The Shadow Queen bj-7

by Anne Bishop

  “I’ve tried everything I know.” The Healer was a middle-aged woman who sounded both frustrated and anxious. “I’ve tried every healing spell I know, but there’s nothing to actually heal.”

  Jaenelle called in a small, short-bladed Healer’s knife and made a shallow cut in Rosalene’s hand, following the path of one of those silvery strands. Setting that knife aside, she called in another and pricked her own finger.

  Daemon snarled, a reflex to smelling his Queen’s blood, to knowing her blood ran.

  A phantom caress down his back—a caress that reassured enough for him to leash the instincts of a Warlord Prince.

  As one drop of her blood fell on the shallow cut she had made in Rosalene’s hand, Jaenelle said, “And the Blood shall sing to the Blood. And in the blood.”

  The Healer wet a small square of cloth with a healing lotion and handed it to Jaenelle, who murmured her thanks—and didn’t grumble at him when he took the cloth and cleaned her pricked finger.

  “Clean off her hands again,” Jaenelle told the Healer.

  The silvery strands showed once more, but this time when they faded, no blood seeped up through the skin.

  “I didn’t think to do that,” the Healer said.

  Jaenelle shook her head. “It wouldn’t have made a difference if you had.”

  *Because the spell was made to recognize your blood?* Daemon asked.

  *And yours.*

  “I would recommend drinking a healing brew several times a day for the next couple of days,” Jaenelle told Rosalene. “That will help your body regain its strength and replace the blood you’ve lost.”

  “I can take care of that,” the Healer said.

  “Then I think we’re done here.” Jaenelle looked at him, clearly letting him make the choice.

  He was more than ready to get out of that house, but he had duties as the Warlord Prince of Dhemlan.

  “Everyone needs some rest,” he told Collyn, who was still hovering in the doorway. “I’ll return this afternoon, and you and I can discuss what happened yesterday.”

  He escorted Jaenelle out of that room and down the stairs to the main floor . . . and escape.

  *Daemon, I know you have duties, but I don’t want to stay in this house,* Jaenelle said.

  *We’re not going to,* he said as they left the house and walked to the Coach. *Arrangements have already been made for us to stay at the estate house for as long as it takes to settle this.*

  She stuttered a step. *Is that why Holt came with us? It seemed odd that Beale would assign a footman to look after us for a Coach ride, but I had other things on my mind.*

  *Holt went on to the house to let them know we’re coming.*

  *Ah.*

  She had seemed grimly calm while she’d looked at the body. She had taken care of Rosalene’s hands with her usual skill as a Healer.

  So he wasn’t prepared when she flung herself in his arms and held on with shuddering distress the moment they were safely inside the Coach.

  “Jaenelle . . .” He held her, not knowing what else to do—and more unnerved by this reaction than he’d been by anything else. “Jaenelle, what’s wrong?”

  “Not yet,” she whispered. “Please. I don’t want to talk about it yet, think about it yet. I don’t want to be completely sober when we talk about this.”

  Mother Night. “Isn’t there anything you can tell me?”

  Her eyes were so haunted when she eased back enough to look at him. “Do you know the story of Zuulaman?”

  They had a summer blanket tucked around them—more for the idea of comfort, since it couldn’t relieve what chilled them—and they were both working on their third very large brandies before Jaenelle stopped shivering.

  Daemon kept one arm wrapped around her. He would have preferred the privacy of the bedroom to a locked parlor, but he understood her choice. She wanted this conversation over with before they got into bed to offer each other some comfort and get some sleep.

  “He’s not sane, Daemon.”

  He wasn’t sure he’d heard her correctly. “You think Saetan got so pissed off about this bitch that he decided to take a walk in the Twisted Kingdom in order to deal with her?”

  “I don’t think he decided anything,” Jaenelle said. “I think something about this shoved him over the border. Free fall into madness—and the rage inside that madness is huge . . . and terrible.”

  He had walked in the Twisted Kingdom for eight years, lost in madness. He had lost none of his power during that time, but his madness had been self-destructive. If he’d understood Jaenelle’s reference to Zuulaman, Saetan’s madness tended to look outward. Toward an enemy.

  “Why?” he asked. “What did you see in that room?”

  She shook her head. “The spell in the shirt was an execution, a brutal kind of justice. He was in that room with her as the Executioner. But something changed toward the end.”

  Shivering, she tried to tuck herself closer to him. Since that wasn’t possible, he put a warming spell on the blanket.

  “It changed,” Jaenelle said. “It became personal. For him. Personal enough to break something inside him.”

  She drained her glass, then used Craft to float the decanter of brandy from the table in front of the sofa. She filled her glass and topped off his before sending the decanter back to the table.

  Daemon narrowed his eyes and considered the wobble as the decanter settled back on the wood. Then he considered his slightly glassy-eyed wife.

  Yes, this was the first time she’d tossed back enough liquor to feel the effects since she’d healed and begun wearing Twilight’s Dawn. She hadn’t taken into account that since she no longer wore the Black, her body wouldn’t burn up the liquor as fast.

  So his darling was a lot less sober than she realized. Which meant he could ask the questions he didn’t think she would have answered otherwise.

  “He took Vulchera’s head,” he said, keeping his voice soothing. “Why did he take her head?”

  “It was all he needed.” Jaenelle sipped her brandy. “He didn’t break her Jewels, didn’t strip her power. She’ll make the transition to demon-dead. He’ll make sure of it.”

  “But . . . it’s just her head.”

  “Which contains the brain, which contains the mind, which is the conduit to the Self. Or one of them, anyway. All he needs. He’s going to finish the execution. She bled to death. Slowly. That was what the shirt was intended to do. Bleed her out. He would have sealed her into that room. She would have tried to get out, would have tried to get the shirt off. When she couldn’t do either, when she knew she couldn’t do either . . . There was so much fear in that room. Could you feel it?”

  “Yes, I could.”

  “Bleeding out because she put on a shirt.” Jaenelle laughed, but it was a hollow sound. “I imagine when they burn the body . . . Whatever spell that releases . . . I guess there will be a few men who will sleep better for whatever message rises from that fire.”

  There is nothing he has done that I couldn’t have done, Daemon thought. So why am I so uneasy?

  “That fear while she bled out, that was the first part of the execution,” Jaenelle said. “After she makes the transition to demon-dead . . . That’s when the pain truly begins.”

  “Why?”

  She looked sleepy. Her body was relaxing against him.

  “Because of you. This is about you, Daemon. About him . . . and you. That’s why you need to be the one who helps him come back from the Twisted Kingdom. He’ll answer you.”

  “I don’t know how to do that,” he protested. “I don’t have any training to do that.”

  “You don’t need training. This is about fathers and sons. Lucivar needs to go with you.”

  “Hell’s fire, Jaenelle. Saetan is my father. Do you really think I’ll need Lucivar there to watch my back?”

  She smiled gently. “No, think of his being there as stacking the deck in your favor.”

  Suddenly exhausted, and scared sick of
what he might be facing, he rested his cheek against her head. “When?”

  “Tomorrow after sunset,” Jaenelle replied. “He’ll be done with the execution by then, and I think he’ll go back to the Keep after that.”

  “All right.” His breath came out in a shuddering sigh. “Come to bed with me. Just be with me.”

  They went to bed for rest, for comfort. And as he went through the motions of the rest of the day, talking to Lord Collyn and dealing with the aftermath of the kill, he tried not to think about what might be waiting for him at the Keep tomorrow.

  CHAPTER 27

  TERREILLE

  “ Psst. Gray.”

  Gray tensed. When he’d been in captivity, that sound usually preceded some boy’s attempt to “befriend” him so that he could be blamed for whatever mischief the boy and his friends had done.

  “Psst.”

  He turned toward the sound—and wondered why Ranon was hiding behind the stone shed.

  He moved toward the other man slowly, reluctantly. Ranon seemed hesitant, uncertain. That in itself was a reason to be wary.

  Then Ranon crouched and rested his hand above the ground. When he dropped the sight shield and revealed the wooden box, Gray rushed behind the shed to join him.

  Plants. Lovely little plants ready for a garden.

  “I talked to my people,” Ranon said. “Some of the elders, along with the Queens, traveled to my home village to meet with me. To hear about the new Queen. I told them about Cassidy. I told them she knew about witchblood—a plant that is not unknown in the reserves even though we’d forgotten what it meant. I told them about the flower bed you wanted to plant for her. I mentioned that some of the flowers Cassidy’s mother had sent looked similar to plants that grew in the southern part of Dena Nehele, so they sent these back with me. The Ladies sent notes with the plants.” He called in several folded sheets of paper. “They said some are perennials, some are annuals. Some can winter over. They tried to give me more of a gardening lesson than I wanted, but I figured you’d know what they were talking about.”

  Each plant had a carefully written label attached to its pot. Gray touched each one gently, moved that strangers would be willing to help him make this special part of the garden.

  He looked up, and was about to ask why Ranon was acting so uneasy about offering the plants. But when he looked into the other man’s dark eyes, he understood the risk—and the hope—that had been carried with these plants.

  Would someone from the house of Grayhaven accept plants that came from the Shalador reserves? Would the new Queen accept a gift from the Shalador people?

  “Thank you,” Gray said. “This will make the flower bed even more special.”

  Ranon’s shoulders relaxed, and he smiled.

  “I’ll be ready to plant tomorrow,” Gray said. “I just need to talk to Theran about keeping Cassie occupied for a few hours.”

  “Won’t that be interesting?”

  He wasn’t sure what that meant, but judging by Ranon’s amusement, he didn’t think Theran would share the opinion that tomorrow would be “interesting.”

  Ebon ASKAVI

  When Daemon arrived at the Keep at sunset, he didn’t know what to expect.

  What he found scared him to the bone.

  A sparely furnished room that was heavily shielded, but he couldn’t tell if the shields were Black or had been made by a power more ancient than the Blood—the power of the dragons, who had gifted the Blood with their magic long, long ago.

  He also couldn’t tell if the shields were meant to contain the man who waited for him in that room or contain the rage. The cold, dark, glittering rage.

  He entered the room and walked toward the table that was set a few paces from the door. An awkward place for the thing, which made him think it had been placed there so that no one would have to cross the room under that feral gaze.

  He moved toward the table and the man waiting beside it, and he swallowed hard. When he looked into Saetan’s eyes, he saw the Warlord Prince who had destroyed an entire race so completely, there had been no trace of them left behind—including the islands they had called home.

  And he saw a truth about himself.

  “Prince,” the High Lord said.

  Oh, no. He had no chance of reaching the man if they kept to formal titles.

  “Father,” Daemon said—and saw a flicker of emotion in those glazed gold eyes. He stopped when he reached the edge of the table, still out of reach of lethally honed nails—and the venom in the snake tooth under Saetan’s ring finger nail. “Father, talk to me. Please.”

  No response. Just a terrifying assessment being made by a powerful man who was walking who knew what roads in the Twisted Kingdom.

  I can take him. If it comes to that, I’m strong enough to stop him.

  Strong enough to win—maybe—but not strong enough to come out of that fight intact. Not when he’d be pitting a little extra raw power against thousands of years of experience.

  Which made him glad Jaenelle had held Lucivar back instead of having both of them go to the Keep. One of them needed to survive to take care of the rest of the family.

  If it came down to that.

  Sweet Darkness, please don’t let it come down to that.

  “Father,” Daemon said again.

  Saetan looked at the table. Pressed the fingertips of his right hand on the polished wood. Two sheets of paper appeared beside his fingers.

  Wary, Daemon took a step closer. “What are these?”

  “Names,” Saetan said, his voice a hoarse, singsong croon. “The names of men who didn’t take the bait but were still caught by the trap.”

  Moving slowly, painfully alert in case a simple action gave offense, Daemon drew one of the sheets closer so he could read it.

  Names and places.

  He took her head, Daemon thought. All he needed. What kind of pain did the High Lord extract along with these names in order to collect the full debt Vulchera owed the people she had harmed?

  “Words that were said cannot be unsaid,” Saetan whispered. “But sometimes hearts can forgive when a lie is revealed, and maybe, for some, the truth will let them hold what is most dear.”

  Daemon frowned at the list as he sorted through the layers of messages in those words. Marriages had been broken by Vulchera’s games. There weren’t many women who would forgive a husband’s betrayal of the marriage bed, especially when fidelity was one of the things a man offered as part of the marriage contract. But Jaenelle was sure Saetan’s slide into the Twisted Kingdom was about him and was personal. So if it wasn’t about the wives and broken marriages, it had to be about the children.

  Daemon pushed aside the chill of fear. He couldn’t afford to have Saetan pick up that particular psychic scent.

  Children. Dangerous ground where the High Lord of Hell was concerned.

  “You want me to contact the families of these men?” he asked.

  Saetan’s fingertips brushed the second sheet of paper. “Their lives were torn apart because of a lie. Because some bitch liked to play games.”

  The words started softly and ended in a savage snarl.

  Who are we talking about? Daemon wondered—and felt something shiver through him.

  The rage still filled the room, but something else was building under the rage. Something that could be the spark that would light the tinder and unleash the High Lord’s temper.

  “You don’t know what it’s like,” Saetan whispered. “You don’t know the agony a man can f-feel when he hears those three words: ‘Paternity is denied.’ ”

  The hoarseness in that deep voice. As if Saetan’s throat had been strained by the effort of keeping the rage in—or by screaming to get some of the rage out.

  Daemon had to choose. Had to commit to the fight. If Saetan lost control of that madness-driven rage, he had to strike without hesitation—because hesitating would, most likely, leave him open to an attack that would cripple him enough to take him out of the fight .
. . and leave Lucivar standing alone on the killing field.

  “Father. Talk to me.”

  The silence held for almost too long.

  “When the burden of existing as demon-dead becomes too great, sometimes Hell’s citizens will seek out the High Lord and ask him to finish what was begun,” Saetan said. “So even though I wasn’t informed by any of the Dhemlan Queens, as I should have been, I heard the story anyway.”

  “What happened?” Daemon asked, watching Saetan’s eyes become lifeless and blank of everything but a memory.

  “By his own admission, the Warlord had flirted a few times with the idea of becoming another woman’s lover, but he hadn’t done anything that would force his wife into making a choice about their marriage. They had a son who had gone through the Birthright Ceremony and was irrevocably his by law. But they also had a little girl who hadn’t gone through the Ceremony yet.

  “Whatever trouble he had with the woman, he adored the little girl, and it was for her sake that he trod so carefully when it came to his marriage vows.

  “A few months before his daughter’s Birthright Ceremony, he went to visit a close friend for a few days—an annual house party he and his wife had gone to for several years. But his wife didn’t go with him that year because their boy was feeling poorly, so it was prudent to keep the children at home.”

  Daemon nodded, seeing where the next part of the story was going. “Vulchera was at the house party, playing her games. Did he take the bait?”

  “No. He came close to it because he and his wife were growing more and more unhappy with each other, but he walked out of the bedroom and went to find his friend. By the time they got back to the room, the bitch was gone.”

  “She denied being in his bedroom?” Daemon said.

  “Of course. But his friend’s wife told her to pack her things and leave, and that didn’t sit well with the Lady.”

  “She sent a shirt to the Warlord’s wife.”

  Saetan nodded. “With enough details about his body to make it clear she’d seen him undressed. The day before she’d set her trap, he’d gotten a soaking during some game the men were playing and had stripped off his wet shirt—which she had kindly offered to take into the laundry room, along with a few others.