The Shadow Queen bj-7

by Anne Bishop

  Something quiet, terrible, and predatory filled the room. Something he’d never felt anyplace else or in anyone else—not even Talon, who was the darkest-Jeweled male back home.

  “Explain,” Saetan said softly.

  “She brought seeds from her mother’s garden,” Gray said, “but she doesn’t want to plant them, doesn’t want them to grow in Dena Nehele soil.”

  A moment’s silence as that terrible feeling faded from the room. Then Daemon said, “That’s a prudent decision, Gray. Windblown seeds could spread for miles.”

  Gray looked stricken, and Theran wanted to erase Daemon’s words, even though he’d basically said the same thing earlier that day.

  “What about bulbs?” Lucivar said. “Something that could be contained in pots? Marian does that in her garden when she wants a particular plant but wants to control where it grows.”

  “So does Jaenelle,” Daemon said.

  “That’s certainly a possibility,” Saetan agreed. “But perhaps finding common ground would be a better idea for this first year.”

  “Common ground?” Gray asked.

  “For example, some form of daisy grows in most of the Territories in Kaeleer,” Saetan said. “If you put them all together, you’ll notice differences, but if someone saw one growing in its own soil, it would be recognized as ‘daisy.’ Maybe you should see what plants are native to Dena Nehele that would look similar to the seeds Cassie brought with her.”

  “A flower bed like that would remind her of Dharo but still belong to the place she now calls home,” Daemon said.

  “I don’t know what the plants look like,” Gray said.

  “Write to Lord Burle,” Daemon replied. “Ask him for descriptions of the plants that come from the seeds Cassie brought with her.”

  “But he doesn’t know about gardens,” Gray protested. “He told me that when he was in Dena Nehele.”

  “He has a wife who knows about gardens,” Saetan replied. “A wife who will remember exactly what seeds she gave her daughter. But you send your request to Lord Burle whether he knows about gardens or not.”

  Gray nodded. “Because a male doesn’t interact directly with a Lady unless he’s been formally introduced, especially when he knows a male who is connected to the Lady.”

  “You’ve studied your Protocol,” Saetan said, his voice warm with approval.

  “Yes, sir. Cassie is helping me.”

  I don’t know him, Theran thought, feeling a pang of loss as he watched Gray. I don’t know this man who is sitting there chatting with the High Lord of Hell as if he did it every week.

  “Add your note to the next batch of reports that are sent to me,” Daemon said. “I’ll see that it gets to Lord Burle in Dharo.”

  Gray smiled. “Thank you. I’ll write it tomorrow.”

  Theran cast about for something to say, but he wasn’t comfortable around those men, didn’t want to share anything with them that he didn’t have to share.

  “I have scars,” Gray said quietly, his eyes fixed on the carpet between his feet.

  Another of those strange silences, as if Saetan, Daemon, and Lucivar were hearing more than words.

  “Has Cassie seen them?” Saetan asked gently.

  “Some of them,” Gray mumbled.

  “Do any of them interfere with your ability to have sex?”

  Gray blushed and shook his head.

  “Well, then . . .”

  “I have scars.”

  The pain in those words ripped at Theran’s heart.

  Another beat of silence.

  “If you kiss a girl the right way, she won’t notice the scars,” Daemon said.

  “The right way?” Gray slowly lifted his head. “There’s a right way?”

  Daemon smiled.

  Gray stared at Lucivar, and there was a hint of challenge in his voice. “You didn’t tell me there was a right way.”

  “You’re in the first stage of courtship,” Lucivar said. “Beginner kisses. As long as you don’t drool on the girl or chew her face, you’re doing fine.”

  Saetan and Daemon made pained sounds.

  “What?” Lucivar said. “Let him figure it out for himself. He’s not kissing her below the neck—or he shouldn’t be.”

  “I’m not,” Gray said hotly. “But—”

  “We’ll discuss technique later,” Daemon said quietly.

  Gray swallowed whatever he’d been about to say and sat back.

  “Oh, the joy of dealing with young men,” Saetan said dryly as he looked toward the sitting room door. “Thank the Darkness, I think the Ladies are returning.”

  Theran rose to his feet with the rest of the men, feeling awkward, exposed. Gray had been the one dumping intimate worries in front of men he barely knew, but Theran felt as if he had been stripped naked as well.

  Then Cassidy walked into the room between Jaenelle and Marian—and Gray gasped and rushed over to her, knocking Theran out of the way.

  Gray clamped his hands on either side of Cassidy’s face, his expression horrified.

  “What happened to her face?” His voice began rising to that desperate keening. “Where is her face?”

  “Gray,” Cassidy said, “what’s wrong?”

  “WHERE IS HER FACE?”

  Saetan and Daemon grabbed Gray’s wrists, trying to pull his hands away from Cassidy’s face.

  Theran leaped toward them, wanting to stop them before Gray got hurt, but Lucivar grabbed his arm and yanked him back.

  “Easy, Gray,” Daemon said.

  “WHERE IS HER FACE?”

  Saetan snapped out a sentence that sounded like a command. Theran didn’t recognize the language Saetan spoke, but the tone was sharp, commanding, and angry—and Jaenelle jerked back as if she’d been slapped.

  A moment later, Gray’s keening changed to gasping sobs as he smiled and said, “There it is. There’s her face.”

  “Gray,” Saetan said. “Come with me now. We need to talk.”

  Seeing naked fear on Gray’s face, Theran tried to shake off Lucivar’s hold on his arm—and almost got yanked off his feet.

  “Jared.”

  Green eyes stared into gold. Gray’s hands relaxed and were gently drawn away from Cassidy’s face.

  “Come with me,” Saetan said, still holding one of Gray’s wrists while wrapping his other arm around Gray’s shoulders. “We won’t leave the room. We’ll just go over there so we can talk for a minute.”

  At first there was that audible hitch in Gray’s breathing, the prelude to one of his bouts of mindless terror. Then the breathing evened out. Looking beaten, he let Saetan lead him to another part of the room.

  This time when Theran tried to shake Lucivar off, the Eyrien let him go. Sadi was between him and where the High Lord was talking to Gray, and he wasn’t foolish enough to think Daemon would let him interfere with the discussion.

  “It was just an illusion spell,” Cassidy said, sounding shaken. “To hide the freckles.”

  He hadn’t noticed, hadn’t seen anything different about her. The room wasn’t brightly lit. How in the name of Hell had Gray seen the difference halfway across the room?

  “I’m sorry,” Jaenelle said, looking at Daemon. “It never occurred to me that it would upset him.”

  “Not your fault,” Daemon replied. “But I think Gray does better with changes when he has plenty of warning.”

  The movements looked casual, as if they were drifting from one position in the room to another without any real reason, but when they stopped, Daemon and Lucivar were flanking the women. Theran had the impression that no matter what they personally thought about what had just happened, they would support and defend their wives—and Cassidy.

  Gray looked anxious and uncertain when he and Saetan rejoined their tense little group, and he stared at Cassidy’s face for so long all three women squirmed.

  “Now,” Saetan said, his voice a velvet-coated whip.

  Theran felt his shoulders tighten in response to that sound. This w
as a voice that allowed no challenge, no discussion, no defiance.

  “Every relationship requires compromises,” Saetan said. “So those compromises are going to be established here and now.”

  A moment of silence, as if the High Lord was giving all of them an opportunity to be dumb enough to argue.

  “Since Lady Cassidy’s freckles are important to Gray, they will not be altered in any way,” Saetan said.

  “But . . . ,” Cassidy began.

  “In. Any. Way.”

  Cassidy hunched her shoulders. “Yes, sir.”

  “In return, Gray, you must accept that women like to paint their faces, adding color to eyes, lips, and cheeks.”

  “Why do they want to do that?” Gray asked, his eyes still fixed on Cassidy’s face as if something might disappear the moment he looked away.

  “Boyo,” Saetan said, “I’ve been observing females for over fifty thousand years, and I can’t tell you why they do what they do. Don’t expect to understand how they think; just understand that some things are important to them that are incomprehensible to us, and learn to work with their way of thinking when you have to.”

  “Like putting color on her face?” Gray asked.

  “Exactly,” Saetan replied. “Although . . . a woman using face paints to enhance her beauty can be intriguing.”

  Theran watched Gray’s face change, watched anxiety shift to curiosity.

  “Darkening the lashes, for instance, to draw more attention to her eyes,” Saetan said.

  “Cassie has pretty eyes,” Gray said.

  “Putting a little gold dust on the cheeks—and other places—so the skin glitters in candlelight,” Daemon purred. “But that’s usually reserved for romantic dinners.”

  “Daemon.”

  Watching Jaenelle blush gave Theran a good idea of how those romantic dinners ended—and the room suddenly got much too warm.

  “Now, the hair,” Saetan said.

  Gray whimpered.

  “Changing the color would be an insult to every man who admires beauty, so it will not be changed.”

  Now Cassidy whimpered.

  “However, you, Gray, have to accept that, like their faces, women like to play with their hair, putting it up in different styles or even cutting it.”

  “Cut?” Gray sounded alarmed.

  “Compromise, Prince,” Saetan said in that voice that allowed no challenge.

  After a moment, Gray nodded. “Okay. I won’t get upset if she cuts her hair.”

  “Then we’re agreed.”

  Theran hadn’t heard anyone but Gray agree to anything, but judging by the look on everyone’s face, that wasn’t going to be mentioned.

  Daemon looked at Gray. “There’s still a few minutes before dinner. Why don’t we get some fresh air and discuss that other matter?” And he winked.

  Gray’s eyes widened. He started to move, then stopped and looked at the High Lord. “Sir?”

  “We’re done here, so you two go on.”

  When Daemon and Gray left, Saetan fixed his attention on Cassidy, and Theran felt sorry for her. After all, she’d just wanted to get rid of those awful spots and look a little better. It wasn’t her fault Gray had gotten fixated on the damn things.

  “I didn’t know,” Cassidy said in a small voice.

  “Now you do,” Saetan said in that implacable voice.

  Cassidy brushed her fingers against one cheek. “Maybe . . .”

  “Witchling, if you really think that boy isn’t going to notice if a single freckle is missing, then you have not been paying attention.”

  The whiplash without the velvet coating.

  Theran winced.

  Jaenelle squared her shoulders. “If you gentlemen will excuse us, my Sisters and I need a few minutes to settle before dinner.”

  Saetan tipped his head in a bow and walked out of the room.

  Lucivar kissed his wife’s head and left the room, giving Theran no choice but to follow him to another sitting room.

  “I need some air,” Lucivar said. “How about you?”

  Theran shook his head.

  As Lucivar opened a glass door that led to some kind of courtyard, Theran said, “I guess the High Lord wouldn’t have lashed at them like that if Lady Angelline had still been the Queen of Ebon Askavi.”

  Lucivar gave him an odd look. “Then you would have guessed wrong.”

  CHAPTER 23

  KAELEER

  No sex tonight, Daemon thought as he took off his robe and slipped into bed. Propped up on one elbow, he studied Jaenelle’s face. She’d been broody and unhappy all the way home, and it didn’t look like her mood had changed.

  “Well, things didn’t go too badly,” he said.

  Jaenelle made a sound that was one part laugh and two parts disbelief. “What dinner party were you at tonight?”

  “The point of the evening was to give Gray a foundation for interacting with a Kaeleer Queen, and in that, I think we did quite well.”

  Her eyes widened. “I created an illusion spell to give Cassie more confidence about her looks and ended up scaring Gray out of half his wits, and also managed to stomp on Papa’s toes hard enough to have him angry with me twice, and you think we did well?”

  Daemon raised a shoulder in a half shrug. “Gray got to ask about things that were bothering him, he now has a measuring stick for how to react the next time Cassidy does something that upsets him, and he learned that he doesn’t have to give up the things that are most important to him if he’s willing to yield about other things.” Gauging her mood—unchanged—he added, “And I learned that Lucivar’s idea of a romantic kiss is not drooling on the girl or chewing her face.”

  Jaenelle popped up so fast she almost clobbered his chin.

  “No,” she said. “You’re making that up. He is not that . . . that . . .”

  “Eyrien?”

  “Mother Night.” Jaenelle looked a little stunned, but when her sapphire eyes focused on him, he wished he had the width of the bed between them. And he was beginning to think that teasing her about Lucivar’s sexual skills hadn’t been the best idea. Especially since he knew Lucivar had said that for Gray’s benefit.

  “You have to do something,” Jaenelle said.

  “Like what?”

  “No woman should have to put up with that. And certainly Marian shouldn’t have to put up with that. If that’s Lucivar’s idea of romance, you need to teach him how to kiss properly.”

  “If a man is doing it right, there’s nothing proper about a romantic kiss,” Daemon murmured.

  “Daemon.” She poked his chest with a finger. “Do something.”

  So he did. He kissed her. And when he was done, one of her hands was fisted in his hair, encouraging him not to go too far away.

  “I gave Gray some tips about romantic kissing,” he said as his lips drifted across her face, leaving a trail of delicate kisses.

  “You did?” She sounded breathless, and her scent had shifted toward arousal enough to warm his blood very nicely.

  “Hmm. I don’t think he had his mind on much else through the whole of dinner.”

  “That explains why he was so cheerful,” Jaenelle murmured, tipping her head to one side so that he could nibble on his favorite part of her neck.

  “Lucivar is a more difficult challenge.” He slipped one hand under her nightgown and his fingertips whispered up and down the insides of her thighs.

  Nothing in her eyes now but desire. Nothing in her touch but love as she slipped a hand under the covers and stroked him.

  “I should practice my technique,” he said as he licked the valley between her breasts.

  “Daemon,” she gasped when his fingers found other interesting bits of her to play with. “How much practice do you need?”

  He settled over her, enjoying, for the moment, the thin barrier of fabric between them. “I’ll let you know in the morning,” he purred.

  Her reply was a moan of pleasure.

  TERREILLE

&n
bsp; Theran walked into the parlor in the family wing and flopped on the sofa.

  “Want some brandy?” Talon asked.

  “Sure.”

  He accepted the glass Talon poured for him, then slugged back half the liquor.

  “How did it go tonight?” Talon asked, settling into a chair near the sofa.

  “Well enough.”

  “Is Gray all right?”

  Theran made a sound that might have been a laugh. “Better than I am.”

  “You hurt?”

  He shook his head. He didn’t want Talon to be alarmed; he just didn’t know if he should repeat what he’d been told. Wasn’t sure he wanted Talon to agree with the High Lord’s assessment.

  “Gray is like them,” he said, swirling the brandy so he wouldn’t have to look at Talon. “He fit in like he was just another piece of an intricate pattern. The way he talked with them, listened to them. If he decides to emigrate to Dharo, they’ll help him.”

  “If he decides what?”

  Theran winced. Of course Talon didn’t know about it. Gray hadn’t mentioned it until this morning.

  “I didn’t know him tonight,” Theran said. “He had one of his . . . scares . . .”

  “Damn,” Talon muttered.

  “. . . and they handled it, Sadi and the High Lord. Soothing spells and power. They got him settled in minutes.”

  “Did you think to ask about the spell?” Talon asked. “Sounds like a handy thing to know. Hell’s fire, I’ve tried everything I know and couldn’t get him settled when he was having a bad night.”

  “The High Lord took me aside after dinner and taught me the soothing spell he’d used. He considered it a basic spell and was surprised that it wasn’t part of our usual training.”

  Talon studied him, then sat back in his chair. “You’re circling around something.”

  “Theran’s blade,” Theran said quietly. “Gray and I used to joke about him being my great protector. But Jewels only measure one kind of power, don’t they? Two men can wear the same Jewel, even have the exact same depth of power, and one might be a dominant male, while the other is better as a follower. If Gray hadn’t been captured twelve years ago, if we’d both grown up as we should have, he would have been my defender. He would have stood in front of me. Overshadowed me. Because he’s a Warlord Prince like they are—like Sadi and Yaslana—or he would have been. I could almost see him changing, hour by hour, as he talked with them. The High Lord said that even with his emotional scars, Gray won’t have any trouble settling in Kaeleer if that’s what he decides to do.”