by Anne Bishop
He jerked back, snarling, as fingers snapped in front of his face.
Jaenelle stared at him. “I don’t know where your brain went just now, but, Mother Night, Daemon, judging by the way your eyes glazed, we don’t have time for whatever you were thinking.”
They had all the time they wanted. Who would dare interrupt them?
“I’m going to Dharo today, remember?”
Leave? She was going to leave?
“Daemon. You have a guest, remember?”
Theran. Stranger. Male. Rival.
“Daemon.”
Her hand clamped over his wrist. Physically, he could break the hold without effort. But her touch, her will, was the only chain strong enough to keep him leashed.
He shifted on the bed, trying to find a comfortable position, trying not to snarl at her for denying him the right to eliminate a rival.
She blew out a breath and kept her hand clamped on his wrist.
“You won’t be able to settle if I stay here today, and if you don’t settle, Prince Theran is going to end up dead.”
She was right, and they both knew it.
“And you need to get out of this room until it’s been cleaned and aired.”
She was right about that too. But . . .
He wasn’t Daemon anymore. Not completely. That other side of him was swimming close to the surface, wanting to dance, wanting to play, wanting to give her a little taste of fear while he aroused her body and produced a banquet of climaxes ranging from wild screams to soft, helpless moans.
He caught the back of her neck and pulled her forward gently, carefully, implacably. His mouth opened and hovered a breath away from hers.
“Kiss me.” Not a request. A purring command.
She trembled a little as her mouth touched his. As her tongue touched his.
A soft kiss. A lingering kiss that soothed with the promise of fire at the end of the day.
He eased back and shoved his brain and libido—and the Sadist—away from all the thoughts of what his body wanted to do with hers.
“Am I forgiven?” he asked.
“For last night? Yes. For eating the last bite of the seafood omelet? I’ll have to think about that.”
He looked at the tray and realized they’d done a fair job of cleaning the plates. “I didn’t drink any of the coffee,” he muttered.
Jaenelle bared her teeth in a feral smile and lightly pinched his cheek. “That’s why you still have all your fingers.”
Daemon stepped out of the Consort’s suite and felt the dark presence in the rooms across the corridor. He shivered as he stared at the door to his father’s sitting room.
As much as he’d told Jaenelle in an effort to explain last night, there was so much more he hadn’t said. Couldn’t say. Not to her.
For one thing, he wasn’t stable, wasn’t sure he could be trusted around her—and that scared him to the bone.
He crossed the corridor, knocked on the door, and waited for his father’s deep voice to give him permission to enter. Barely pausing to close the door, he hurried to the chair where Saetan was reading a book, and sank to his knees.
“Father.”
Saetan closed the book, then removed and vanished his half-moon glasses. “What’s wrong?”
Jaenelle’s lack of anger and her willingness to understand had helped him maintain a crust of calm, a thin layer of control, that had hidden a seething ugliness for a little while.
But here, now, he faced a man who wouldn’t hesitate to punish him if he needed to be punished, who wouldn’t hesitate to hurt him if that was needed to pay the debt. Who would understand the depth of what he’d done wrong.
“Father,” he said, his voice breaking. “I hurt Jaenelle. I scared Jaenelle.” Those words would mean little to most people, but Saetan would know what it would take to frighten Witch.
“Tell me,” Saetan said.
He told Saetan everything. Everything. And when he was done, he pressed his face against his father’s legs . . . and wept.
Hell’s fire, Mother Night, and may the Darkness be merciful, Saetan thought as he stroked Daemon’s hair, the movement of his hand weaving a soothing spell around his son.
It could have been worse. Could have been much worse. This was a painful reminder that Daemon’s mind and sanity had been shattered twice—and no matter how strong the man, no matter how well he healed, there were always scars, always permanent damage. But he could help his boy deal with the fears stemming from last night.
“Are you ready to listen?” Saetan asked quietly.
What worried him was the certainty that if he told Daemon to strip and lie on the floor to be whipped until there wasn’t any skin left on his back, Daemon wouldn’t hesitate, wouldn’t question—as long as the punishment came with the promise that Jaenelle would truly forgive him for last night.
Daemon nodded, his face still pressed against Saetan’s legs.
“I’m here because Jaenelle asked me to come—not because she needed me, but because you did.”
“She needs a Healer,” Daemon whispered.
And you need more than a Healer. And the witch who had the skill to mend what had been broken was currently in the suite across the hall. “I’ll see to it, and I will tell you what is needed. I’ll also find something to do with your guest.” And wouldn’t that be fun?
“Now,” he said, giving Daemon’s hair a tweak, “you need some rest, so I want you to wash your face, strip down, and get into my bed.”
He felt the jolt, recognized the reason. A Warlord Prince was what he was, and letting another male in his bed for any reason was an unspoken testimony of love. His bed had been forbidden ground, but every one of his boys had been allowed to have a nap there when they were feeling shaky or heartsore. Sometimes he had joined them, had held them while they whispered their little hurts and secrets; sometimes he sat in a chair by the bed, reading. Either way, his boys knew they were safe there, protected there. And sometimes knowing that was all they needed.
“Really?” Daemon asked, with just enough doubt to rip at Saetan’s heart.
“Really. I’ll even read you a story after I take care of a couple of things. Go on, now.”
Daemon got to his feet, unable to hide how shaky he was physically and emotionally. He swallowed once, twice. Then he rushed to the bathroom and slammed the door shut.
A moment later, aural shields went up around the bathroom to hide the sounds of Daemon being violently sick.
Sighing, Saetan went across the hall and knocked on the door to Jaenelle’s sitting room.
Fresh from a bath, she was bundled in a robe, her golden hair still damp. He saw no fear in the sapphire eyes that assessed him, but he did see worry.
Using Craft, he floated a footstool over to her chair and sat down in front of her.
“How is he?” Jaenelle asked.
“First things first. Was this rape?” Am I going to have to execute my son?
He saw the shock in her eyes, quickly followed by anger. “No.”
“Are you saying that to protect him because he’s your husband?”
“No.” Her voice was icy and knife-edged. “I’m saying that because it wasn’t. He gave me a choice, Saetan. He asked me to stay, but he told me I could go. I chose to stay.”
Sick relief washed through Saetan. Daemon hadn’t remembered giving her a choice, and even though the word had remained unspoken, the fear that he’d crossed an unforgivable line had been in every word Daemon had said.
“You need to see a Healer, witch-child.”
“I am a Healer.”
And a Black Widow and a Queen. One of the three witches in all of Kaeleer who had a triple gift.
“Then I need an accurate list of your injuries.” Jaenelle was his adopted daughter; Daemon was his son. More than that, he had been her Steward. This wouldn’t be comfortable for either of them, but they were going to have this conversation. “Before you try to shrug this off because you’d rather not be frank wit
h me, you should keep in mind that whatever broke in Daemon last night may stay broken unless it’s fixed in a hurry, and if it stays broken, your husband may not be able to do more than imagine making love to you again.”
“Does he really know what happened last night?”
Saetan frowned. “I had the impression he explained some of this to you.”
“Yes, he did.” Jaenelle studied him for a moment, then pushed back the sleeves of her robe and held out her wrists.
Ugly bruises. His own wrists ached in sympathy.
“That’s the worst of it,” Jaenelle said, smoothing the sleeves back down. “There are a few other bruises from love bites, but considering where they’re located, I’m not going to show you.”
On the basis of Daemon’s fears, he’d been prepared for something far more serious, and he found himself comforted by Jaenelle’s tone of amused snippiness.
“I’m a bit sore, but that has to do with quantity, not his temper, and at any other time, he’d be smugly sympathetic about that,” Jaenelle continued. “And between the exercise I got with Nighthawk and Daemon, my thighs are sore enough that I’m not interested in riding anything for a couple of days.”
Saetan gave in to the smile tugging his lips. “That’s it?”
“That’s it.”
His smile faded. Couldn’t be all of it. “He scared you. That’s the sticking point for him. He scared you.”
“Yes, he did,” Jaenelle replied quietly. “He didn’t know who I was, Saetan. He didn’t know where he was. He was caught in some twisting memory, and when I realized that, I also realized that if he really tried to hurt me, I was going to have to hurt him, because he would be able to live with a physical injury much easier than he could live with the knowledge that he’d done more than give me a couple of unintentional bruises.”
“Could you have hurt him?” Saetan asked. “Are you strong enough that you could have stopped him?”
She folded her right hand into a loose fist. When she opened her hand . . .
Her fingers no longer had human nails. These were cat claws, the kind that could do serious damage with even a glancing blow.
“I see,” Saetan said softly. A physical wound, even a permanently crippling one, would have been less destructive for Daemon. She had known that—and her choice of weapon would have shocked any man back into the present.
“Well.” Jaenelle closed her right hand, then fluffed her hair with her normal fingers. “I’m heading out to Dharo. Aaron should be here by now.”
“Oh?” He kept his voice carefully neutral, but he wondered if Jaenelle was being honest about her own emotional state. He understood her summoning him in the early-morning hours so that he would be here when Daemon most needed him, but summoning Aaron could indicate a need to escape.
“Oh.” Those sapphire eyes looked through him—and understood everything he didn’t say. “The purpose of the visit has changed, but the arrangements were made several days ago. I’m not hurt, Papa. I promise you. I’m . . . shaky. I won’t deny that. But I’m not hurt.”
He nodded.
She laid her hand on his. “Will you stay over today? Be here for him? I think you can do more to help him heal right now than I can.”
“Yes, I’ll stay.”
Her fingers curled around his. “Daemon can’t go back to Terreille. In memory of a friend, he’ll try to do what’s right, but he can’t go back to Terreille.”
“He has no defense against the memories anymore, does he?”
“No. His mind and his sanity are intact. He may feel broken right now, but that’s a surface feeling, an emotion. Last night didn’t actually break him. I did descend into the abyss during one of the times he fell asleep, and I made a thorough assessment of his mind, so I’m sure of that. But he’s going to be fragile for a while. If it’s needed, Lucivar can go to Dena Nehele.”
“If Lucivar goes to Dena Nehele, he’ll walk in ready to fight.”
Jaenelle huffed. “That’s not new. Lucivar walks into every place ready to fight.”
Saetan laughed softly. Hard to deny the truth about his Eyrien son’s temper. “All right.” Raising her hand, he kissed her knuckles, then let her go. “You head out to Dharo. . . .”
“And you’ll look after our guest?” Jaenelle asked knowingly.
“That I will. But first I’m going to read my boy a story. I had thought of reading him Unicorn to the Rescue! or Sceltie Saves the Day—”
Jaenelle’s silvery, velvet-coated laugh eased his heart and vanished his concern about this child.
“—but I don’t think he’d appreciate the humor of being read a story appropriate for his nephew,” he finished. “At least, not today.”
“No, I don’t think he would. Not today.”
When their laughter faded, Jaenelle called in a small wooden frame Black Widows used to hold their tangled webs. “That room needs to be cleaned and aired before Daemon can go back in. I think Helene will find this useful. Marian and I have been working on a way to cleanse a bedroom after a Warlord Prince goes through a rut. The vial is opened with a basic housekeeping spell. Once it’s triggered, the web will absorb the psychic scents in the room, while the oil in the vial absorbs the physical odors. The whole thing takes a couple of hours. When it’s done, the spider silk of the web will look thick and greasy. Same with the oil. We haven’t figured out how to cleanse the frame or vial after it’s been used, so the whole thing should be put in a shield and burned with witchfire, then buried so the ash doesn’t drift on the Wind.”
He had to marvel that no one else had ever thought of this. Of course, there probably hadn’t been that many friendships between Black Widows and hearth witches, and until Marian and Jaenelle started working together to create specific spells, no one, to his knowledge, had thought to combine those two kinds of Craft.
“Yes,” he said. “I’m sure Helene will find this useful.” Setting it aside a moment, he asked about something that had troubled him in Daemon’s story. “Witch-child, you must have known Daemon wasn’t in the best frame of mind. Why did you wear something that . . . ?” If she weren’t his daughter and his Queen, he wouldn’t have any trouble in phrasing the question.
“Why did I wear an invitation?” she asked.
He nodded.
She fluffed her golden hair. The look she gave him was a little amused and embarrassed. “It’s been said that when a man is feeling a bit broody about something, sometimes he wants sex as a comfort but doesn’t feel secure enough to ask for it.”
The thought of Jaenelle’s coven exchanging confidences about their husbands and/or lovers made him want to run and hide, but he just sat there and nodded.
“I thought Daemon was feeling moody about Jared, about remembering a friend who was gone, but I hadn’t realized it was more than that until it was too late. Anyway, I was reading a story, and the clothes the woman was wearing had caught the man’s interest, so . . .” Jaenelle shrugged. “I knew if Daemon wasn’t interested, he wouldn’t notice the clothes and would be oblivious to the invitation.”
“I beg your pardon?” Saetan blinked, sure he’d misheard. “Daemon wouldn’t notice what you were wearing? Daemon?”
“Yes, Daemon.”
“Witch-child . . .” He shook his head. “Maybe he pretends not to see, but he does notice.”
“Before Surreal went back to Ebon Rih, we went shopping in Amdarh, and she picked out some things that she swore would make Daemon’s tongue hit his toes and have his eyes roll back in his head.”
“What a lovely picture,” Saetan muttered.
“So I was trying the outfit on later that evening and wondering if I really had the nerve to wear it when Daemon walked into the bedroom. I don’t remember what he’d been working on that day, but he looked exhausted. Before I could say anything, he stared at me for a moment, then told me I wasn’t dressed warmly enough for the weather since a bad winter storm had hit a couple of hours before. He bundled me up in his winter robe, stuff
ed my feet in two pairs of socks—a pair of his over a pair of mine—made us both a hot drink, tucked us into bed, and promptly fell asleep.”
Saetan pressed his lips together to hide his smile. Daemon’s robe. Daemon’s socks. The clues had been there, but neither Jaenelle nor Daemon had recognized the significance.
“That’s not the only time it’s happened,” Jaenelle said. “It’s a comfort.”
“How so?”
So much understanding in those sapphire eyes. “I don’t ever want him to feel like sex is a duty. The fact that he’s sometimes blind to an invitation means he doesn’t feel obliged to perform.”
“Did you wear that outfit on another night?”
She hesitated a long time. “Yes.”
“And did you get the response Surreal said you would?”
“Not exactly.”
But judging by the sudden color flaming her cheeks, she had definitely gotten a response.
He stood up, kissed her forehead, picked up the frame with the web, and walked to the door. Then he turned back. “Are you sure there are no other injuries, witch-child?”
“I’m sure.”
That assurance helped, especially when he walked out of Jaenelle’s sitting room and found Beale, Helene, and Jazen standing in the doorway of the Consort’s bedroom, a look of shock on their faces.
“Problem?” he asked softly. When they turned toward him, he raised a finger to his lips. “Prince Sadi is in my suite. It would be best not to disturb him.”
Helene looked from him to the bedroom and back again. “Was anyone hurt?” she asked in a hushed voice.
They stepped aside for him, and when he stood in that doorway, he understood the question.
Nothing outwardly wrong with the room. Nothing broken or damaged. Even the bed didn’t look unduly messy.
But the psychic scents in the room, combined with the muskiness of sex, made his own body tighten. Rage and fear filled the room, along with a hatred so deep it caught in the back of the throat like a bitter mist. If he’d walked into that room without already knowing both people were safe and unharmed, he would have been tearing the Hall apart to find Daemon and Jaenelle, certain one or both would be desperately hurt.