the sweater.

“Thank you, witch-child.” He vanished the box and sank gracefully to the floor, finally stretching out his legs and propping himself up on one elbow. “Sufficiently slouched?”

Jaenelle laughed and plopped down beside him. “Quite sufficient.”

“What else did you get?”

She didn’t quite look him in the eye. “I bought some books.”

Saetan eyed the piles of neatly stacked books that formed a large half-circle around her. “So I see.” Reading the nearest spines, he recognized most of the Craft books. Copies were either in the family library or in his own private library. Same with the books on history, art, and music. They were the beginning of a young witch’s library.

“I know the family has most of these, but I wanted copies of my own. It’s hard to make notes in someone else’s book.”

Saetan experienced a hitch in his breathing. Notes. Handwritten guides that would help explain those breathtaking leaps she made when she was creating a spell. And he wouldn’t have access to them. He gave himself a mental shake. Fool. Just borrow the damn book.

It hit him then, a bittersweet sadness. She would want a collection of her own to take with her when she was ready to establish her own household. So few years to savor before the Hall was empty again.

He pushed those thoughts aside and turned to the other stacks, the fiction. These were more interesting since a perusal of her choices would tell him a lot about Jaenelle’s tastes and immediate interests. Trying to find a common thread was too bewildering, so he simply filed away the information. He considered himself an eclectic reader. He had no idea how to describe her. Some books struck him as being too young for her, some too gritty. Some he passed over with little interest, others reminded him of how long it had been since he’d browsed through a bookseller’s shop for his own amusement. Lots of books about animals.

“Quite a collection,” he finally said, placing the last book carefully on its stack. “What are those?” He pointed to the three books half-hidden under brown paper.

Blushing, Jaenelle mumbled, “Just books.”

Saetan raised an eyebrow and waited.

With a resigned sigh, Jaenelle reached under the brown paper and thrust a book at him.

Odd. Sylvia had reacted much the same way when he’d called unexpectedly one evening and found her reading the same book. She hadn’t heard him come in, and when she finally did glance up and notice him, she immediately stuffed the book behind a pillow and gave him the strong impression it would take an army to pull her away from her book-hiding pillow and nothing less would make her surrender it.

“It’s a romantic novel,” Jaenelle said in a small voice as he called in his half-moon glasses and started idly flipping the pages. “A couple of women in a bookseller’s shop kept talking about it.”

Romance. Passion. Sex.

He suppressed—barely—the urge to leap to his feet and twirl her around the room. A sign of emotional healing? Please, sweet Darkness, please let it be a sign of healing.

“You think it’s silly.” Her tone was defensive.

“Romance is never silly, witch-child. Well, sometimes it’s silly, but not silly.” He flipped more pages. “Besides, I used to read things like this. They were an important part of my education.”

Jaenelle gaped at him. “Really?”

“Mmm. Of course, they were a bit more—” He scanned a page. He carefully closed the book. “Then again, maybe not.” He removed his glasses and vanished them before they steamed up.

Jaenelle nervously fluffed her hair. “Papa, if I have any questions about things, would you be willing to answer them?”

“Of course, witch-child. I’ll give you whatever help you want in Craft or your other subjects.”

“Nooo. I meant…” She glanced at the book in front of him.

Hell’s fire, Mother Night, and may the Darkness be merciful. The whole prospect filled him with delight and dread. Delight because he might be able to help her paint a different emotional canvas that would, he hoped, balance the wounds the rape had caused. Dread because, no matter how knowledgeable he was about any subject, Jaenelle always viewed things from an angle totally outside his experience.

Menzar’s thoughts, Menzar’s imaginings flooded his mind again.

Saetan closed his eyes, fought to stop the images.

“He hurt you.”

His body reacted to the midnight, sepulchral voice, to the instant chill in the room. “I was the one performing the execution, Lady. He’s the one who is very, very dead.”

The room got colder. The silence was more than silence.

“Did he suffer?” she asked too softly.

Mist. Darkness streaked with lightning. The edge of the abyss was very close and the ground was swiftly crumbling beneath his feet.

“Yes, he suffered.”

She considered his answer. “Not enough,” she finally said, getting to her feet.

Numbed, Saetan stared at the hand stretched toward him. Not enough? What had her Chaillot relatives done to her that she had no regrets about killing? Even he regretted taking a life.

“Come with me, Saetan.” She watched him with her ancient, haunted eyes, waiting for him to turn away from her.

Never. He grasped her hand, letting her pull him to his feet. He would never turn away from her.

But he couldn’t deny the shiver down his spine as he followed her to the music room that was on the same floor as their suites. He couldn’t deny the instinctive wariness when he saw that the only light in the room came from two freestanding candelabras on either side of the piano. Candles, not candle-lights. Light that danced with every current of air, making the room look alien, sensual, and forbidding. The candles lit the piano keys and the music stand. The rest of the room belonged to the night.

Jaenelle called in a brown-paper package, opened it, and leafed through the music. “I found a lot of this tucked into back bins without any kind of preservation spell on them to protect them.” She shook her head, annoyed, then handed him a sheet of music. “Can you play this?”

Saetan sat on the piano bench and opened the music. The paper was yellowed and fragile, the notation faded. Straining to see it in the flickering candlelight, he silently went through the piece, his fingers barely touching the keys. “I think I can get through it well enough.”

Jaenelle stood behind one candelabra, becoming part of the shadows.

He played the introduction and stopped. Strange music. Unfamiliar and yet…He began again.

Her voice rose, a molten sound. It soared, dove, spiraled around the notes he was playing and his soul soared, dove, spiraled with her voice. A Song of Sorrow, Death, and Healing. In the Old Tongue. A song of grieving…for both victims of an execution. Strange music. Soul-searing, heart-tearing, ancient, ancient music.

Witchsong. No, more than that. The songs of Witch.

He didn’t know when he stopped playing, when his shaking hands could no longer find the keys, when the tears blinded him. He was caught in that voice as it lanced the memory of the execution and left a clean-bleeding wound—and then healed that.

Mephis, you were right.

“Saetan?”

Saetan blinked away the tears and took a shuddering breath. “I’m sorry, witch-child. I…I wasn’t prepared.”

Jaenelle opened her arms.

He stumbled around the piano, aching for her clean, loving embrace. Menzar was a fresh scar on his soul, one that would be with him forever, like so many others, but he no longer feared to hold her, no longer doubted the kind of love he felt for her.

He stroked her hair for a long time before gathering his courage to ask, “How did you know about this music?”

She pressed her face deeper into his shoulder. Finally she whispered, “It’s part of what I am.”

He felt the beginning of an inward retreat, a protective distancing between himself and her.

No, my Queen. You say “It’s part of what I am” with conviction, but your retreat screams your doubt of acceptance. That I will not permit.

He gently rapped her nose. “Do you know what else you are?”

“What?”

“A very tired little witch.”

She started to laugh and had to stifle a yawn. “Since daylight is so draining for Mephis, we did most of our wandering after sunset, but I didn’t want to waste the daytime sleeping, so…” She yawned again.

“You did get some sleep, didn’t you?”

“Mephis made me take naps,” she grumbled. “He said it was the only way he’d get any rest. I didn’t think demons needed to rest.”

It was better not to answer that.

She was half-asleep by the time he guided her to her room. As he removed her shoes and socks, she assured him she was still awake enough to get ready for bed by herself and he didn’t need to fuss. She was sound asleep before he reached her bedroom door.

He, on the other hand, was wide-awake and restless.

Letting himself out one of the Hall’s back doors, Saetan wandered across the carefully trimmed lawn, down a short flight of wide stone steps, and followed the paths into the wilder gardens. Leaves whispered in the light breeze. A rabbit hopped across the path a body length in front of him, watchful but not terribly concerned.

“You should be more wary, fluffball,” Saetan said softly. “You or some other member of your family has been eating Mrs. Beale’s young beans. If you cross her path, you’re going to end up the main dish one of these nights.”

The rabbit swiveled its ears before disappearing under a fire bush.

Saetan brushed his fingers against the orange-red leaves. The fire bush was full of swollen buds almost ready to bloom. Soon it would be covered with yellow flowers, like flames rising above hot embers.

He took a deep breath and let it out in a sigh. There was still a desk full of paperwork waiting for him.

Comfortably protected from the cool summer night, his hands warm in the sweater’s deep pockets, Saetan strolled back to the Hall. Just as he was climbing the stone steps below the lawn, he stopped, listened.

Beyond the wild gardens was the north woods.

He shook his head and resumed walking. “Damn dog.”