The Queen's Bargain

by Anne Bishop

  Jillian could see the girl’s face, but Sadi’s body blocked the rest of her. The girl didn’t say anything—at least not out loud—and Jillian didn’t know what she might have done. But the next instant, Sadi smiled a cold, cruel smile—the kind of smile that Jillian had never seen before and hoped never to see again.

  The girl backed away from the counter.

  “She’s not available? Really?” Sadi said too softly.

  A moment later a roll of thunder filled the building. The two Warlords set the boxes of cakes on a table. They looked at her, then at the door.

  Yes, Jillian thought, viewing everything as if she were on the edge of a violent, terrible storm. If the warning turned into something more, the Warlords would do their best to get out of the shop alive—and would do their best to take her with them. But the girl behind the counter, being the target of that cold rage, would be forfeit.

  A woman rushed out of the back of the shop. “What’s going—” Seeing Sadi, she froze.

  ٭Jillian?٭

  Recognizing Rothvar’s voice, she looked over her shoulder. He stood outside the shop, his Eyrien war blade in one hand, a fighting knife in the other. If he walked into the shop right now, he would die. She knew it. So did Rothvar. But he would walk into the shop and try to protect her because she was Nurian’s sister.

  ٭I’m all right.٭

  “P-Prince?” the woman said. “Is there something I can do for you?”

  Jillian was sure everyone could feel the effort Sadi was making to step back from the killing edge. Again.

  “You can explain why you’ve been selling cakes left by the customers eating here as if they were fresh and untouched,” he said.

  “You’re mistaken, Prince. We always offer to box up anything that is left for our customers to take home. If they don’t want the cakes, they’re set aside on that glass-covered tray and sold as remainders at a steep discount at the end of the day. Or my employees are permitted to take the remainders home with them.”

  Sadi stared at the woman, then looked at the girl. “It would seem you weren’t informed of a change in policy.”

  The two boxes of cakes the Warlords had purchased floated over to the counter. The lids opened. The cakes rose out of the boxes and settled gently on the counter. Raising his right hand, Sadi flicked his index finger with his thumb, then made a motion as if the black-tinted fingernail was a small knife. He didn’t touch any of the cakes, but the eight small cakes were cut cleanly in half. He moved the first two fingers of that hand apart, and the halves of each cake separated.

  Jillian and the two Warlords moved closer to the counter.

  The woman stared at the gold coin sticking out of the middle of one of the cakes. “I don’t understand.”

  “I had heard your shop was reselling cakes as new that had already been on the table. My young friend and I came in to find out if the rumor was true. I put the gold coin in one of the cakes that we didn’t eat. We weren’t given the option of taking the cakes with us. From what you say, the cakes should have been put with the remainders. But these Warlords just purchased as new a piece of cake that had a gold coin inside—a coin I put in as a test.” Sadi pointed to a cake that had been in the other box. The thumbprint the girl had put on the cake was clearly visible. “Cakes that were already purchased by customers eating in the shop are being resold at full price. Someone is pocketing the profit of selling the same food twice.”

  The woman squared her shoulders. “Clearly, I haven’t been paying as much attention to the front of the shop as I should have been. That error will be rectified.”

  Sadi tipped his head in the slightest of bows, walked out of the shop . . . and disappeared.

  “Come along, Lady.” One of the Warlords touched Jillian’s elbow, gently urging her to get out, get away, even though the danger was past.

  As she reached the door, she looked back and met the eyes of the girl. Shaken by the hatred she saw in those eyes, she rushed through the doorway.

  “My thanks, Warlords,” Rothvar said to the two men. “I’ll see Lady Jillian home.”

  They glanced at her but didn’t challenge the Eyrien Warlord. Either they recognized Rothvar and knew he was Yaslana’s second-in-command, or they realized they had no chance of surviving a fight with him.

  “You all right?” Rothvar asked, leading her away from the shop. “You look pale.”

  “I’m all right,” she said weakly.

  ٭No cake?٭ Khary asked. ٭Why is there no cake?٭

  “I changed my mind.” She wanted to run home, wanted to hide. But she was Eyrien, and she had a connection to the Yaslana household—and no one connected to that name hid from trouble. She looked at Rothvar, who had asked no questions, made no demands for her to explain the part she had played in a Black-Jeweled Warlord Prince rising to the killing edge. “I still need to make a stop at the library.”

  Rothvar studied her. “Do you need an escort?”

  ٭I am standing escort,٭ Khary said with a growl.

  “A second escort,” Rothvar amended.

  “No, thank you. We’ll be fine. I’ll be going home right after the library.” When Rothvar started to walk away, she said, “Why was Prince Sadi so angry about the cakes? It wasn’t right for the shop to sell the cakes twice at full price, but he seemed . . .” He would have killed the women in the shop. She was sure of it. Should she tell Rothvar that Khary thought the Prince was unwell?

  Rothvar returned, standing close to her. She braced for a slap, then realized he stood that close to speak quietly.

  “Something else was already riding his temper, and something besides the cakes pushed him to the edge. Yaslana asked us to keep an eye on him. I would have stepped in when he approached you, but it seemed to calm him.”

  “He looked”—like a man in agony—“upset when he sat down to talk to me.”

  “The thing to remember is that, even upset, Sadi didn’t lose control. A man who stands so deep in the abyss can’t afford to lose control of his power or his temper—not until he steps onto a killing field.” Rothvar looked puzzled. “If you suspected there was a problem at the shop, why did you tell Sadi instead of telling Yaslana?”

  She couldn’t meet his eyes. “I didn’t want to cause trouble.”

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  Pain coiled around his chest, an ever-tightening chain that squeezed his heart and smothered every effort to take a full breath. But he didn’t ask for help. If he asked, help would be given. Maybe this pain, and where it would take him, would make things easier. After all, sexual heat was a burden placed on the living, not on the demon-dead.

  Daemon glided through the corridors of the Keep, shrouded by pain. He saw no one, which wasn’t unusual. He was well-known to Draca and Geoffrey, the Keep’s Seneschal and historian/librarian respectively, and his presence didn’t attract the attention of whatever guarded Ebon Askavi.

  Eventually he approached the airy metal gate that blocked the corridor leading to the rooms reserved for the Queen and her triangle—Steward, Master of the Guard, and Consort. He pushed one side of the gate and was surprised to find it unlocked and swinging open at his lightest touch. That was unusual. The gate to those rooms had always been locked. But, perhaps, since there was no longer a Queen in residence, there was no need for that symbolic protection.

  How many years since he’d walked this particular corridor, opened the door of the Consort’s suite, stood in the room that had been his personal territory in this sprawling place? Thirty-five years? More? He’d expected dustcovers over the furniture and the bed stripped of linens and covering. But it looked no different from what he remembered. Looked as if he’d been gone no more than a week or two. Looked as if the years between today and the last time he’d made love to Jaenelle Angelline in the Queen’s suite hadn’t existed at all.

  He wasn’t sure how much longer he could breathe, h
ow much longer his heart would beat. Wasn’t that why he was here? Assisting Jillian had dulled the pain just enough for him to be able to catch the Winds and reach the Keep. Here, in this place where he’d been accepted, his heart could beat for the last time and he could step away from the pain he caused the living—and the pain the living caused him.

  That’s a fair dose of self-pity, old son. Lucivar would kick your ass down the mountain and up again if he heard any of that.

  Which didn’t make the truth any less true. Surreal might breathe a sigh of relief once the High Lord of Hell—and the Sadist—resided in Hell.

  Crack.

  “Prince?”

  Turning, he saw Draca standing in the doorway.

  “I’d like your permission to move back into this suite for a while,” he said quietly. He didn’t mention that he doubted he would need the rooms for long.

  She who had once been the last Queen of the dragons, the ancient race that had created the Blood so long ago, took a step toward him. “A Conssort cannot entertain a wife in thiss room.”

  At least, not a wife who wasn’t also his Queen. “I’m aware of that.” He looked around the room. “I need this, Draca. It’s the only place I can be who I am. Everything I am. It’s the only place where I can stand at the full measure of my strength and not frighten people who don’t deserve to be frightened by what I am.”

  She didn’t ask who now feared him that he wanted to protect. Maybe she already knew. Maybe she’d always known this day would come, and that was the reason she had kept the Consort’s suite ready for him.

  “Very well. Would you like ssomething to eat?”

  “Not right now. I’d like to be alone for a while.”

  Draca walked out of the room. The door closed behind her.

  He removed his black jacket and hung it over the clothes stand before exploring the room. Nothing in the closet or the chest of drawers except . . . He smiled when he opened the bottom drawer and saw all the pieces that made up the game called cradle. He should purchase the original game, not this labyrinthine version Jaenelle and the coven had devised—and, all right, he’d added a few layers and rules of his own to the damn thing over the years—and teach Jaenelle Saetien how to play.

  Would he have the chance to teach her how to play?

  Crack.

  Flinching at the pain scraping the inside of his skull, Daemon closed the drawer. Checking the bathroom, he found new bars of soap and fresh towels. Then he approached the door that connected the Consort’s suite with the Queen’s suite. He turned the handle, half expecting it to be locked. But the door opened for him, as it had for seventy years.

  He could smell her in this room. Jaenelle Angelline. His wife. His life. His Queen. Oh, the physical scent was gone after so many years, but her psychic scent still filled the room—a room that, like his, looked ready to receive the living myth, as if she were traveling through Kaeleer and would be back any day now.

  Tears stung his eyes. He had set aside the misery of living without Jaenelle, had focused on ruling Dhemlan and Hell, had made the commitment to be a good husband to Surreal and a good father to Jaenelle Saetien. He had leashed everything he was as tightly as he could, had done everything he could to protect and please Surreal during these past few months while he battled the debilitating headaches and tried to understand why she had turned away from him in every way except for sex. Now he knew why. She truly believed she’d been bedding the Sadist. Her inability to tell the difference meant she couldn’t accept what he was, despite how many years they had known each other and the years they had already spent together. Her words had sliced him deeper than any knife, and that pain had reopened the wound of missing the love of his life, and he didn’t know how to heal that wound a second time.

  He didn’t want to heal it a second time. He wanted to bleed from that wound. Bleed and bleed until he was hollow, until he was nothing more than intellect and power. Until Daemon Sadi disappeared and there was only the High Lord of Hell—and the Sadist.

  Maybe someone at the Keep could help, Lucivar had said.

  Who could help a man who wore Black Jewels?

  Removing his shoes, Daemon stretched out on the bed he had shared with Jaenelle most of the nights they had stayed at the Keep. Bunching a pillow under his head, he squeezed his eyes shut, denying the tears, while his heart pounded, pounded, pounded, and his breathing became more pained and shallow.

  Maybe he could sink into a dream of being with his Queen and never wake, leaving the body behind.

  Except there was still the child. His daughter. She would need him to teach her and protect her for many years to come. He couldn’t walk away from his daughter even if his wife saw him as a monster.

  “Jaenelle,” he whispered. “If any part of you is still here, please help me. Please . . .”

  The headache pounded, pounded, pounded like a hammer breaking bone—or breaking a crystal chalice. His heart clenched—another kind of pain.

  The tears fell, and he couldn’t say if he wept for himself or wept for his father, who had also worn the cold, glorious Black, had also been thought a monster by some, and had also felt the same terrible loneliness.

  CRACK!

  * * *

  * * *

  The bed felt cold and hard enough to pull him out of sleep.

  Rolling to his side, Daemon struggled to sit up. Then he looked around.

  It had been a long time since he’d seen the Misty Place, even in dreams.

  And there, drumming her claws against the stone altar, stood Witch. The living myth, although no longer among the living. This form was the Self that had lived within the flesh, the Self that had been shaped by the dreams of so many of Kaeleer’s races.

  The joy of seeing her was almost as sharp as pain.

  “Jaenelle,” he whispered. “Jaenelle.”

  He couldn’t interpret the look in her sapphire eyes before she returned her attention to something on the altar.

  “Hell’s fire, Daemon,” she said, shaking her head and sounding perplexed. “I can guess how you did this, but what I don’t understand is why.”

  “Did what?” Grabbing one end of the altar, he pulled himself to his feet—and wondered if he’d be able to stay upright.

  Witch pointed to the crystal chalice. He recognized it as the representation of his own mind. It had shattered twice and been repaired—by Witch. He could see the mends, the veins of power that held the pieces together. But the chalice had many new cracks; it even had a small hole in the bottom that was oozing . . . something.

  Four leashes were looped around four posts. Three were simple leather. One was leather and chain. The last time he’d seen these images in another dream, the leash that kept his sexual heat under control . . .

  He couldn’t see the loop beneath the hardened pus and rot.

  “I didn’t do this,” he said, looking away from the damage.

  “No one else could have done this to you. The pain must have been hideous. If someone else had tried to do this, you would have fought back long before you reached this point.”

  He stared at the posts, at the damaged chalice. “The headaches.”

  “Clearly a warning you didn’t heed.”

  The snarl under her words gave him a weird kind of comfort. “I went to Healers. More than one. None of them could find a reason for the headaches.”

  “That was the reason!” She pointed to the post encased in hardened pus and rot. “You tried to leash the sexual heat tighter than your current maturity could tolerate. You’re a man in your prime, Daemon. You were never going to succeed in choking the heat back to a less mature stage of your life, but you gave it a damn good try and this is the result.”

  The love and concern he saw in her eyes almost broke him.

  “Why, Daemon?” Witch asked. “Why did you do this?”

  �
��I made a mistake.”

  “And this was your way of punishing yourself for that mistake?”

  He might have believed the mild tone of voice if thunder hadn’t rolled through the Misty Place, if the lightning of fury hadn’t flashed and sizzled over the chasm that held a web that spiraled down and down and down into the Darkness—a web that was the reservoir for the vast power Jaenelle Angelline had set aside when she had dreamed of having an extraordinary ordinary life.

  “Show me,” Witch said.

  “What?” He knew what she was asking; he just didn’t want to do it.

  “Show me.” A Queen’s command.

  “I can show you what happened as I remember it, felt it. Surreal’s feelings are very different.” Jaenelle was no longer his wife, but she was still his Queen. He flinched at the idea of sharing a memory of himself with another woman.

  “Show me.”

  She wouldn’t ask again. If he didn’t obey now, he would have to walk away from the Queen whose will was still his life.

  Opening all of his inner barriers, he offered the memory of the night Surreal had walked into his bedroom and he’d thought, Mine. He offered every word, every touch, every taste, every sound. Then he offered the memory of the following morning when he’d realized Surreal feared him because of the way they had played the night before, even though staying had been her choice. Finally, the memory of Surreal telling him it would never happen again and to leash the damn heat.

  He closed his inner barriers, and his mind, damaged as it was, was his own again.

  “She kept saying I was playing with her, kept demanding that I leash the sexual heat and wouldn’t believe me when I said it was leashed.”

  Witch sighed. “Well, Surreal is right in one way, and this is why she was very wrong in another way.”

  She called in four brass rings and placed them on the altar. First, she arranged them in a row from smallest to largest. Then she nested the rings, making the difference in sizes apparent. The difference between the first and second brass ring was significant. So was the difference between the second and third. Not much difference between the third and fourth, but enough that the third fit into the fourth.