by Anne Bishop
“Why would they even think to do this?”
“Because we—meaning you and me—had children who are, in every sense, our children.”
Daemon closed his gold eyes. “Mother Night.”
“And may the Darkness be merciful.”
“How is young Andulvar doing?” Daemon said after a moment. “Staying out of trouble?”
“As much as any Eyrien boy that age stays out of trouble.”
“Which means he’s no trouble at all when he’s asleep.” Daemon shook his head and smiled. “Beron has a supporting role in a new play that will be opening in Amdarh soon. If Marian wants to get away from trouble, I would be happy to stand as her escort for an evening at the theater.”
“I’ll let her know and have her make the arrangements with you. She could use an evening for herself.” He would attend the theater with his darling hearth witch or go to musicals or whatever else Marian wanted to attend, but Daemon would discuss the play and the actors and the costumes and sets and all the other things that would interest Marian but had no interest for him. Well, Lord Beron, being Daemon’s legal ward, was of interest to him, but that wasn’t the same thing.
“And your cuddly witchling? How is she?”
Nerves danced under Lucivar’s skin. He pushed out of the chair, set the snifter on the desk, and began to pace.
Daemon came around the desk, immediately on alert. “Prick?”
“Something I want to show you.”
“All right.”
Lucivar called in the drawing pad and handed it to Daemon as he passed the desk. He needed to move, couldn’t quite look at his brother as Daemon examined the drawings and sketches on each page.
“Titian drew these?” Daemon asked.
Lucivar nodded.
“This upsets you?”
“No, it doesn’t upset me!” Lucivar whirled toward the desk and Daemon. So tempting to aim some of the fury churning inside him at a man strong enough to meet it. But his hot fury would be met by Daemon’s cold rage, and that rage could freeze blood. Literally.
He gripped the back of his neck, trying to ease some tension. “I just found out about her drawings before I headed out to see you. She’d been hiding them from us. From me more than Marian. Someone told her a true Eyrien wouldn’t be drawing flowers, and she was afraid I’d be disappointed in her.” That stung more than anything else.
He inhaled warm air—and exhaled in a room that had turned so cold he could see his breath.
Daemon held up a hand. A few moments later, the room returned to its normal temperature—but the brandy left in the snifters had frozen solid.
“My apologies,” Daemon said.
“No need. It took my mind off destroying your furniture to work off some temper.”
“I could ask Beale to find something in the attics that you could rip to shreds.”
Daemon would do it, and that made him smile. “Save it for another time.”
“Do you know who said that about true Eyriens?” Daemon asked too softly.
Lucivar shook his head. Better if he didn’t know. Much better for everyone if Daemon didn’t know. Besides, he’d have a pretty good idea of who had said it the next time Daemonar scrapped with someone. But . . . “How do I fix this, Bastard? I don’t know a damn thing about art, but if my girl wants to draw flowers or wolf pups or rocks or . . .”
“Nudes?” Daemon suggested.
“Not at her age,” Lucivar snapped. Seeing Daemon’s smile, he blew out a breath and began pacing again. “The point is, if she wants to draw, how do I help her?”
“Does she know you’re showing me her work?”
Lucivar nodded.
Daemon looked through the drawings again, then fingered the paper. “Would you allow an indulgent uncle to handle this?”
“How?”
“A gift of better paper and a set of colored pencils. Not so much that she might think we had expectations she couldn’t meet but enough to let her know we want to encourage her interest and she has our support.”
Lucivar felt the tension easing out of his neck and shoulders. “An instructor?” He wasn’t sure where to find one. Were there any artists in Ebon Rih? Would he trust anyone with a sensitive child who was the daughter of the Demon Prince? His sensitive child? Wouldn’t more verbal needles inserted in a vulnerable heart be a subtle way to attack the man?
“Let her play and explore on her own for a while,” Daemon replied. “If she wants a teacher, give her a chance to ask.”
It might take her a while to work up to it, but if Titian wanted something, she would ask.
Daemon closed the pad and handed it to Lucivar. “How early is that early dinner we’re having?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t ask.”
“Sometimes, Prick, you’re as useful as a boot full of piss.”
Lucivar laughed. “I’ll ask Beale how much time you have to deal with more of those papers.”
Daemon looked at his desk, then headed for the door. “Forget the papers. Holt can scold me in the morning while he pulls out the paperwork and contracts he needs to have me look at first. Let’s take a walk.”
Lord Holt would scold his employer in the morning. That was one of the things that made him a valuable secretary. Like their father, Daemon needed people around him who didn’t fear him. Standing so deep in the abyss, having so much power and so much potential for destruction could leave a man feeling isolated and lonely. And that, as their family’s history had made clear, could lead to mistakes that would have repercussions for centuries.
Having confirmed the time that dinner would be served, they went out for a walk, happy to be in each other’s company.
* * *
◆ ◆ ◆
Surreal dropped from the Green Wind close to the house she owned in Halaway and had once shared with Rainier, a Dharo Warlord Prince who had been Daemon’s secretary for decades. Before that, Rainier had served in the Second Circle of Witch’s court, so he’d been trusted on many levels. For her, he’d been a friend and companion, but never a lover. During all the years they had lived together, she had never asked about his lovers or liaisons and he had never asked about hers.
And they had never spoken of the attraction they had both felt for the beautiful, dangerous man who was fiercely in love with Jaenelle Angelline and wore her wedding ring.
So many things remained unspoken where Daemon Sadi was concerned.
Pulling back from thoughts that wouldn’t do her any good, Surreal gave the house a quick psychic probe to determine who was home. Confirming that the only people currently in residence were the staff, she went around to the kitchen door and knocked. The cooks came and went, as did the maids and personal servants, but the butler and housekeeper worked for her, not her current tenants. That assured her that her property was not mistreated. It only took a minute’s chat with the butler and housekeeper to confirm that the current staff also wasn’t being mistreated in any way.
If informing a potential tenant that they were renting a house from Sadi’s second-in-command didn’t seem like sufficient warning about the consequences of randy behavior that wasn’t consensual, mentioning that she was a highly paid assassin whose mother had been the Queen of the Harpies and had taught her daughter what to do with a knife usually did the trick.
Of course, some potential tenants bolted a minute after learning that about her.
Unfortunately for them, she gave their names to the Province Queens on her next visit to their territories, just in case some fool thought that what couldn’t be seen wouldn’t have a price.
Wanting to postpone her return to the Hall a little longer, Surreal walked to the village’s bookshop and browsed the new selection of books.
The Hall might be the family seat, but it didn’t feel like a home. Not to her. It was too big, too imposing, too fu
ll of people who were neither friends nor family in a way that allowed her to simply be herself. The town house in Amdarh, which was Dhemlan’s capital, suited her—a small house in a large city. The Hall suited Daemon, giving him the breathing room he needed to be away from people who might be overwhelmed by his sexual heat and respond in a way that put them, and everyone else, in danger.
And Jaenelle Saetien? A child between. The estate offered her space to ride and walk and explore, either on her own or with a Sceltie or two for company, or with Mikal, who lived with Tersa and was Daemon’s ward. The girl enjoyed physical activities and the protected independence that came from being able to go to the village without an adult in tow. But she also enjoyed the theater and the parks and the shops that were in Amdarh, even if she had less independence in a city that size. She enjoyed mingling with girls from other aristo families when they gathered for some event.
Fortunately, the movement between one residence and the other wasn’t unusual. Sometimes Daemon came with them. Sometimes she planned the time in Amdarh to coincide with his staying at the Keep. Either way, her goal never changed—to keep her daughter safe and let her grow up without the scars that had marked her life, and Daemon’s life . . . and Jaenelle Angelline’s life.
In that, she and Daemon were united.
After purchasing two books, Surreal walked to a dining house. She didn’t offer an explanation for why she was dining out instead of going to the Hall, and no one asked. Everyone in the village knew that Jaenelle Saetien was visiting her cousins in Ebon Rih, and Surreal often had dinner in Halaway, alone, during those times—or when Sadi was also not in residence.
He was there, at the Hall. She could feel the presence of the Black. That dark power ran under the whole village as well as the SaDiablo estate, both a comfort and warning to Halaway’s residents.
Funny how she hadn’t been as aware of it during the years she’d lived in the village.
When she was a child, she’d had a crush on Daemon Sadi, who already was a young man when she met him and had been a pleasure slave for centuries by then. She’d had a girl’s romantic notion of what it would be like to be with him. As a young whore, whose training he had financed because that was the only kind of help she would accept from him at the time, she’d gotten drunk one night and made a mistake that had provoked him into showing her what sex wrapped in cold rage could feel like. That was the night she had brushed against the side of his temper the rest of the Blood called the Sadist.
Then there was the night when Saetan Daemon SaDiablo, Prince of the Darkness and High Lord of Hell, had gone to his final death and become a whisper in the Darkness. She and Daemon came together as a way of dealing with a painful loss. If she hadn’t gotten pregnant that night, maybe they would have become lovers, maybe not. But because Daemon had been taken from his father at so young an age, and because of what had happened to him after that, he couldn’t tolerate her leaving with his child. So she agreed to marry him, and at the time, she’d believed her reasons to be sound.
A mistake. They were good as partners, good as friends. She’d had plenty of time to think about the night that had damaged their marriage and almost destroyed Sadi, and she could admit now, to herself, anyway, that she should have declined when he invited her to play, should have retreated to her room and closed the door. That might have bruised his feelings a bit, but he would have shaken off that particular edge of desire by morning and her refusal wouldn’t have changed things between them. Not like her accepting the invitation had done.
That invitation hadn’t been about sex, as fabulous and terrifying as the sex had been. Not really. Not at the core. That’s what she finally realized after years of struggling to understand why she’d run away instead of confronting Daemon the next morning. She’d run in order to survive because, that night, what Daemon had really offered was to be a husband to her in the same way he had been with Jaenelle, offering everything, holding back nothing. And Daemon holding back nothing . . .
She’d run from him, and she’d run from the truth, was still running in some ways because she was afraid of what would happen to the family, to Dhemlan, to the whole damn Realm if she spoke the truth.
She didn’t want to be a wife in the same way Jaenelle Angelline had been. Couldn’t be a wife in that way. Not to the High Lord of Hell or the Sadist. Sadi’s partner and lover? The Warlord Prince of Dhemlan’s second-in-command? Yes, she could be those things, enjoyed being those things. That woman could aim a crossbow at a man and establish boundaries without hurt or harm. Sadi hadn’t expected his second-in-command or his friend to accept everything he was. But a woman who was his wife in the fullest sense of the word? Oh, yes. He would expect her to accept all of him.
After all, his first wife had done exactly that.
He didn’t want to cause her pain. If she asked to end the marriage, he would let her go. And then? All the women who romanticized what it would be like to be with Daemon, who thought it would be wonderful and exciting to be surrounded by his sexual heat but didn’t understand what it would feel like to be surrounded by it day after day after day, who hadn’t any notion of everything he was . . . They would swarm around him, an irritation that frayed his control until the leashes that held his temper and the Sadist in check snapped.
The slaughter would be horrific.
For everyone’s sake, she couldn’t leave Sadi without the protection of having a wife. But sometimes—often, lately—she wished Jaenelle Angelline hadn’t made being Sadi’s wife look so damn easy.
* * *
◆ ◆ ◆
Daemon felt Surreal’s return to the Hall a few minutes before he felt the departure of the Ebon-gray.
Dhemlans, Eyriens, and Hayllians were the three long-lived races, their life spans measured in thousands of years. Too many years. While generations of other races bloomed and faded like summer flowers, the long-lived grew slowly—spurts of growth followed by long plateaus before reaching the next level of maturity. But races that measured their lives in centuries also needed more time to let go of words or actions that had caused a wound.
On the surface, Lucivar behaved toward Surreal as he’d always done, with a mix of caution for the Gray-Jeweled witch who was a highly skilled assassin and a willingness to fight her into the ground if that was what had to be done. But under the surface, Lucivar was still pissed off that Surreal’s choice to suffer in silence when she’d been overwhelmed by her husband’s sexual heat instead of talking to someone—anyone—had led to Daemon making mistakes that had resulted in his coming too close to shattering his mind again and sliding into the Twisted Kingdom.
There had been hurt on both sides, and if Surreal had talked to him after he’d made the mistake of allowing the Sadist to play as lover, their lives and marriage might have been very different. But they all knew if someone had told him outright that he would have to endure hideous pain for months and almost lose his sanity in order to bring Witch back into his life in any way, he would have done it without a second thought, would have embraced that pain and paid any price.
Not a body he could touch or hold or physically love. Not anymore. But the embrace of mind to mind, to be seen and accepted for everything he was in all his terrible glory, whether he was Daemon Sadi or the High Lord of Hell or the Sadist . . . That had saved him and continued to save him. Jaenelle Angelline, his Queen and the love of his life, might use those different labels to acknowledge aspects of who he was, but she saw no distinction. Sometimes he was more of one thing than the other, but for her he was always Daemon. Just like Saetan had been Saetan, whether he was going by the title of High Lord or Steward of the Dark Court . . . or father.
It hadn’t been her intention, but Surreal’s choices had brought Witch back to Daemon, and for that alone, he had been willing to work hard at being a good husband. A careful husband. Staying connected with the living and working on his marriage had been part of the bargain h
e’d made with Witch in order to spend time with her at the Keep, where her Self, using the enormous reservoir of power still at her command, could create a shadow of the dream that had lived within flesh.
So he worked on his marriage—or his partnership, as Lucivar called it—with Surreal, and Lucivar worked to let go of the kernel of anger that the Eyrien still felt toward Surreal.
Returning to his suite of rooms in the family wing of the Hall, Daemon took a quick shower and dressed in fresh clothes—his usual black trousers and white silk shirt. He debated for a moment about adding the black jacket, then decided that would look too formal, too official. He wasn’t looking for a report from his second-in-command; he was offering to spend the evening with his wife, doing whatever she wanted to do.
As he styled his thick black hair, he noticed the first threads of silver at the temples. At nineteen hundred years old, he was a little young for his hair to start changing color, but if he ended up with the silver wings at the temples that his father had, well, he wasn’t going to kick about that. Besides, his face, while still beautiful, looked mature now, but it was unlined except for faint lines at the eyes. Laugh lines. Couldn’t kick about acquiring those either.
He studied himself in the mirror over the dresser. Gold wedding ring on his left hand. Black-Jeweled ring on his right hand. Thinking about the woman in the adjoining bedroom, he vanished the pendant that held his Black, replacing it with his Birthright Red. Less intimidating.
Finally he took stock of the leashes—the self-control and self-discipline—that controlled his temper, power, sexual heat . . . and the Sadist. Everything was quietly leashed, comfortably leashed. He couldn’t tighten those leashes anymore to the point of harming himself. A barrier formed from Witch’s power made certain of that.
Since she’d been away for several days, Surreal might not mind the sexual heat that, even leashed, could overwhelm a woman and make her desperate for a lover’s attention.