The Queen's Weapons Page 15

  “I heard Lady Zhara brought Zoela to the city and is going to have her live there now. Just as well. Zoela really isn’t our kind of aristo. She’s almost a rube.” And not a girl who looked the other way when rules were bent, let alone broken. That was a shame. Having a Queen as a good friend would have been useful. But there were other girls, other Queens. It was just a matter of choosing the right kind of friends. Blood sings to Blood. Like calls to like. And if a person didn’t fit with her? Well, someone had to be the prey in the games she enjoyed the most.

  She and Hespera split up as they reached the tables set out with platters of food. They moved in and around the adults, smiling and polite, as they selected a small amount of delicacies and were encouraged to take more. She looked away, blushingly shy, when complimented on her dress—and she laughed silently when she overheard a Warlord who was going flabby in middle age tell her father how delightful it was to see a girl her age who was so well-behaved.

  An hour later, Dahlia began looking for her kitten, who wasn’t in the shielded basket where she’d put it while she had something to eat.

  Delora and Hespera rushed to help with the search.

  “I’m sure we’ll find him,” Delora said, putting an arm around Dahlia. “A small thing like that couldn’t have gone far.” She stayed with the other girl as they looked for the kitten, staining her party frock by getting on her hands and knees to check under bushes.

  No sign of the kitten. Nothing. Gone.

  As Delora led weeping Dahlia toward the house, she said very quietly, “It’s too bad about the kitten, but it could have been worse. If your baby brother had gone missing, that would have been a tragedy.”

  Dahlia stared at Delora. Delora patted the girl’s shoulder and smiled sympathetically.

  The party continued a while longer, mostly because one didn’t invite this many aristos—and have a sufficient number deign to attend—and then ask them to leave before the usual time.

  After receiving praise for their efforts to find the kitten, Delora and Hespera linked arms and made another circuit around the lawn.

  “Do you think anyone will find the kitten?” Hespera asked.

  Delora didn’t even glance at the large tree or the roots that were lifted above the ground. Didn’t need to look to know that no one would check around the trees carefully enough to spot any sign that the ground had been disturbed. She passed by the tree and imagined she could still hear faint, desperate mewing.

  “Perhaps someone will someday.” She gave her best friend a brilliant smile. “But not in time.”

  * * *

  ◆ ◆ ◆

  Lucivar slipped into the communal eyrie after dinner, not sure why Hallevar had acted so cagey about wanting to see him this evening. The crusty old arms master had been one of his own trainers in the Askavi Terreille hunting camps and was now teaching the Eyrien youngsters in Ebon Rih how to handle weapons—and was the sort of man who usually said whatever was on his mind.

  When Lucivar saw Rothvar waiting with Hallevar, he hesitated. He didn’t want to think Rothvar had turned on him or that Hallevar had betrayed him, but his previous second-in-command had not been an honorable man and had managed to hide that truth for several years.

  “Figured you should both hear this,” Hallevar said. “I didn’t promise the boy I’d keep quiet about it, so I’m not breaking trust.”

  Lucivar approached slowly. “All right.”

  “It comes down to the traffic and trade between Kaeleer and Terreille,” Rothvar said.

  “Some people have always come through the Gates, and I guess there’s always been some trading.” Lucivar couldn’t imagine wanting anything from Terreille, but that didn’t mean other people felt the same way.

  “Just because someone left Terreille doesn’t mean there aren’t ties,” Rothvar said. “Some of the Eyriens living here have family that either stayed in Terreille by choice or didn’t get to the service fairs before the purge that cleansed the Realms. News from family can have a powerful pull.” He looked Lucivar in the eyes. “Not for me—I was glad to leave that pus-riddled Realm—but for some.”

  “Are we talking about anyone in particular?”

  “Dorian,” Hallevar said. “Alanar overheard Dorian and Endar arguing over some letters she received from family still living in Terreille. The boy doesn’t know what the letters said, just that it sounded like Dorian had been sending and receiving letters for a while now and his father was upset about it.”

  “People in Terreille poisoning the well out of spite?” Rothvar suggested. “Or preparing the ground for a battle to help the family’s Queen gain control of some territory?”

  Hallevar snorted. “Endar brought his family to Kaeleer because it’s obvious the girl has a bit of a short-lived race in her bloodline, and Eyriens in Terreille wouldn’t have accepted her as a Queen they were willing to serve.”

  “That was before the purge,” Lucivar said. “Now?” It was a possibility. Train the girl here and then return to Terreille to set up a court. Except anyone who thought Daemonar would follow Orian to Terreille was a fool. More likely, set up the daughter’s court as the means of bringing the rest of the family to Kaeleer.

  “Ask around,” he said. “Find out what you can about Dorian’s family. My impression was they weren’t aristo, but they might have unrealistic expectations about what they can gain from having a Queen in the family—especially if they’re looking to reconcile with Dorian for some kind of profit.”

  What sort of profit they thought to gain from Endar was anyone’s guess. But it could explain Dorian’s interest in setting a hook into the Yaslana family. He—or one of his children—had the kind of wealth that could support a Queen’s court in style.

  He’d send them to Hell—and to the High Lord—before he let that happen.

  After thanking Hallevar for bringing this to his attention, Lucivar walked out with Rothvar.

  “Might be nothing more than letters from home,” Rothvar said. “Might not have anything to do with Dorian feeling sour about her life.”

  “Might not,” Lucivar agreed. “But distance can make some things look better, just like stories can gloss over a truth to make it less ugly.”

  “Or less frightening?”

  “You don’t think the stories about me are frightening?”

  “They are.” Rothvar lowered his voice. “They’re still not close to the truth about you. I’ve worked alongside you enough years now to have figured that out. There may come a time when I can’t stand with you, Lucivar, but I’ll never stand on the other side of a line against you. You need to know that, here and now.”

  Lucivar stepped aside and spread his wings. “Then let’s hope we never find that line.”

  Tomorrow he would go to the Keep and ask Geoffrey for whatever was available about Dorian’s bloodlines. Now, as he flew home, he wondered if Marian had received any letters—and he wondered what he would do if she had.

  * * *

  ◆ ◆ ◆

  Daemon waited until Jaenelle Saetien fell asleep before riding the Black Wind to the Keep, leaving his girl in the care of Beale and Holt. It was the same arrangement they had worked out for the times when Surreal wasn’t at the Hall and he needed the solitude of staying in his father’s old suite, with the layers of Black shields keeping everyone away from him while he regained his self-control and emotional balance.

  As he waited in the sitting room across from the Queen’s and Consort’s suites, he thought about the change in Surreal since they had taken that walk in the town house’s back garden. Not a change so much as a return of the woman he had known.

  “I tried to be something I wasn’t, and it hurt both of us,” she’d said. “I thought I wanted to be a wife, but that night when you invited me to play and offered everything you were, when you showed me what it would be like to be with you without any barriers
. . . I can’t be a wife to that man, Sadi. It’s taken me years to realize I felt safe enough to be with you because a part of you was still Jaenelle’s husband. Witch’s husband. Even when we didn’t know she was here in some way, you were always going to be her husband.”

  “Is that your way of saying you want to leave?” he’d asked quietly.

  “No, that’s my way of saying I want to be a different kind of wife, the kind that suits my nature.” A hesitation. “I’ll be your sword and shield, Sadi. I’m the sword.” She raised her left hand so that he could see her wedding ring. “This is your shield. As long as you have a wife and you wear a wedding ring, you’ll have at least some of the companionship you need—and a reason to refuse any companionship you don’t want.”

  “You want to be celibate?”

  “Hell’s fire, no.” Another hesitation. “I want to be the Warlord Prince of Dhemlan’s second-in-command. I want to be Daemon Sadi’s lover. But I can’t be lover to the Sadist or . . .”

  “Or the High Lord of Hell?” he finished.

  “Yes.”

  He nodded. Not so different from where they had started.

  “And I know Sadi as a lover has a bit of an edge, so you can stop asking permission before you do every damn thing. It’s annoying.”

  “How will I know if that edge is too much?”

  “You’ll feel my knife against your ribs.”

  “You could just tell me to stop.”

  “I like my way better.”

  He laughed softly and took her hand. “Of course you do.”

  “Daemon?” Witch said as she walked into the sitting room.

  He turned to look at the Queen who was his life. “Thank you.”

  “For what?”

  “For helping Surreal set the boundaries of what she wants to give as a wife and what she expects in return.”

  “Can you accept those boundaries?” she asked quietly.

  “I can.” He smiled dryly. “Actually, it’s a relief to know where the lines are drawn.” I can accept that from her. It would have destroyed me if you’d needed those lines.

  Not something he would say. Not something he needed to say. Not to her.

  She stepped closer and studied him. “It doesn’t feel like you need to drain the Black or need my help regaining your balance. And I don’t think Surreal defining the terms of your marriage brought you here at this time of night. So I have to wonder what’s really on your mind, Prince?”

  “Tersa asked me to deliver a message. She said the footsteps are getting closer.” Seeing the feral light that came into Witch’s eyes, Daemon smiled a cold smile. “What does it mean?”

  “The approach of a potential enemy.”

  “Who? Where?”

  “I don’t know. The only thing I see in the tangled webs I’ve woven is the need to prepare. Tersa is the one who has felt the approach of an enemy, one who is not yet on the horizon, let alone close enough to be seen and recognized.”

  “Have other Black Widows seen anything?”

  Witch shook her head. “There have been no whispers, Prince. Nothing. But Tersa has always been more farseeing than most.”

  “An enemy that well hidden?” He stepped close and bent his head until his lips were a breath away from touching hers—if he could have felt her lips under his. “Use me,” the Sadist crooned.

  She placed a hand on his chest, over his heart, and pushed just enough to have him ease back.

  “When the time comes,” Witch said. “One of Saetan’s regrets was that Mephis and Peyton had to live with the truth of what he was while they were still young, that they felt the weight of it before they were old enough to understand. Give your daughter as much time as you can before Kaeleer has to acknowledge the truth of all that you are.”

  “What will you do?”

  She gave him a smile that held some regret. “I’ll help forge a weapon to stand beside you in this fight.”

  NINE

  Tersa wandered through rooms and corridors in the Keep, muttering, “Wrong place. Wrong place. Can’t see what must be seen until I find the right place.”

  She’d stopped hearing the footsteps approaching when she wove a tangled web. Now she felt something that scratched at her bones and filled her dreams with figures made of shrouded mist and voices that screeched and screamed—and laughed. The laughter was the worst because it almost sounded familiar. But the tangled webs she’d woven lately told her nothing more than her dreams, except that she was in the wrong place because the right place held lethal cold and deadly heat that would ensnare—and then kill.

  Tersa pushed open an ornate metal gate, took a few steps into that part of the Keep—and froze as something very male and predatory became aware of her presence.

  Lethal cold. Deadly heat. Her boy—but not her boy. This was the predator who knew how to turn pleasure into a kind of fatal pain a person would beg to feel until it was no longer possible to beg for anything except to be allowed to die. And even that wouldn’t free a person from his attention. Not anymore.

  As the sexual heat washed over her, wrapped around her, she braced a hand against the wall. She should have been immune to that part of him, but that safety was now erased by the cold rage braided with the heat.

  Intruder.

  Yes, she was. And she wasn’t the only one. Another male, familiar to her, had already scraped at the predator’s control with his presence.

  This threat, this bone-deep fear of someone she loved was the element her tangled webs had been missing. She needed those things, needed to be here to spin the web that would let her see the visions clearly.

  Tersa hurried into a sitting room closest to the gate and closed the door.

  Tables. Chairs. Sofas. A gathering place for a First Circle.

  Yes. It would do.

  Choosing a table with an empty surface, she called in a wooden frame and her spools of spider silk and began to weave a tangled web of dreams and visions.

  Lethal cold. Deadly heat. Voices that screeched and screamed. And one voice whose laughter was filled with joyful malevolence.

  She had barely time to attach the last thread, hadn’t even taken that one mental step to the side when the web revealed the visions the previous webs had kept hidden.

  Tersa sucked in a breath. Much was still hidden and wouldn’t be revealed until the enemy’s shape—a shape that would be shrouded by deceit for many years—crossed paths with that lethal cold and deadly heat. And then . . .

  *He is coming.*

  A whisper of warning spoken in a midnight voice.

  She hesitated. He was a Black Widow. He could—and would—read what was revealed in her tangled web.

  As her trembling hand reached out to break the strands of spider silk, she felt that Black power moving swiftly toward her. Leaving the web intact, she fled from her son, running out of the room and past the metal gate, knowing he wouldn’t follow her once she was no longer in the Queen’s part of the Keep.

  She found another sitting room and curled up on a sofa, shivering, to wait for Witch’s summons.

  * * *

  ◆ ◆ ◆

  Daemon prowled the Consort’s suite, stared at the unlocked door that would give him freedom, then turned away to pace to the windows and stare at the Queen’s private garden. He had promised, had given his word he would remain in his suite when that other male came here for lessons.

  Not just another male. Nephew. Daemonar. Not a rival. Just a boy the Queen wanted to train because the boy would become a strong man one day—if he could tolerate the boy’s presence enough to let the boy live.

  He paced and prowled, prowled and paced in a room that seemed to be shrinking with every circuit he made from door to windows, windows to door.

  Had to stay away. Had to stay here. He’d tolerated the arrangement the first few times he
and the boy had been here at the same time, had even been able to join the boy, and two other Warlord Princes, in a sitting room beyond the Queen’s part of the Keep to talk about the lesson.

  This time it felt different. He didn’t understand why, but it felt different.

  Still unwilling to break his promise, Daemon turned away from the door leading into the corridor—and the small sitting room directly across from the Queen’s suite—and tried the door that opened into Witch’s bedroom. It was unlocked, which gave him some relief.

  He walked into the room, walked over to the bed, and ran a hand over the covers, breathing in the various scents. A hint of scent, physical and psychic, from the witches who tended the Keep and kept these rooms clean drifted up from the sheets and bedcovers. Nothing else in Witch’s room except her own psychic scent—and his. No indication that the other male was trying to stake a claim in his territory.

  Nephew. Daemonar. Not a rival. A Brother in the court. So hard to remember that today because something was scratching at him. Had been scratching at him.

  Returning to his own room, Daemon removed the cufflinks from his shirt and tossed them on the dresser, then undid the buttons one . . . by . . . one. He shrugged the material off his shoulders, letting the shirt fall to the floor. Today even silk abraded his skin.

  He would stay in his room. He would keep his promise. The boy was no threat to him—or to her.

  He shaped his Red Birthright power into a psychic probe that rippled through the Queen’s part of the Keep. Rippled over the boy. Rippled over . . .

  Intruder.

  Smiling a cold, cruel smile, Daemon unleashed his sexual heat and sent it out to touch everyone in this part of the Keep—to ensnare everyone who foolishly entered his territory. And yet . . .

  He recognized her tangled mind and her psychic scent. How could he not recognize her? But today even she was an intruder.