by Anne Bishop
“This is wonderful!” Jaenelle Saetien said as they floated down the river.
Daemonar scanned the river and the banks, watching one for debris that could snag the raft and upend it and the other for any Eyrien who might have spotted them and sent word to his father on a psychic communication thread.
He felt the change in the river, saw the white water and boulders seconds before Jaenelle Saetien said, “Uh-oh.”
He wrapped an arm around her waist and closed a fist around some of her tunic, wishing she had worn something with a belt. Easier to hold on to someone if they wore a belt. He’d remember that for next time.
“Here we go,” he said as they hit the rapids.
He leaned this way and that way, using his whole body to steer the raft around the boulders as best he could.
Not easy, he thought, exhilarated by the challenge. Not easy, but, sweet Darkness, this is fun.
He saw sky ahead of them and mist from the waterfall. One more tight passage and—
He leaned one way. Missing her cue for the first time, Jaenelle Saetien leaned the other way. Instead of skimming past a boulder, they hit with enough force that it took all the skill he had to keep the raft from flipping and tossing them onto the boulders or into fast-moving water.
They hit another boulder and spun—and the raft began breaking under them, the twine snapping from the strain, despite the coating of Green power.
“Hang on!” he shouted, wrapping both arms around her as the raft reached the end of the rapids and shot over the falls.
They rode the raft down partway. Then the last of the Green power he’d used on the twine burned out, and what was left of the raft fell apart.
Should they go down ahead of all those branches or behind them? Ahead, they’d have all that wood coming at them, and even if he shaped a shield around them, one of them could receive a nasty knock on the head if they surfaced right in front of one of the heavier branches.
Behind, then.
Daemonar spread his wings, pumping hard to get some height—or at least delay the plunge into the pool below long enough for the branches to move downriver.
Jaenelle Saetien was younger than his sister, Titian, but the girls were about the same size. He hadn’t considered either of them large, but, Hell’s fire, it was everything he could do to hold that weight—and he wouldn’t be able to hold her much longer.
Judging the distance to the water, Daemonar created a Green bubble shield around them and folded his wings.
Jaenelle Saetien screamed as they fell.
*Hold . . . ,* he began on a psychic thread.
No time. They hit the water and went down like a stone halfway to the bottom of the pool before the buoyancy of the bubble shield popped them back to the surface. They rolled a bit in the Craft-made bubble before he eliminated the shield and they went under a second time.
“You okay?” he asked when they surfaced.
She tipped her head back and whooped, a sound full of the joy he also felt. “That was wonderful! Daemonar, let’s . . .”
“Hell’s fire,” he muttered when he spotted movement on the riverbank.
“What?” Treading water, she looked in the same direction. “Uh-oh.”
“Yeah. Uh-oh.”
Lucivar Yaslana, the Warlord Prince of Askavi, stood on the bank, watching them. He didn’t shout, didn’t make a come-here motion with his hand. He just watched them.
That could not be good.
“Come on,” Daemonar said. “We’d better not keep him waiting.”
They swam to the bank, fighting the current with every stroke. Well, he fought the current, aiming for the ground where his father waited. Jaenelle Saetien either wasn’t strong enough or wasn’t trying hard enough to reach stern judgment, so the river floated her away from her uncle. Lucivar paced her, letting her struggle—more than necessary, in Daemonar’s opinion—until she finally reached the river’s edge.
Lucivar reached down and pulled her up to the bank.
Daemonar let the current take him to that spot on the bank. When Lucivar reached down, he accepted his father’s hand, unable to decipher the look in those gold eyes. His father had a volatile temper, even by Eyrien standards. It should have been in evidence and wasn’t—and that was a worry.
“It was my fault, Uncle Lucivar,” Jaenelle Saetien said. “It was my idea to build the raft.”
“I figured that.” Lucivar looked them over. Satisfied that there were no apparent injuries, he studied the river and said mildly, “Listen carefully, witchling. If you ever test that river and waterfall again—or any river or waterfall anywhere in Askavi—without my permission, you will be banned from Askavi for a year. All of Askavi, including my home. Do you understand me?”
Daemonar’s jaw dropped, and he imagined his expression matched Jaenelle Saetien’s. No visits for a year?
“But . . . ,” Jaenelle Saetien began.
“Do. You. Understand?”
Oh, Hell’s fire. There was the heat of temper under the mildness.
“Yes, sir,” she replied.
“Then let’s get you home and into dry clothes.” Lucivar wrapped them both in Red shields and took them with him when he caught the Red Wind, one of those psychic roads in the Darkness, and headed back to the Yaslana eyrie.
The Winds were connected to the power in the Jewels the Blood wore. The darker the Wind, the faster you traveled. Traveling on the Red, which Daemonar couldn’t have used on his own since the Red was darker than his Green, they arrived at the eyrie too fast. He wasn’t ready for the reckoning that had to be coming.
When they arrived at the eyrie, Lucivar handed Jaenelle Saetien over to Daemonar’s mother, Marian, then looked at him.
“Get cleaned up. I’ll be waiting for you in my study.”
“Yes, sir.” Nothing else he could say.
“Do I want to know what the two of you were doing?” Marian asked.
“No, Auntie Marian, you really don’t,” Jaenelle Saetien replied.
“I want to know,” Andulvar said, joining them in the large front room.
*I’ll tell you later,* Daemonar said on a psychic spear thread.
He smelled like the river, which wasn’t a bad smell at all, but because he’d be closed in a room with his father and wasn’t sure what kind of discussion they were going to have, Daemonar took a fast shower before getting dressed and reporting to his father’s study.
He usually liked the room in the family eyrie where his father took care of the business of ruling Ebon Rih, the valley that lived in the shadow of the mountain called Ebon Askavi. Also known as the Keep, Ebon Askavi held a vast library, was the repository for the Blood’s history, a sanctuary for the darkest-Jeweled Blood—and the private lair of Witch.
He often did his schoolwork in his father’s study, sitting quietly while Lord Rothvar, Lucivar’s second-in-command, reported on the Blood and landen villages in the valley or received orders for the other Eyriens who protected Ebon Rih. The men knew he listened, and he knew anything they considered private was discussed on a psychic communication thread. He also knew that when Lucivar, who had trouble reading, asked him to read a document out loud, it was as much to give him a glimpse at what it meant to be a leader as it was to help his father.
Maybe someday, if he proved worthy, he would be the one ruling Ebon Rih while Lucivar took care of holding the lines of Blood law and honor throughout the rest of Askavi.
Since he couldn’t measure how much trouble he was in while standing outside the door, Daemonar knocked, waited for permission to enter, and went in.
Lucivar wasn’t sitting behind the desk; he leaned against it and gave the boy a careful study before shaking his head. “Tell me all of it.”
Daemonar told him all of it, from the first glimmer of the idea to building the raft. He even threw in the word
s about the difference between calculated risks and foolish ones—and heard his father snort in an effort to suppress a laugh.
Still no sign of anger or disappointment or anything except . . . amusement?
“Hold out your arms,” Lucivar said.
Daemonar obeyed and said nothing while Lucivar ran his hands over shoulders and arms before moving around to examine back muscles.
“You are going to be hurting sore by tomorrow, boyo,” Lucivar said. “You don’t have the muscles or the strength yet to carry that much weight safely.”
“I wouldn’t have dropped her,” he replied defensively.
“No, you would have gone down with her, because that’s who you are.” Lucivar came around again and looked Daemonar in the eyes. “Smarter to use Craft and the reservoir of power in your Jewels to lift something that’s too heavy to lift otherwise. So I guess those are the Craft lessons we’ll be working on this week.”
Lucivar’s hands rested on the boy’s shoulders, and the strength and power Daemonar felt in those hands reminded him that he had a lot of growing up to do.
“Did you have fun challenging the rapids?” Lucivar asked, that mild tone still a worry to the boy.
“Yes, sir.” Daemonar grinned. Couldn’t help it.
“Then I guess another thing you need to learn is how to build a better raft.”
He studied his father. “You’re not angry.”
Lucivar stepped back to lean against the desk again. “Well, I can’t get pissy about you and Jaenelle Saetien doing the same thing your aunt Jaenelle and I did. Only we rode those rapids and went over that waterfall on a raft built out of nothing but kindling and Craft. Twice.”
“Twice?” Daemonar’s voice rose to the point of cracking. “Hell’s fire! Doing it once was a dumb-ass thing to do but . . .” He stopped and considered who he was talking to. “I mean . . .”
“It was a dumb-ass idea. Both times. But I imagine I did it for the same reason you did. That sparkle in the eyes that warns you that she’s going to try this with or without you, and the thought of her doing it without whatever skill and strength you can give . . .”
“No.” Daemonar shook his head. “We couldn’t do that.”
Lucivar smiled. “No, we couldn’t do that. But sometimes that means drawing a line and being willing to fight someone you love into the ground if that’s the only way to protect them.” He looked away, seemed to be seeing something that wasn’t in the room. “Jaenelle Saetien reminds me of Jaenelle Angelline in a lot of ways, but they aren’t the same. When it came to Craft and spells and the use of power, my sister was brilliant and could do things no one else in the entire history of the Blood had done. Things no one else will ever do again. Her ideas didn’t always work, but she wasn’t impetuous or careless. Jaenelle Saetien is a child in a way that Jaenelle Angelline never could be, because your cousin is growing up safe under her father’s protection.”
“So are we. Growing up safe.” Uncle Daemon wasn’t the only Warlord Prince who took care of his family.
Lucivar laughed softly, then sobered. “Yeah, you are safe, and I don’t know if you’ll ever appreciate how much that means to me and your uncle. You’ll carry your own scars. That’s part of growing up. But you won’t carry the kind that Daemon and I carry. You won’t have to live with those kinds of scars.”
Serious talk. “Would you tell me about those scars?”
Something about the look in Lucivar’s eyes made him wonder what line he’d just crossed.
“That’s campfire talk,” Lucivar finally said. “Private talk. But not until you’re older.” He pushed away from the desk. “I need to go to Dhemlan. Better your uncle Daemon hear about this adventure from me than from someone else since I know what to say to smooth it over.”
He and his sister, Titian, and his younger brother, Andulvar, were protected in their father’s house, but outside the eyrie . . .
“You should talk to Titian.” The words were out before he considered if he was protecting his sister or betraying a trust. But talk of scars and growing up made him think this wasn’t something he should keep to himself any longer.
“Later,” Lucivar said, heading for the door. “I’ll be back before your bedtimes if Titian wants to talk.”
“No, sir.” Daemonar hesitated when his father turned to face him—an Ebon-gray Warlord Prince responding to the sound of a challenge issued by a Green-Jeweled Warlord Prince. Then he stepped up to the line. “You should talk to her before you go to Dhemlan.”
A crackling silence as the Warlord Prince of Ebon Rih studied him.
“It’s that important?” Lucivar finally asked.
Was it? Titian had been excited and happy about her secret, but lately she’d been unhappy and afraid of what Lucivar and Marian would say when they found out. “Yes, sir. I think it is.”
“All right.” Lucivar walked out of the study.
Daemonar bent at the waist and braced his hands on his thighs. Challenging a male as strong and as powerful as his father was a messy way to commit suicide, and even a son couldn’t count on getting away with a challenge without paying a harsh price.
But he had gotten away with it. Sure, he’d argued with his father plenty of times and had even sassed him on occasion, but what was overlooked in a boy—up to a point, anyway—wasn’t tolerated in a youth, especially one who wore a dark Jewel. Even though he was years and years away from that day, the closer he came to being considered an adult, the more dangerous it became to test the temper of the Ebon-gray.
It will be all right, Daemonar thought as he left the study and went into the kitchen to see what his mother might have for a snack. Father will know what to do for Titian.
* * *
◆ ◆ ◆
Spotting his daughter at the far end of the play yard, where a stream filled a small pool before continuing down the mountain, Lucivar considered all the messages—intentional and unintentional—that he’d picked up from Daemonar.
What had been said that had pushed Daemonar to draw a line? A small one, sure, but this was different from their usual pissing contests. The boy knew something about Titian, something that hadn’t been shared with him or Marian.
The boy wasn’t looking to get his sister in trouble in order to draw attention away from his own dumb-ass choice. The demand that he talk to the girl now was . . . protective. Concerned.
Titian was his quiet little witchling, a gentle contrast to her brothers. Why was Daemonar concerned about her?
Lucivar wasn’t trying to approach with any stealth, but Titian was so focused on the paper in front of her, she didn’t realize he was there until his shadow fell over her. Then she gasped, closed the pad of paper, and hunched in on herself as if she’d been caught doing something shameful.
Going down on one knee beside her, Lucivar wondered about the misery he saw in her face.
“What are you doing, witchling?” he asked quietly. “Will you show me?”
“It’s not Eyrien,” she mumbled, glancing up at him.
The tears that filled her eyes ripped his heart. “Okay.”
She opened the pad of paper and looked away from him.
Lucivar frowned at the half-finished drawing of the pool and the flowers Marian had planted to bring some color to a spot they all enjoyed in the summer.
“I’m sorry, witchling. I don’t understand why this makes you unhappy. I think you’ve captured the pool and your mother’s flowers pretty well. I’m not an expert about such things, but I can see the difference in the flowers and—”
“A real Eyrien wouldn’t want to draw flowers,” Titian said.
He ruthlessly leashed the fury rising in him before she sensed it.
Now he knew why Daemonar had pushed at him.
Scars.
The boy had known about the drawings and hadn’t tattled on his sister
—and why should he?—but now he needed someone else to know about the hurt. Which meant the hurt was recent.
Lucivar snorted, a dismissive sound. “Whoever said that doesn’t know much about Eyriens.”
Her startled look made him tighten the leash on his temper until it hurt. So. Another Eyrien had slid that needle of doubt into his daughter’s heart.
He ran a hand down her braided black hair. “Listen to me, Titian. Are you listening?” He waited for her nod. “In Terreille, Eyrien girls from the aristo families were the only ones who were given drawing lessons and music lessons, because it was assumed that they would serve in the courts and be companions to the Queens. Some of the boys received lessons, too, but they mostly used the skills they learned to make sketches of the hunting camps or the killing fields as a kind of record of the men and the battles. I can’t tell you what the girls usually drew because I never had much to do with them.”
“We’re aristo,” Titian said in a small voice.
“We certainly are, which is something your uncle Daemon takes pains to remind me of from time to time.” A finger under her chin brought her head up until she looked at him. “Since you want to draw, why are you unhappy?”
“Because you would be disappointed in me when you found out.”
She couldn’t have stunned him more if she’d smacked him with a rock. It took him a moment to find his voice. “Witchling, the only way you could disappoint me is if you allowed someone’s meanness to push you away from doing something you love. If you don’t feel strong enough to meet that meanness on your own, you come to me and I will back you all the way.”
Suddenly his arms were full of a girl doing her best to squeeze the breath out of him.
“Thank you, Papa.”
He didn’t see that he’d done anything to deserve thanks, but he cuddled her and let her sniffle until her feelings settled. His were churning with a fury that needed an outlet, but he’d deal with that later.
“I’m heading out to see your uncle Daemon,” he said. “Would you let me show him your drawings?”
Titian hesitated, then eased out of his arms and handed him the pad. “You’ll bring it back?”
