by Anne Bishop
Jaenelle Saetien rushed after Surreal, almost knocking over the footman at the door. Ignoring the footman and Beale, who was talking to that woman, she screamed, “You vile, disgusting creature! You filthy whore! You tricked my father into marrying you. He never would have touched something like you if he’d known what you are!”
She heard a door open, felt the cold dark power, but she stayed focused on her quarry.
Surreal hooked her long black hair behind one delicately pointed ear. “First off, sugar, I bathe regularly, so I’m not filthy. And I’ve never tricked your father into anything.”
“That’s enough,” Daemon said too softly as he approached from the direction of his study.
Wasn’t enough. Would never be enough. “She’s a whore and she tricked you into marrying her.”
“Was a whore,” Surreal said. “I retired before I came to Kaeleer.”
Mother Night, Jaenelle Saetien thought. She just admitted it in front of him. “Well, everyone knows your secret now.”
“It was hardly a secret. There were plenty of people from Terreille who came to Kaeleer around the same time I did, plenty who knew part of what I did for a living.”
“You’re disgusting!”
“And you can take a piss in the wind.”
“I wish you were dead! You are not my mother. I could never come from something like you!”
“Enough,” Daemon snarled.
Grabbing Jaenelle Saetien’s arm, he hauled her into his study and locked the door.
Deprived of her desired target, ashamed that her father had been duped so badly and had now lost all credibility with the aristos and Queens in Dhemlan—maybe even the whole Realm—she turned on him.
“How can you stand letting her touch you, letting her live here? She’s a whore, Father. Everyone is laughing at you because of her!”
He slipped his hands in his trouser pockets. The smile he gave her was cold and oddly cruel—and made her shiver.
“I know far better than you ever will who and what Surreal is,” he said with a savage pleasantness.
“You couldn’t have known she did that.”
“Since I paid for her education in the best Red Moon houses, I was well aware of what she did—and could do.”
Stunned, Jaenelle Saetien stared at him. “You knew?”
He took a step toward her. She took a step back. He had a look in his eyes that he usually had when he was about to take one of his funny turns and needed “quiet time,” but that look had never been focused on her. Until now.
She turned and tried to open the door—and felt the heat of his body at her back as his left hand gently pressed against the door next to her head.
“You want to twist a verbal knife?” he crooned. “All right, then. Here’s another truth about your family. I was a pleasure slave for centuries before your mother was born and for a lot of years after that. I was on my knees pleasuring hundreds, maybe thousands of bitches over the years. I was very good at providing pleasure. I was even better at turning pleasure into pain. One way or another, I destroyed every bitch that used me—including the ones who were barely older than you. Anything you want to say about that?”
She shook her head. She didn’t want anything except to get out of that room and get back to the school.
“Now,” he continued. “Who told you about Surreal in a way guaranteed to have you come home hurling accusations instead of talking to your mother?”
Jaenelle Saetien shook her head. Considering what had happened to Amara and those other girls, she wasn’t going to give him names.
He leaned closer, his breath warm against her cheek. “You’ll have dinner on a tray in your room. In the morning, I’ll escort you back to the school, and you will introduce me to your new friends. And just in case you’re considering slipping out in the middle of the night . . .”
Soft thunder rolled through the Hall, and she felt the Black shields and locks that effectively turned the Hall into a prison.
“Either I escort you in the morning and you introduce me to your friends, especially the one who was so helpful in telling you about Surreal, or you don’t go back at all.”
“I have to go back to school!”
“No, you don’t. I am in no way obliged to permit you to return to that school, especially if this bitch behavior is what you’re learning from the other students.”
He was so angry right now, he wasn’t going to listen. Well, she’d swallow her disgust and make nice. “I don’t need a tray in my room.”
“If you don’t want dinner, that’s your choice, but you’re not sitting at a table with my wife tonight.” He reached down and closed his hand over the doorknob. “One other thing you should know. Surreal was a very talented and very expensive whore, and she earned a good living doing it. But she was, and still is, even better as an assassin—and you’ve just given her a reason to sharpen her knives. Something to think about this evening.” He opened the door and stepped back. “We’ll leave early enough for you to be at school for your first class. Don’t procrastinate getting ready tomorrow morning. We leave when I’m ready, and I will deliver you in whatever you are, or aren’t, wearing.”
“Why are you being so mean?” she whimpered.
“If you don’t know, that will give you something else to think about this evening.”
The look in his eyes, that smile . . . She came close to wetting herself out of fear.
She’d never been afraid of her father, even when he was starting to take one of his funny turns. But the man standing in the study wasn’t really her father, and she wanted to get away from him as fast as she could.
* * *
◆ ◆ ◆
Daemon walked into Surreal’s bedroom without waiting for permission since he didn’t think she would grant it right now.
He’d expected fury, was prepared to listen to her rage about the girl acting like a snippy bitch. He didn’t expect to walk into the room and find Surreal staring out a window and crying.
“Surreal.” He came up behind her, wrapped his arms around her waist. “Sweetheart, don’t cry. This isn’t worth your tears.”
“Hell’s fire, Sadi. How did you stand me when I was her age?”
He kissed her temple. “You weren’t like that.”
“Yes, I was. So full of myself and needing to prove . . . something. I looked like an adult. I looked like a woman with an exotic heritage. But inside . . .” She sniffed. “Whenever you went to one of those flats or secret places you owned, you slipped away from the Queen who owned you and her court in order to get away from the bitches and their demands. And then I would show up, and you were so patient, so tolerant of this girl who wanted your attention just like everyone else.”
“I enjoyed your company.”
“Until the night I asked you to show me what it was like to be in bed with Hayll’s Whore.”
His arms tightened around her. “Stop.”
“Snippy little bitch thinking of no one but herself, never considering how that might hurt you. And then you gave me a taste of what it was like to be with Hayll’s Whore.”
“Surreal, stop.”
“I’m so sorry for what I said that night, and you were right to do what you did.”
“It was a long time ago.”
“I was afraid of you after that. Until I met Jaenelle Angelline all those years later, I was afraid of you.”
“I know.” He sighed. “You’re still afraid of me.”
“Some days,” she agreed. “Some aspects of you.”
He called in a handkerchief and handed it to her.
Surreal wiped her nose. Then she sighed and leaned against him. “Daemon? Could Jaenelle Saetien just be your daughter for a little while?”
“Why? She had no right to speak to you that way about your former profession, but—”
“It’s not that.” She hesitated, and he felt her brace for his reaction to what she would tell him. “When she said I wasn’t her mother and that she wished I was dead, I felt something inside me break, and I don’t know if I can fix it. I don’t know if anyone can fix it. But I’d like to not deal with her for a few days.”
“I’ll take care of it.” He kissed her temple again. “Talk to Tersa.”
She laughed, a reluctant sound. “I don’t think Tersa knows much about adolescent girls.”
“She knows about being broken.”
“Yeah, I guess she does.”
They stood quietly for several minutes.
“Why don’t you rest for a while?” Daemon said. “Then you and I will go down and have dinner.”
“Your daughter doesn’t want to dine with us?”
She tried to sound amusing, but he heard pain under the words. “She hurt my wife, my friend, my partner. I don’t want her dining with us tonight.”
Surreal turned in his arms. “She needs you, Sadi.”
“And in the morning she’ll have all my attention.” He kissed her mouth softly. “But you need me tonight.”
TWENTY-SEVEN
The following morning, Daemon met Beale and Holt in the butler’s pantry. The third time Beale offered the plate of shredded-beef-and-cheese sandwich triangles, Daemon conceded that he wasn’t going to be offered the coffee sitting on Beale’s desk until he took a sandwich.
He accepted a sandwich, received a mug of coffee, and waited. He didn’t need to ask; he could tell by the look in their eyes that the whole staff knew about Jaenelle Saetien’s emotional firestorm as well as what was said.
“It is difficult to know what to do with a girl that age,” Beale said. “Your father had less trouble, despite the number of Ladies living here, because the coven was united by a single purpose—to be here with Lady Angelline. And while there were . . . eruptions . . . on occasion, it was the opinion of the senior staff that those moments were caused by an excess of feelings.”
“Once Prince Yaslana came to live here, he simplified things,” Holt said. “He’d haul whoever was erupting outside, hand her a sparring stick, and wouldn’t let her go back inside until she’d worked off enough of the energy behind those feelings. She could yell about anything while they were sparring, but the moment there was any meanness in the words, he’d put her in the dirt—and he didn’t care who she was.”
“I don’t have that kind of fighting skill,” Daemon said dryly.
“You have your father’s skill for cold disapproval,” Beale pointed out. “That is just as effective, if more subtle.”
“There was intentional meanness in what Jaenelle Saetien said yesterday.” The words had wounded Surreal so deeply, he wasn’t sure she would fully recover. Now he wanted to know what the other men thought.
Beale and Holt exchanged a look before Beale said, “What the young Lady said about Lady Surreal’s former profession was driven by embarrassment coupled with a sense of drama. She had been mortified in front of friends and wanted to make a scene.”
“Or was encouraged to make a scene?” Daemon asked.
“Possibly,” Holt said after a moment.
“The young Lady is displaying an attitude of entitlement with the staff that wasn’t there before she began attending that school,” Beale said.
It kept coming back to that school, where many aristo families sent their children because it was supposed to have the finest education—and also provided those children with a way to meet their equals. When he’d considered the school as the place for the next stage of his daughter’s education, he’d seen no cause for concern. But Jaenelle Saetien’s presence at the school seemed to be cracking the veneer of polite behavior, giving him a whiff of some kind of rot underneath.
“I suggest assigning the more seasoned members of the staff to take care of any requests coming from Jaenelle Saetien,” Daemon said. “I’m sure they know how to respond to an attitude of entitlement.”
Beale’s eyes sparkled with sharp amusement and understanding. “Very well, Prince. I will adjust the assignments whenever the young Lady is at the Hall.”
Daemon handed the empty mug to Beale. “The eruptions that follow will be educational for the younger staff.”
“Indeed they will be.”
“What are you going to do about Jaenelle Saetien’s behavior?” Holt asked.
“That will depend on what I see when I escort my daughter back to the school.”
* * *
◆ ◆ ◆
Jaenelle Saetien sat in the seat next to her father as he caught the Red Wind and guided the small Coach toward Amdarh. She wished he’d chosen to ride the Black, which would have gotten them to the city so much faster. As it was, they wouldn’t reach the school much before the first class.
She’d had plenty of time to think last night. She’d been horrified to learn her father had been a pleasure slave and didn’t want to think of him doing some of the things the men did in an erotic romance she’d recently borrowed from Borsala. It wasn’t his fault that he’d been forced into doing those things, at least until he became powerful enough to refuse. But that woman had chosen to sleep with who knew how many men—for money.
“I suppose you want me to apologize to her,” she said when the silence had dragged on so long she couldn’t stand another minute of it.
“It wouldn’t be sincere, and I’m sure you’d phrase it in a way that the words would add salt to an open wound,” he replied coolly. “So, no, I don’t want you to apologize. In fact, I don’t want you to say anything to my wife that isn’t courteous.”
“Your wife? How can you—”
“And to help you remember this warning, since I will not say it again, every time you are discourteous to Lady Surreal, whether by word or deed, you will forfeit half of your spending money for the next quarter of the year.”
Jaenelle Saetien stared at him. “You’d punish me for having opinions?”
“There is a difference between opinions and deliberate cruelty. You were cruel. You will not be again without paying a price.”
“And you’re never cruel?”
“I am. Often. I can rip the heart out of someone with a few well-chosen words. That’s why I know that sometimes wounds made by words never fully heal.” He finally looked at her. “That’s why I know you caused more damage than you realize, although I suspect it was exactly what you and your little friends intended. Now you have to live with the consequences.”
She swallowed hard. “What consequences?”
“That’s something we’ll all have to find out.”
They didn’t speak for the rest of the trip. Then Daemon dropped from the Winds and guided the Coach to . . .
“Father!” she yelled. “You can’t set a Coach down on the school green!”
Ignoring her, he did exactly that. It caused a commotion. Of course it did. Then, as he escorted her out of the Coach and onto the green, she felt something flow from him, undiluted and unrestrained. That woman had explained it was the sexual heat that was part of a Warlord Prince’s nature, but immediate family members—like the man’s children—had a little protection from that heat. But this was more than what she felt at home.
This was dangerous.
She saw her friends hurrying toward them. She saw Zoey and Titian head toward them before Daemonar grabbed them, turned them around, and shoved them in the opposite direction. Then she saw Daemonar and that instructor Prince Raine walking toward them—and everything about the way Daemonar moved screamed the need for caution.
When her friends were gathered in front of them, her father crooned, “Introduce me.” It wasn’t a request.
“This is my father, Prince Daemon Sadi,” Jaenelle Saetien said, trembling.
“You never told us he was so handsome,” Hespera cooed
.
“Father, these are Ladies Amara, Borsala, Leena, Tacita, and Hespera. Lords Dhuran, Clayton, and Krellis. And this is Lady Delora.”
He smiled a cold, cruel smile and purred, “Dorothea.”
She took his arm, mortally embarrassed that he was about to have one of his funny turns in front of everyone. “No, Father. You must have misheard me. This is Delora.”
The smile didn’t change, but the look in his eyes when he focused on her . . .
*Daemonar,* she called as she released her father’s arm and took a step back. *Help me.*
* * *
◆ ◆ ◆
“May the Darkness have mercy,” Daemonar muttered as he lengthened his stride. He knew what the Black felt like when Sadi went cold. And he knew what it felt like to be near the Sadist.
“What’s wrong?” Raine asked, matching his stride.
“You should get out of here.”
“I’m an instructor, and there is clearly a problem.”
“You notice no one else is rushing out to meet the problem?”
“You think this has something to do with the rumors that were sweeping the school yesterday?”
“Yeah.” More likely, the Sadist had come there today to find the source of those rumors.
“Good morning, sir,” Daemonar called when he was a few strides away from the group. Knowing he was about to dance on the knife’s edge, he took the last steps toward the man he always loved and sometimes feared.
Today was a day it was prudent to fear.
“May I be of service?” he asked.
Those gold eyes, glazed and sleepy, stared at Prince Raine for much too long before the Sadist said, “Who is this?”
“Prince Raine. My tutor. You met when I started classes.” He waited a moment. “Sir?”
“Escort Lady SaDiablo to her class.”
“It will be my pleasure.” Wrapping a hand around Jaenelle Saetien’s arm, he eased her away from the group—and the man—before escorting her across the green. He felt relieved when Raine hurried to join him.