The Queen's Bargain

by Anne Bishop

  He wasn’t going to find either of those things in a Rihland city that catered to aristos. If he was going to be successful, he’d have to settle in some out-of-the-way place and find a girl who was sufficient to his needs and then use the spell for a little while—just long enough to make her love him.

  TEN

  Four pegs, each one as big around as the palm of his hand. A loop of leather went around each peg, one end of the leashes that were attached to the choke collar around his neck. He had to keep the leashes tight, so very tight, to protect the people he loved from what he was. It should have been all right. It had always been all right. Hadn’t it? But now, as the leashes tightened, so did the collar around his neck, choking him until he couldn’t breathe.

  His heart pounded, pounded, pounded in a way that would damage it eventually. His lungs burned with the effort to draw a breath, but he had to keep the leashes tight because . . .

  A hand slapped his shoulder hard enough to sting, and a voice said, “Kiss kiss.”

  Gasping, Daemon looked at the witch now standing beside him. “Karla.”

  “Prince Idiot.”

  A flash of temper. One leash relaxed a little; the strangling collar loosened a little. He sucked in a breath and studied the witch who had been the Queen of Glacia—and one of Jaenelle Angelline’s closest friends.

  She looked old. She looked the way he remembered her in the last years of her life. White hair, lined face, a body that was still straight-backed yet growing frail. But the ice-blue eyes had never changed. He hadn’t been the High Lord of Hell when she made the transition to demon-dead, but he’d known she had settled in Hell near the Gate that was closest to Glacia, in order to keep track of her adopted daughter—Della—and Della’s children and grandchildren.

  “What are you doing here, Karla?”

  “What am I doing here? What are you doing here? This is supposed to be my vision, my dream, my tangled web.” She looked at the pegs, at the leashes, at the collar that had bruised his neck. “Then again, you’re the one who’s in trouble. You need to loosen those leashes before you ruin yourself.”

  “I have to stay in control,” Daemon protested.

  “Not this much. You’ve never held the leashes this tight. No one could for long.”

  “I can. I will.”

  The leash that had loosened a bit with his flash of temper tightened again, choking him.

  “And what price will Kaeleer pay for this self-indulgence?” Karla asked.

  Daemon smiled a cold, cruel smile as one particular leash relaxed around its peg. Unlike the others, this one was leather braided with chain. This one held the Sadist in check.

  “You do not want me to slip this leash,” he said too softly. “Not this one.”

  “And you don’t want to snap this leash along with the rest of them when you start fighting to survive,” she replied, sounding too damn reasonable. “So loosen another one, Sadi.”

  “They’re all there for a reason.”

  “Yes, yes, yes. Temper. Power. Sexual heat.” She waved a hand at the chain and leather. “And whatever that one keeps in check.”

  “I’m a Black-Jeweled Warlord Prince. I have to keep power and temper under control.”

  “Not under this much control. Not all the time. But if you truly believe you have to keep power and temper so tightly leashed, at least loosen that one.” She pointed to the leash he held on the sexual heat.

  “You want me to turn all of that on a woman? You want to see every woman around me begging to be mounted? I don’t.” Even the thought of it reminded him too much of being a pleasure slave and added cold claws to his temper.

  She smacked his shoulder again, making him snarl.

  “Dream. Vision. Me, who was never impressed with the wiggle-waggle even when I walked among the living. What’s done here won’t matter, so do it now.”

  Allowing that leash to go slack around the peg, Daemon drew his first full breath in . . . How long had it been?

  Sweet Darkness, had he really been holding on too tight? And when had that leash frayed to the point of breaking, leaving him in less control than he’d realized? He couldn’t be around other people if the heat wasn’t under control. He certainly couldn’t be around Surreal, since the heat continued to upset her.

  “You have your own bedroom, don’t you?” Karla asked as if she’d heard his thoughts. Maybe she had. As she’d pointed out, he’d somehow landed in her dream vision, not the other way around.

  “I do.”

  “Breathing room, Sadi. You need it. You’re too damn dangerous to indulge in being foolish.”

  Daemon looked thoughtful. Then he shook his head. “I can control it.”

  * * *

  * * *

  “Until you can’t.”

  Karla blinked. Sat back in her chair and stared at the tangled web of dreams and visions. Uneasy, she pushed away from the worktable and used Craft to glide across the room to the small table that held a decanter of yarbarah and a ravenglass goblet. She filled the goblet, then created a tongue of witchfire to warm the blood wine.

  Tersa’s plea hadn’t been directed at her, but that didn’t matter. She had heard, and Tersa’s concerns about Daemon Sadi had been troubling enough that she had woven her own tangled web.

  The demon-dead were not supposed to interfere with the living. When he’d been the High Lord, Uncle Saetan had held that line. All right, he had smudged the line when it came to his own family, but being Jaenelle Angelline’s adoptive father had been necessary, and he’d needed the help of his eldest son, Mephis, as well as Andulvar and Prothvar Yaslana—especially after he ended up being the honorary uncle for Jaenelle’s First Circle.

  No, the demon-dead were not supposed to interfere with the living. But couldn’t the new High Lord of Hell have advisors who no longer walked among the living even if he still did? Couldn’t he have the relief of talking to old friends whose only interest in Kaeleer was their concern for him? Couldn’t he be allowed the luxury—and necessity—of expressing his feelings to someone who had no reason to fear his temper?

  “The time will come when you’ll be needed. I hope you can stay in Hell that long.”

  “Well, Sister, it looks like you were right.” Karla raised the goblet in a salute to the friend who wasn’t there. Of course, if Jaenelle still walked the Realms, Daemon wouldn’t be descending into this troubling state of mind.

  How could she tell him his control was slipping when his reaction would be to try to tighten that control even more—which would only fray the leashes of his self-control faster until either the leashes snapped or his mind shattered? If his mind shattered, there was no one in the Realms anymore who was strong enough or gifted enough to heal him.

  The sexual heat seemed to be the sticking point, but why now? And why, if Tersa had seen something similar, had she come to the Keep to beg for help from someone who didn’t exist anymore instead of telling her son to ease his control of the sexual heat and put up with the annoyance of women—and men—lusting for him?

  Unless Tersa’s tangled web had revealed more than Daemon’s excess of self-control. Unless Tersa had seen something coming that would require the intervention of someone who didn’t exist. At least, everyone believed Witch didn’t exist—except, it would seem, a broken Black Widow.

  “Song in the Darkness,” Karla whispered. “Are you more than that, Sister? If the need is great enough, can you be more than that?”

  Which brought her back to the question of what to do about Sadi.

  She could tell him what she had seen and let him do whatever he liked with the information. Or she could wait and keep watch. Whatever was coming, Daemon would need some old friends, but he wouldn’t go looking for them. She’d just have to be in a place where she would be easy to find—a place where he couldn’t avoid finding her.

  Having made that de
cision, Karla drank the rest of the yarbarah, cleared away her tangled web, and went to talk to Draca, the Seneschal, about taking up residence in the Shadow Realm’s Keep.

  * * *

  * * *

  Daemon woke in the dark, heart pounding, throat feeling bruised. Where . . . ?

  Feeling overheated, he sat up, tossing aside the bedcovers as he used Craft to create a small ball of witchlight.

  His bedroom at SaDiablo Hall. His room.

  By the time he’d returned to the Hall from his trip to Ebon Rih, Surreal had retired for the night, and he’d had no desire to disturb her—and even less desire to tangle with her temper. Time enough in the morning to discuss Jaenelle Saetien’s misbehavior and the whole nutcake incident.

  Getting up, he went to the window and pushed aside the heavy winter drapes that Helene and her staff had hung in the bedrooms recently to keep out the cold. The moonlight shined through the glass—and the chill from the glass whispered over his skin, a refreshing sensation after the bed’s heat.

  He drank water straight from the carafe Jazen brought up each evening when the valet came in to turn down the bedcovers. Daemon thought it was an unnecessary bit of work, since he slept with Surreal most nights, whether or not they had sex, but he knew better than to interfere with any household routines and requirements. He might own the Hall and pay all the bills, but the place ran according to the dictates of Helene, Beale, and Mrs. Beale—and skimping on one’s duties was not acceptable.

  Leaving the drapes open, Daemon drained the power from the witchlight and returned to bed. He stretched out, ignoring the covers as he tried to recall the odd dream he’d been having just before he woke. Something about Karla? Why would he dream about Karla? Couldn’t remember. Besides, he felt languid, lazy, better than he’d felt in weeks.

  The feel of cool air against his bare skin was almost as sensual as a lover’s caress, and he was just floating back to sleep when the door between his bedroom and Surreal’s opened. His mind registered her psychic scent as he breathed in her physical scent—a scent heated by lust.

  “Surreal.” Too languid and lazy to have any interest in sex, even with a woman who had entered his private domain, he drifted toward sleep again.

  Then she climbed on the bed, took his cock in her mouth, and worked him until he swelled to an edgy lust that equaled her own, until he was hard and hungry and needed to be ridden. Spurred by her hunger, he welcomed the pricks of pain from her nails as she impaled herself on him and rode him to a climax that took them both to the razor’s edge of marrying pain to pleasure.

  When she was done, she didn’t settle next to him to cuddle or talk or even sleep. She didn’t say a word. She simply dismounted and went back to her room, leaving him to wonder what had just happened—and why.

  * * *

  * * *

  Surreal washed away the smell of sex—and him—before putting on a fresh nightgown and getting into her own bed. Then she grabbed fistfuls of her hair and pulled, hoping the pain would settle her, would help her think past the wanting that was twisting into something terrible.

  Daemon had always been a demanding lover. He wore the Black and was a Warlord Prince, so that wasn’t surprising. He’d always been a wonderful lover, enjoying the pleasure he gave almost more than his own. He also liked to play, and while that play never physically hurt her, ever since the night when she’d found herself in bed with the Sadist, having sex with Daemon—even being around Daemon—frightened her, because he made her so needy, so desperate for his touch, his kiss, that she couldn’t think past feeling.

  He swore the sexual heat was leashed, but she knew that wasn’t true. It was more now, always more, wrapping around her like a cocoon of soft fur that imprisoned, took away choices.

  That was what the Sadist did—wrapped his victims in desire that they couldn’t escape. Didn’t want to escape until it broke them. Ruined them. Destroyed them.

  She should talk to him again, should demand an explanation for why he was continuing to play with her like this. Like tonight, going to his own room without saying anything. Then that sexual heat drifting from his room into hers, and her waking with hard nipples and a wet need between her legs that wouldn’t be slaked by anything but him.

  She had entered his room, ignoring the danger of being there, not sure if she intended to tell him to stop or to take her, but that one word purred in that deep, smooth voice—“Surreal”—took the decision away from her, had her working him, riding him. And leaving him. Escaping before the Sadist woke and decided to play with her.

  She should talk to him in the morning and insist that he stop this game. But she was afraid, so terribly afraid, that if she forced him to admit that he had turned sex into an addictive torment, he would apologize with genuine sincerity—and never touch her again. And that was a torment she didn’t want to endure.

  ELEVEN

  Jillian dumped a pile of clean diapers at one end of the wooden table in the laundry room, then started folding the dry baby clothes. Daemonar and Titian were eating breakfast, and Marian was taking care of baby Andulvar. That gave her a little time to complete some chores before she escorted the children to the Eyrien school.

  She liked Lord Endar, but she had learned everything he could offer. How much longer did she have to sit in a classroom, listening to the same lessons over and over and over? But if she didn’t go to school . . . When she was younger, she’d wanted to be a guard, a warrior, but she wasn’t sure she wanted that anymore. And she wasn’t interested in the other work that was usually pursued by Eyrien women, so what was there to do? She liked Marian, but she didn’t want to be someone’s helper forever. She wanted . . . She didn’t know what she felt, didn’t know what she wanted, didn’t know . . .

  “What’s wrong with you?” Daemonar asked, approaching the table but not getting too close.

  “Nothing is wrong with me.” What did it say about boys that Daemonar, a Warlord Prince who wore a Green Jewel, could plunge his hands into the guts of a deer but got squeamish about touching a diaper—even a clean one? “If you’ve finished your breakfast, you should clean your teeth and get ready for school.”

  “Something is wrong,” Daemonar insisted. “You’ve been acting . . . odd. You’ve been acting like . . . a girl.”

  Her hands clenched on the little shirt she had just folded. If she didn’t say something, he would keep poking at her until she hit him or started crying, so she said the one thing she knew would rout him. “I used to change your poopy diapers, boyo, so don’t you get bossy with me.”

  She watched color rush into his face, darkening his light brown skin, before he rushed out of the laundry room.

  Bitch, she thought as she finished folding the shirts. She grabbed the pile of little trousers and kept her head down as she felt the return of a male presence. Then, angry with herself for being bitchy and angry with Daemonar for pushing her into being bitchy, she turned and said, “Look, boyo . . . Oh.” She pulled her wings in tighter, an instinctive reaction when facing an adult Eyrien male. Lucivar Yaslana had a hot, volatile temper, but it was seldom displayed inside his own home. Remembering that, she offered a wobbly smile. “Is there something I can do for you, Prince?”

  Lucivar studied her a moment before he started folding diapers.

  Relieved to have some of his attention off her, Jillian folded more of baby Andulvar’s clothes.

  “You should start thinking of another argument, witchling,” Lucivar said as calmly as if he were pointing out something of interest on the mountain. “Right now the boy is of an age where he’s embarrassed that he needed diapers and doesn’t want to think about who changed them. In a few more months—or years if you’re lucky—he’ll still be embarrassed, but he’ll set his heels down and fight . . . and he’ll fight harder for being embarrassed.”

  “It’s none of his business.”

  “You’re probably right.”
Lucivar gave her a smile that she knew meant trouble. “But now it’s my business. So what’s wrong?”

  Trapped. Excuses like being late for school or needing to do something that would get her away from him wouldn’t work. A glance at him told her everything she needed to know—the relaxed wings, the easy stance, the lazy smile. Anyone who didn’t know him wouldn’t realize he was prepared for a brutal fight. And right now she was the opponent he was focused on.

  “I don’t know,” she said, her voice barely audible.

  Lucivar went back to folding diapers. “You must have some idea.”

  “I don’t!”

  They folded clothes in silence for a minute before Jillian blurted out, “I broke the permission-before-action rule. I kissed Tamnar. And he kissed me back.”

  “Oh?” Lucivar didn’t look at her, just kept folding diapers.

  “It wasn’t intentional. It just sort of happened. And that’s all we did, so we barely broke the rule.”

  “And?”

  She was down to matching little socks and wasn’t sure how long she could spin out the task. “And what?”

  “Did you like it?”

  Relief that he wasn’t roaring at her made her head swim. “It was all right. I think Tamnar liked it more than I did.” She instantly felt disloyal. Tamnar was her friend, and it wasn’t his fault that kissing him hadn’t felt wonderful or exciting. Except . . . “Who else is there to kiss?”

  Lucivar folded the last diaper. “That is a question, isn’t it?” A beat of silence. Then he looked at her. “Shouldn’t you be getting ready for school?”