by Anne Bishop
“Some of those girls are there because they were harmed by the coven of malice.”
Jillian nodded. “But the Scelties who are going to be there will look after her, if for no other reason than to protect the puppy who is her special friend.”
Was Jillian really the person making this suggestion, or was she the messenger for a spiky-haired Black Widow Queen?
“And I think Zoey and Titian and the friends who were at the house party should be assigned rooms in the square of suites that belonged to the Dark Court. Certain suites will be out-of-bounds, of course, but . . .”
He stared at her. “You want young women to have rooms across from the rooms I reside in when I need to relinquish control and am too dangerous to be around anyone?”
She nodded again. “They are safe because you are dangerous, in the same way Jaenelle’s coven was safe because Saetan was dangerous.”
Jillian was a messenger. But so was Karla, who must have coached the girl in what to say.
My Lady, your will is my life.
“The suites that will be out-of-bounds,” he said. “Those would be the Queen’s and Consort’s suites?” He couldn’t tolerate anyone residing in the room that had belonged to Jaenelle Angelline. “And the suites that were set aside for Lady Karla and Prince Chaosti because they may start visiting again?”
“Yes.” She looked relieved. Message delivered and understood.
Daemon eyed Jillian’s spiky black hair and nodded. “You may say it. Once.”
Jillian gave him a brilliant smile. “Kiss kiss.”
* * *
◆ ◆ ◆
Surreal studied Daemon, who stood behind his desk, his hands tucked in his trouser pockets. The question of what to do with Jaenelle Saetien had been tearing at him from the moment he’d accepted that he’d have to send his daughter away—alone. His duty to the people of Dhemlan would keep him at the Hall much of the time because the point of all these young Queens taking up residence here was to have him here as well.
The girl couldn’t live with Manny in the village—assuming Manny would agree to it—because the Province Queens didn’t want Jaenelle Saetien to have contact with the girls who had been threatened at the house party. At least, not for a couple of years.
Being from long-lived races, the Queens—and Lucivar, too—could have banned the girl from entering specific places for two decades or two centuries. The two-year bans were a concession made for Daemon’s sake, not for Jaenelle Saetien’s. But this?
Not his idea, Surreal thought, but a possibility that gave him hope.
As she’d helped coordinate the arrangements for the girls who would be arriving, she’d seen the speculation in the eyes of the Province Queens and District Queens. The Queen of Ebon Askavi had returned—and everyone knew that whatever remained of Witch wouldn’t have made her presence known, wouldn’t have called in the debts owed by the coven of malice and personally extracted the payments for anyone but Daemon Sadi. And if the Queen had returned to that extent . . .
Surreal set those thoughts aside for the moment. “Does Witch know that some of the girls at the sanctuary are there because of the coven of malice and the males who ran with those bitches?”
Daemon flinched, since Jaenelle Saetien had been considered one of those bitches. “She knows,” he said quietly. “I think that’s why she suggested it.”
“We both know a suggestion from Witch is tantamount to an order from any other Queen.” She blew out a breath. “The other girls may not accept her, Sadi. If they don’t, could she stay at the family estate near the village?”
“Only if Lucivar gives his consent, which is doubtful.”
Jaenelle, are you sure Jaenelle Saetien will be safe at the sanctuary? She may have rejected me as her mother, but I still care about her.
She didn’t have to wonder. She could go to the Keep and ask. Or she could trust the Queen who had been her friend—and still was. “All right. We need to have this done before the other girls arrive. Are you going to come with us as far as the estate? It would be better if you didn’t come to the sanctuary.” If Jaenelle Saetien was going to have any chance of being seen as just another girl who needed to repair her life, she didn’t need anyone realizing that she was the High Lord’s daughter. At least, not at first.
“I’d like that.” He started to move around the desk. “Surreal . . .”
She raised a hand to stop him. “Ever since that black-bordered warning was presented to all the Dhemlan Queens—and let’s not pretend it was anything less than Witch showing her claws and announcing that she had returned—I’ve been thinking about where that leaves you and me.”
“It doesn’t have to change anything between us.”
He stood so quiet, so still.
“Mind and heart, you’re Witch’s husband. You always were. Am I correct in assuming that you can’t be Witch’s lover?”
“Not while I still walk among the living.”
“Sadi.”
He huffed out a breath. “You don’t need to worry. I won’t hurry that day.”
“If you did, Witch would kick whatever was left of your ass.”
Daemon laughed. “And Lucivar would stomp on whatever was left after that.” Then he sobered. “But that day is on the horizon. Still distant, but it’s there.”
Mother Night.
“The Queen has no objections to me being your lover?”
“She has no objections. She expects me to honor my commitment to you.”
“What about you? Can you accept having a lover?” She and Daemon didn’t spend much time together, but he still needed the occasional relief of having sex and, more important, he needed someone physical to hold. So did she.
“I can accept it,” he said quietly. A pause. “What do you want for yourself, Surreal?”
“I want to be who I am—a hunter who won’t allow the debt owed a broken girl to go unpaid. Beyond that?” She shrugged. Then she smiled. “I don’t think Jaenelle Angelline came back just for your sake.”
Daemon put his arms around her. Held her as a friend and lover.
She eased back. “We’ll get Jaenelle Saetien settled at the sanctuary tomorrow.”
He gave her a gentle kiss, more friend than lover. “Tomorrow.”
* * *
◆ ◆ ◆
Daemon sat behind his desk, a hard reminder to himself that it wasn’t Jaenelle Saetien’s father who had to hand down this decision but the Warlord Prince of Dhemlan—and the High Lord of Hell.
“Why do I have to leave?” His daughter’s eyes were bright with tears—and shadowed with fear.
“It’s part of the price for your involvement in the coven of malice,” he explained again. “I’m sorry, Jaenelle Saetien, but it has to be this way.”
“Couldn’t I live in the village?”
“No,” he said gently. “You’ve been banned from Amdarh and Askavi, so you can’t live in those places either.” His heart hurt, but he couldn’t see any other way to help her now. “You’ll be going to the sanctuary that Surreal created for girls who have been broken. It will be a good place for you to learn how to use the Purple Dusk Jewel. And Jillian is going to be working there, so you won’t be all alone.”
He’d been ignoring the scratching on the wood and the yips that had followed when he hadn’t obligingly obeyed the demand to open the door. Now the yips became howls and the scratching became determined. To spare the door being refinished—again—Daemon used Craft to open the study door for Shelby.
The puppy raced across the room, then scratched at Jaenelle Saetien’s legs until she picked him up.
*My Saeti,* Shelby announced.
“There will be other Scelties there who will help Shelby learn his own lessons,” Daemon said.
Jaenelle Saetien cuddled the puppy. “Why did you name me after the Queen?
” The question burst out of her, as if the need to ask had been building for days.
“I didn’t choose your name.” He sighed. “Surreal didn’t have an easy time giving birth to you, and once you arrived, her need to keep you safe made her dangerous to everyone else for a little while. When she was rational again, she said she wanted to name you Jaenelle Saetien to honor two people we both loved. I agreed.”
She wouldn’t look at him. “So you wouldn’t be angry if I changed my name so that people wouldn’t compare me to the Queen?”
“No, I wouldn’t be angry. My father gave me his name—Saetan Daemon SaDiablo—but Manny called me Daemon because, so she said, she wasn’t about to stand at the back door and yell for Saetan to come wash up for dinner.”
Jaenelle Saetien smiled.
*Saeti,* Shelby said. *My Saeti.*
Daemon raised an eyebrow.
“That’s my Sceltie name,” she mumbled.
“Easy enough to be Saetien for the humans. That would explain Shelby’s choice of name. You could do what your grandfather did and use your initials to sign legal papers and be Saetien SaDiablo going forward.”
“Saetien,” she said softly, nodding. “Saetien.” A hesitation. “Can I write to you?”
It took everything in him not to burden her with his own feelings of loss. “I’d like that.”
“Would you write to me?”
“Yes.” He would purchase a decorative seal that would only be used for her—a special communication between the two of them. “We’ll leave tomorrow. A couple of the maids will help you pack.”
When he stood, she grabbed the puppy and bolted for the door. Then she stopped and looked at him. “I understand some things now, and I’m sorry for all the trouble I’ve caused.” She fumbled the door open and whispered, “Good-bye, Papa.”
“Good-bye, witch-child.”
Alone, Daemon locked the door. Then, finally, he allowed himself to feel the pain of letting her go this way—and felt his heart break.
FIFTY-ONE
As the horse-drawn carriage took them from the SaDiablo estate to the sanctuary, Surreal wasn’t sure what to say to someone who had come from her body and then had become the enemy. She didn’t know what to say to this girl who had been protected her whole life and now was about to live among the broken.
There is no cure for Briarwood. But you learn to live with the scars.
Knowing that Witch had suggested the sanctuary as the place for Jaenelle Saetien, Surreal wondered what other price the girl still had to pay.
No, not Jaenelle Saetien. Just Saetien now.
“Jillian is going to be working at the home,” she finally said. “If you run into trouble, you can ask her for help.”
“All right.” Saetien caught her lower lip between her teeth. “Is this like Briarwood?”
“No,” Surreal replied sharply. She looked out the window. She supposed it was a reasonable question, but even the thought that one place might be mistaken for the other made her ill. “It’s more like the school in Amdarh, only smaller.” And more exclusive, considering who lived there.
The administrator, housekeeper, and Healer who ran the place came out to greet them. So did Jillian.
The pack of Scelties now in residence must have been herding some other unfortunates who required their help. Thank the Darkness for that.
“This is Lady Saetien,” Surreal said. “And this is Lord Shelby.”
The women eyed the Purple Dusk Jewel and the girl’s delicately pointed ears. Whatever conclusions the women made about why a girl who still wore a Jewel was being sheltered there went unspoken. This wasn’t the first time Surreal had brought a girl to the sanctuary, and it wouldn’t be the last.
“Why don’t I take the luggage and show Lady Saetien to her room?” Jillian said. “Then I can show her around and help her collect the books and supplies for her classes.”
“Thank you,” Surreal said. She waited until the two girls went into the building, then turned to the women. “Questions?”
“Are you sure about her being here?” the administrator asked.
“No,” she replied. “But the Queen of Ebon Askavi is sure, and that’s all the young Lady’s father and I need to know.”
After promising to return in a week to review the women’s observations about all the girls, Surreal returned to the family estate just long enough to collect her belongings. Then she caught the Gray Wind and headed for Dea al Mon to spend a couple of days with her mother’s people. Among the Children of the Wood, she wasn’t Sadi’s wife or his second-in-command. She was the daughter of a young Black Widow Queen who had been taken from her people and broken by a Hayllian Warlord. She was Surreal, a hunter who was very good with a knife—and whose prey usually walked on two legs.
She spent the day wandering the land her mother had walked and thought about who she had been and who she was now—and who she might want to be.
Late that night, she brought two mugs of coffee to a tree she had chosen that afternoon for no particular reason. One mug held black coffee; the other held coffee mixed with a precise amount of sugar and cream. Holding out that mug, she said, “I brought coffee.”
A biting cold. Mist and stone. And the living myth, the girl who had first shown her the pretty poison and then, later, become a great Queen despite her scars. Or, maybe, because of those scars.
“Saetien being at the sanctuary,” she said. “Is that part of her price to pay?”
“It is,” Witch said, accepting the coffee. “She needs to see what someone like Delora can do when there is no one to stop her. She needs to see that before you tell her about the maternal side of her bloodline.”
“Tell her what?”
“That she’s Dorothea’s great-granddaughter. That Dorothea’s son was your sire. That she is descended from one of Hayll’s Hundred Families.” Witch smiled. “That you took SaDiablo as your family name as a way to spit in Dorothea’s eye.”
“How was I supposed to know that the patriarch of the family was living in Dhemlan?” Surreal grumbled. Saetan’s acceptance when she arrived in Kaeleer changed her life.
“This interest in Hayll has stirred up memories, and for the people who fled Terreille, most of those memories are painful. Don’t let your daughter find out from someone else.”
“You think some of the aristos will say Saetien was infatuated with Delora because she can trace her bloodline to Dorothea?”
“Better for both of you if she has an answer to that before the question is raised.”
“My connection to Dorothea never bothered you, did it?”
“Why should it? You’re Titian’s daughter. You were always Dea al Mon. Kin of my kin.”
“And that makes us kin.” Surreal blinked away sentimental tears. Then she hooked her hair behind one delicately pointed ear. “I’m going to look for a place of my own. Something that doesn’t belong to the SaDiablo family. I thought about living in Dea al Mon, but living among trees for more than a couple of days makes me itch. Besides, I like cities. Or maybe I could buy a cottage in a village like Halaway where I could walk to the shops but also have a choice of dining houses if I wanted to eat out.”
“A first step in separating your life from Daemon’s?” Witch asked.
Surreal hesitated. Then she nodded. “A life apart yet still connected to him and the rest of the family. I had that once, during the years I lived with Rainier, and I can have it again because a Warlord Prince belongs to his Queen before he belongs to anyone else, and Daemon Sadi’s Queen is once more in residence at Ebon Askavi.” She raised her mug in a salute. “Thank you for coming back to save all of us.” And for setting me free of a choice I made so many years ago.
Witch smiled, handed the mug back, and disappeared.
Biting cold. Then Surreal felt the tree’s bark against her back. Wiping a tear off her che
ek, she walked back to the Dea al Mon equivalent of an inn.
FIFTY-TWO
You all right, witchling?” Lucivar asked.
“Uh-huh.” In truth, even though she knew Jaenelle Saetien wasn’t going to be there, Titian felt sick and excited about being back at the Hall. She linked her arm with her father’s left arm, leaving his right hand free in case he needed to call in his war blade. Not that she expected he would need to, but there were girls and boys standing outside the Hall that she didn’t know, and the unknown could be dangerous. Deadly.
Then she spotted Lord Weston, and excitement won out over sickness. Zoey had come.
She pulled her father along as she wove through the youngsters who were hesitating to approach the door, unsure, now that they were here, about the wisdom of this choice. Then she caught sight of Zoey and stopped abruptly as she noticed the face that looked drawn from the loss of too much weight and the smudges under Zoey’s eyes that looked more like awful bruises.
“You look like shit, witchling,” Lucivar said, eyeing Zoey. Then he focused on the Sceltie pressed against Zoey’s legs. “You need to persuade her to eat and do walkies.”
*I am trying,* Allis complained. *But she is stubborn, and I am not allowed to nip.*
“Says who?” Lucivar asked.
Lord Weston made an angry sound of warning.
“You have my permission to nip—”
“Hey!” Zoey protested.
“—and if Prince Sadi has a problem with that, he can talk to me.” He gave Zoey, then Weston a lazy, arrogant smile.
The door opened. Beale looked at them, then beyond them to the youngsters milling around the landing web.
“I’ll fix it,” Lucivar said. He untangled his arm from Titian’s, then grabbed both girls by the backs of their tunics and toe-walked them across the threshold, first Zoey, then Titian. “Now, go say hello to your uncle while I deal with the rest of the youngsters.”
