The Queen's Bargain

by Anne Bishop

  Daemon took the other seat. “Checking up on the other estates.”

  Lucivar studied his brother. Daemon had been different since Jaenelle Saetien’s Birthright Ceremony. Happier. Warmer. Closer to the way he’d been when he’d been married to Jaenelle Angelline. Now Daemon felt jagged—and there were shadows in the depths of those gold eyes.

  “You okay?” he asked.

  Daemon shrugged, a dismissive move. “Have a bit of a headache.”

  “What’s the witchling done now?”

  Daemon laughed. “She has been pestering to have a special-occasion cake made. She made a sufficient nuisance of herself that Mrs. Beale came to my study to discuss it.”

  “Did Mrs. Beale bring her meat cleaver?”

  “Of course she did.” Daemon crossed his legs at the knees. “Since I have my own kitchen in the family wing, which is still a sore spot as far as Mrs. Beale is concerned, I offered to help Jaenelle Saetien make the cake if she wanted one so badly.”

  “Sounds fair.” His children often made the biscuits while he prepared another part of the meal on Marian’s resting nights. The biscuits were edible most of the time.

  “I thought so. Despite my explaining how much of each ingredient had to be added, she was a bit . . . slapdash . . . about it, because measuring took time and stirring took time.” Daemon smiled. “Then she announced that there was something she had to do and that she would be back in a few minutes.”

  “Yeah, I’ve heard that excuse. It’s your own fault—and mine—for having bright, clever children.”

  “Hmmm. Well, my clever child bounced into the kitchen about thirty minutes later to find her papa reading a book and the cake ingredients looking exactly the way she’d left them. When she started to express her disappointment, I reminded her that I had offered to help her make it, not do the work, and since she didn’t want the cake enough to put any effort into making it, there would be no further pestering of Mrs. Beale or me or anyone else, because further pestering would result in a loss of privileges.”

  “Would the cake have been edible?”

  “Not likely. But that, too, would have been a lesson.” Daemon seemed to weigh something before finally asking, “Did your two behave differently after receiving their Birthright Jewel? I don’t remember them being different, but I didn’t see them every day.”

  “Titian shied away from doing any kind of Craft for about a month because, once she had her Summer-sky Jewel, doing even basic Craft was important and maybe she’d been doing it wrong. So Marian and I ended up teaching her the same things she’d been doing, because she wasn’t a child anymore; she was a girl. She was certain she would be held to a higher standard because she wore a Jewel.”

  “She wasn’t wrong,” Daemon said.

  “No, she wasn’t wrong.” Lucivar huffed out a laugh. “The boy, on the other hand, acted like he’d finally learned some manners when he received his Green Jewel. That lasted less than a week. In the years since then, he seems committed to being more and more of a pain in my ass. He’s on the cusp of leaving boyhood behind and embracing the changes that come from being a youth. I figure the pissing contests will start in earnest when he’s fully into adolescence.” He considered Daemon’s question and his mood. “You worried about the witchling?”

  Daemon didn’t reply. Then, “I’m starting to appreciate how much thought and care Saetan took when he began training a young witch who wore extraordinary Jewels, how firmly he had to draw the lines. Being special is its own kind of burden.”

  “Maybe it’s like the sexual heat,” Lucivar said. “The people around you have to adjust to its presence. And then the people who mean the most to you get used to it and you’re accepted for who you are.”

  “What if you’re not accepted for who you are?” Daemon asked softly.

  Why did Surreal really leave to check on the estates? Being Eyrien and wearing the Ebon-gray, he didn’t think twice about making blunt observations or asking questions no one else would dare ask. But the jagged feel of Daemon’s psychic scent warned him not to push for answers. Not yet. Instead, he said, “Well, old son, if you ever need reminding of how much you’re accepted, just come here and I’ll knock you on your ass a couple of times. That should help you remember.”

  Daemon laughed, as Lucivar hoped he would.

  No sign of Jillian when he walked Daemon to the front door. No sign of Marian or Titian either, but Daemonar rushed out to say good-bye to his uncle and convey the news.

  “Baby Andulvar made a big fart and sprayed poop all over before Mother got a clean diaper on him,” Daemonar announced.

  “Don’t sound so excited, boyo,” Lucivar said. “You and I are going to help clean up the room.”

  “But, Papa. It stinks in there.”

  Lucivar gave Daemon a lazy, arrogant smile. “Sure you need to go?”

  “I’m certain,” Daemon replied dryly.

  Lucivar watched his brother’s gliding walk across the flagstone courtyard in front of the eyrie. Daemon never looked like he was moving fast, but he covered a lot of ground.

  “He could have stayed and helped.”

  Lucivar looked at his son’s sour expression. “Oh, I expect he has enough shit of his own to deal with. Come on—we need to help your mother.”

  A boy had rushed out to make the poop announcement, but it was a young Warlord Prince who was another step closer to adolescence—and the sharper temper that went with maturing—who helped him clean that room so that Marian could deal with the baby.

  FIVE

  Dillon hunched in his seat on the Rose-Wind Coach, hoping he wouldn’t be recognized by any of the other passengers. Then he sat up and called in a book. Better to look unconcerned. Just a young Warlord traveling for business or pleasure, but certainly not involved in anything sordid.

  Not many of the Blood were taking this Coach. Its destination wasn’t one of the places where the aristos played and courted and pressured the rest of the people in Askavi—Blood and landen—into believing they were too important to follow the Blood’s code of honor.

  He should have thought it through, should have realized a city where aristos flocked wouldn’t be a safe place for someone like him. Carron must have been furious when she learned her father had paid him to leave town. She must have contacted Blyte and the two of them written their vindictive letters to all the aristo girls of their acquaintance as soon as he’d left town. The bitches here had been looking for him, waiting for him. He’d barely settled into the hotel and walked down the street for a meal before they spotted him and the whispers started.

  “That one can’t keep his trousers zipped. He’ll give anyone a ride.”

  “Amusing enough, but he’s from some insignificant branch of some minor aristo family tree.”

  “Are the knees of your trousers shiny, Lord Dillon? Must be from all the time you spend on them.”

  They circled around him like a pack of savage dogs until he had no choice but to pack his trunk and flee to another town. Hopefully the aristos in the next town would be from minor branches of a family, more like his own parents. A place like that wouldn’t be of interest to Blyte’s or Carron’s family. Maybe the aristo bitches would leave him alone for a while.

  Dillon turned the pages of the book, but he wasn’t reading the words. He spent the journey thinking about what he’d been told by the one Warlord who had dared to talk to him after the girls began their vicious whispers about who he was and what he’d already done in girls’ beds.

  “You think you’re being mistreated—and you are,” the Warlord had said. “But at least you’re still alive. My cousin got caught by Lady Blyte’s ‘if you loved me’ spell and couldn’t get free of her until he didn’t have a copper left to buy her presents. Then she destroyed his reputation and his honor, making him sound like a street whore who went with any woman who snapped her fingers.


  “My cousin barely lasted a month after Blyte and her cronies went after him. The young men who had been his friends avoided him, afraid to have their reputations stained by association. His family didn’t know how to counter the verbal attacks. The boy had made a mistake with one girl, the wrong girl, but the girl and her friends kept twisting the story, turning Blyte into the victim of an unscrupulous boy. I offered to report Blyte’s conduct to the Province Queen, but before I was granted an audience, my cousin took a bath in his own blood.

  “He didn’t think it through, though. Didn’t drain the power from his Jewels before he opened his veins. He made the transition to demon-dead and most likely is in Hell now, still trying to make sense of why loving a girl had destroyed his life.”

  Dillon vanished the book and closed his eyes.

  Was that all it had been? A bit of Craft that had made Blyte’s suggestions sound reasonable? A spell that had him believing that he loved her? Was that all?

  If you loved me.

  A spell like that would be expensive—maybe not for the spell itself, but sometimes discretion was the most expensive part of a transaction. It would probably take most of the payoff he’d received from Carron’s father. And he couldn’t go back to the same witch who had taught the spell to Blyte, even if he found out who she was. The Lady was probably a favored customer who paid very well for deceitful spells and unsavory brews. However, if one witch knew how to make that kind of spell, it stood to reason that there were others who were as well trained in the Craft and would know that spell or something similar—and would be willing to teach the spell to a young Warlord for the right price.

  If you loved me . . .

  He could play that game as well as Blyte. If the aristo girls were going to plague him because of things she had said, he should get some compensation for the association—without having to get into a bed.

  SIX

  Standing behind a table in her sitting room, Surreal sorted her notes and reports for the SaDiablo estates and slipped the pages into heavy paper folders, along with the correspondence she carried from District and Province Queens who wanted to convey information to the Warlord Prince of Dhemlan but didn’t want him to think his personal attention—and presence—was required. She didn’t have a study like Sadi or an office like his secretary, Lord Holt. She didn’t want one. She wrote reports whenever she deemed it necessary and handed them to one man or the other, letting them figure out what to do with the requests, the complaints, and the paperwork.

  The arrangement suited her, and the men, wisely, had never asked her to make any adjustments that might have accommodated them better and certainly would have annoyed her.

  She’d spent a couple of days at each estate and a couple more talking to residents of the neighboring villages, the District Queens who ruled those villages, and even a Province Queen who must have heard she was in the area and made an “informal” visit to that village. That had left the District Queen’s court in a state of controlled panic as her First Circle organized a formal dinner for the Queen who ruled over theirs as well as for the Warlord Prince of Dhemlan’s second-in-command.

  After spending days doing the work she’d been doing for decades—and still enjoyed—she admitted to herself that she had missed Sadi’s company, had missed sleeping with him. Missed having sex with him.

  Admitting that much allowed her to consider what had happened with Daemon that last night before she’d fled from the family seat.

  Truth wasn’t always a comfortable beast to ride.

  A Warlord Prince’s bedroom is his private place, and he tends to be more possessive when he’s there.

  She should have heeded Jaenelle Angelline’s warning and instruction.

  Truth, then, before Sadi and Jaenelle Saetien returned from visiting Manny and Tersa in the village.

  She had loved Daemon Sadi for a long time. She still loved him. Had chosen to marry him because he needed to stay connected to the living, and he’d trusted her enough to make the commitment to be her husband. All right, if she hadn’t become pregnant, he wouldn’t have married again after losing Jaenelle Angelline, but once they’d made a child, she became his wife.

  Except she hadn’t become his wife. Not the same way Marian was Lucivar’s wife. She and Sadi had a partnership—a mutual commitment to raise their daughter, to take care of the family estates and the vast SaDiablo wealth, and to rule Dhemlan. There had been a comfortable distance between them. A safe distance between them. Even when they had sex, she had been separate, independent—and always in control of how much she surrendered.

  That night in his bedroom, he’d erased that distance, that safety, had drowned her sense of independence and her ability to choose what she surrendered. He’d made her need with a desperation that was almost a sickness.

  But that had been in his room, in his bed. That seemed to be the key that turned that particular lock, so she would take care to stay out of his personal territory from now on.

  Surreal knew the moment that the Black returned to the Hall. Minutes later, she felt Sadi approach her sitting room. Moving the folders to the sides of the table, she called in her crossbow, already primed to fire, and set it in the center of the table.

  Daemon rapped on the door and took one step into her personal domain before he stopped. He looked at the crossbow, then at her, his lips twitching in what might have been amusement. Or relief?

  “Is that on the table because you found out something at one of the estates that you think I won’t like?” he asked.

  He just stood there. Beautiful. Tempting. His sexual heat flowed into the room, a stealthy coiling around her skin, between her legs. She’d shaken off this damn need while she’d been away, and here it was again, just as fierce, within a minute of her being in the same room with him.

  “The estates are fine.” Her voice held an edge that should have warned him to back off.

  “Surreal . . .” Daemon took another step into the room.

  Surreal placed a hand on the crossbow. He stopped. But the heat . . . In another minute, she’d be on him, tearing at his clothes and trying to arouse him in order to get some relief.

  No. She was not going to surrender to the point of being helpless. Not again. “I accept some of the blame for what happened that night—”

  “Blame? Surreal . . .”

  “—but I am telling you, here and now, that what happened that night will not happen again. You will not do that to me again. Are we clear on that, Sadi?”

  A flash of something in his eyes—pain? regret?—before that beautiful face became a mask that revealed nothing.

  “You have made your wishes very clear, Lady. I will, of course, respect them.” His voice, like his face, told her nothing. “Now that you’re home, I need to be away for a day or two. If Jaenelle Saetien pesters you about having a special cake made, the answer is no. I’ve already had this discussion with her.”

  She’d been gone for days, and now he was leaving without . . . Well, Hell’s fire, she couldn’t exactly say that she needed sex, could she? Wanted, not needed.

  “When are you leaving?” she asked.

  “In the morning. I have some things to finish up here before I go.”

  His psychic scent had an unfamiliar edge, and his physical scent . . .

  As he turned away, she snapped, “Leash the damn heat!”

  Daemon turned his head but not enough to look at her. “The sexual heat is leashed.” He walked out of the room.

  Surreal vanished the crossbow before she did something that couldn’t be undone. She knew what Sadi felt like when the heat was leashed, and he didn’t feel like this. This was more—with something jagged and dangerous mixed in with the heat.

  The man who had walked out of the room wasn’t quite Daemon Sadi and wasn’t quite the Sadist. She wasn’t sure what was happening between them, or why, and she didn�
�t know who would come to her bed tonight. But she was sure that if she wasn’t careful, the man who came to her bed would be something a woman might not survive.

  * * *

  * * *

  “That’s all the immediate concerns,” Holt said as he took the signed letters.

  “Good,” Daemon replied. “I won’t be gone for more than a day or two.”

  “If someone needs to contact you?”

  Daemon stared at his secretary. Holt had been a young footman when Daemon had first come to the Hall, but his service to the family had been invaluable. When Prince Rainier retired from the position of being Daemon’s secretary, Holt had stepped in. Intelligent and discreet, the Opal-Jeweled Warlord had never betrayed a trust.

  “I’ll be in Riada,” he finally said. “Unless there is an emergency, I would prefer not to be disturbed.”

  “I’ll convey that message if required.”

  Daemon waited until Holt left the room before he sagged in his chair and braced his forehead against his fisted hands.

  “. . . I am telling you, here and now, that what happened that night will not happen again. You will not do that to me again.”

  The time away hadn’t done anything to ease Surreal’s distress about what they had done that night or her fear of him the morning after. So. The barriers between them would be reinforced to keep her safe from the full truth of what he was. Doing anything less would be cruel now that she’d made her feelings so clear.

  “Leash the damn heat!”

  He couldn’t contain the sexual heat more than he was doing now. Surreal should know that after living with him for so many years.

  Didn’t matter what she should know. He’d made a mistake, and she was still feeling raw because of it. He wouldn’t make that mistake again, but he had to give her time to let her feelings settle one way or the other.

  Daemon rubbed his temples, trying to ease the pain. Maybe Surreal was right and he wasn’t keeping the heat as tightly leashed as he should. It was hard for him to tell when the pain felt like jagged edges of a broken glass being shoved into his brain.