"They're the Blood who rule, Tersa," Daemon says sadly. "Who is left to call in this debt? Bastard slaves like me?"
I'm slipping fast. My nails dig into his hands, drawing blood, but he doesn't pull away. I lower my voice. He strains to hear me. "The Darkness has had a Prince for a long, long time. Now the Queen is coming. It may take decades, even centuries, but she is coming." I point with my chin at the Lords and Ladies sitting at the tables. "They will be dust by then, but you and the Eyrien will be here to serve."
Frustration fills his golden eyes. "What Queen? Who is coming?"
"The living myth," I whisper. "Dreams made flesh."
His shock is replaced instantly by a fierce hunger. "You're sure?"
The room is a swirling mist. He's the only thing still in sharp focus. He's the only thing I need. "I saw her in the tangled web, Daemon. I saw her."
I'm too tired to hang on to the real world, but I stubbornly cling to his hands to tell him one last thing. "The Eyrien, Daemon."
He glances at Lucivar. "What about him?"
"He's your brother. You are your father's sons."
I can't hold on anymore and plunge into the madness that's called the Twisted Kingdom. I fall and fall among the shards of myself. The world spins and shatters. In its fragments, I see my once-Sisters pouring around the tables, frightened and intent, and Daemon's hand casually reaching out, as if by accident, destroying the fragile spidersilk of my tangled web.
It's impossible to reconstruct a tangled web. Terreille's Black Widows may spend year upon frightened year trying, but in the end it will be in vain. It will not be the same web, and they will not see what I saw.
In the gray world above, I hear myself howling with laughter. Far below me, in the psychic abyss that is part of the Darkness, I hear another howling, one full of joy and pain, rage and celebration.
Not just another witch coming, my foolish Sisters, but Witch.
PART 1
CHAPTER ONE
Lucivar Yaslana, the Eyrien half-breed, watched the guards drag the sobbing man to the boat. He felt no sympathy for the condemned man who had led the aborted slave revolt. In the Territory called Pruul, sympathy was a luxury no slave could afford.
He had refused to participate in the revolt. The ringleaders were good men, but they didn't have the strength, the backbone, or the balls to do what was needed. They didn't enjoy seeing blood run.
He had not participated. Zuultah, the Queen of Pruul, had punished him anyway.
The heavy shackles around his neck and wrists had already rubbed his skin raw, and his back was a throbbing ache from the lash. He spread his dark, membranous wings, trying to ease the ache in his back.
A guard immediately prodded him with a club, then retreated, skittish, at his soft hiss of anger.
Unlike the other slaves who couldn't contain their misery or fear, there was no expression in Lucivar's gold eyes, no psychic scent of emotions for the guards to play with as they put the sobbing man into the old, one-man boat. No longer seaworthy, the boat showed gaping holes in its rotten wood, holes that only added to its value now.
The condemned man was small and half-starved. It still took six guards to put him into the boat. Five guards held the man's head, arms, and legs. The last guard smeared bacon grease on the man's genitals before sliding a wooden cover into place. It fit snugly over the boat, with holes cut out for the head and hands. Once the man's hands were tied to iron rings on the outside of the boat, the cover was locked into place so that no one but the guards could remove it.
One guard studied the imprisoned man and shook his head in mock dismay. Turning to the others, he said, "He should have a last meal before being put to sea."
The guards laughed. The man cried for help.
One by one, the guards carefully shoved food into the man's mouth before herding the other slaves to the stables where they were quartered.
"You'll be entertained tonight, boys," a guard yelled, laughing. "Remember it the next time you decide to leave Lady Zuultah's service."
Lucivar looked over his shoulder, then looked away.
Drawn by the smell of food, the rats slipped into the gaping holes in the boat.
The man in the boat screamed.
Clouds scudded across the moon, gray shrouds hiding its light. The man in the boat didn't move. His knees were open sores, bloody from kicking the top of the boat in his effort to keep the rats away. His vocal cords were destroyed from screaming.
Lucivar knelt behind the boat, moving carefully to muffle the sound of the chains.
"I didn't tell them, Yasi," the man said hoarsely. "They tried to make me tell, but I didn't. I had that much honor left."
Lucivar held a cup to the man's lips. "Drink this," he said, his voice a deep murmur, a part of the night.
"No," the man moaned. "No." He began to cry, a harsh, guttural sound pulled from his ruined throat.
"Hush, now. Hush. It will help." Supporting the man's head, Lucivar eased the cup between the swollen lips. After two swallows, Lucivar put the cup aside and stroked the man's head with gentle fingertips. "It will help," he crooned.
"I'm a Warlord of the Blood." When Lucivar offered the cup again, the man took another sip. As his voice got stronger, the words began to slur. "You're a Warlord Prince. Why do they do this to us, Yasi?"
"Because they have no honor. Because they don't remember what it means to be Blood. The High Priestess of Hayll's influence is a plague that has been spreading across the Realm for centuries, slowly consuming every Territory it touches."
"Maybe the landens are right, then. Maybe the Blood are evil."
Lucivar continued stroking the man's forehead and temples. "No. We are what we are. Nothing more, nothing less. There is good and evil among every kind of people. It's the evil among us who rule now."
"And where are the good among us?" the man asked sleepily.
Lucivar kissed the top of the man's head. "They've been destroyed or enslaved." He offered the cup. "Finish it, little Brother, and it will be finished."
After the man took the last swallow, Lucivar used Craft to vanish the cup.
The man in the boat laughed. "I feel very brave, Yasi."
"You are very brave."
"The rats . . . My balls are gone."
"I know."
"I cried, Yasi. Before all of them, I cried."
"It doesn't matter."
"I'm a Warlord. I shouldn't have cried."
"You didn't tell. You had courage when you needed it."
"Zuultah killed the others anyway."
"She'll pay for it, little Brother. Someday she and the others like her will pay for it all." Lucivar gently massaged the man's neck.
"Yasi, I—"
The movement was sudden, the sound sharp.
Lucivar carefully let the lolling head fall backward and slowly rose to his feet. He could have told them the plan wouldn't work, that the Ring of Obedience could be fine-tuned sufficiently to alert its owner to an inner drawing of strength and purpose. He could have told them the malignant tendrils that kept them enslaved had spread too far, and it would take a sweeter savagery than a man was capable of to free them. He could have told them there were crueler weapons than the Ring to keep a man obedient, that their concern for each other would destroy them, that the only way to escape, for even a little while, was to care for no one, to be alone.
He could have told them.
And yet, when they had approached him, timidly, cautiously, eager to ask a man who had broken free again and again over the centuries but was still enslaved, all he had said was, "Sacrifice everything." They had gone away, disappointed, unable to understand he had meant what he'd said. Sacrifice everything. And there was one thing he couldn't—wouldn't—sacrifice.