“Yes, sir.”
“Anything you want to tell us?”
Daemonar shook his head.
“Then make yourself comfortable, boyo. We’ll head home as soon as the storm passes.”
Within a minute Daemonar was sprawled on the rug in front of the hearth, sound asleep.
Daemon watched the boy for a moment, then laughed softly. “He does stop moving once in a while.”
Sighing, Lucivar rested his head on the back of the chair. “Sometimes I wonder how Marian and I had time to make two more with him being the first one.”
The three men talked for a few minutes more before Chaosti rose to take his leave.
“Wait for me,” Daemon said quietly.
Chaosti nodded and left the room.
“Problem?” Lucivar asked.
“No, nothing like that.” Daemon set his mug on the tray. “Unless you need me, I’m going back to the Hall for the night, but I’ll return in the morning.”
“What about . . . ?”
“Unless you need me.”
They looked at each other, so much being understood in the silence.
“We’ll be fine,” Lucivar said. “See you in the morning.”
Daemon left the room. Chaosti held out a note. “This came for you.”
Daemon broke the seal and opened the single sheet of paper. “Lady Perzha has asked me to meet her tomorrow morning. Early.” Tucking the note into his jacket pocket, he headed for the Keep’s Dark Altar—that place that was a Gate between the Realms.
“Is there something you need from me, High Lord?” Chaosti asked, falling into step.
Daemon sighed. Queen’s command. “I need to tell you about some changes I have to make because of a healing that was done today—and to ask you about the sexual heat.”
“A healing? Someone besides the boy?”
Daemon stopped outside the room that held the Dark Altar. “Me.” He hesitated, then asked a question he had never thought he’d ask. “Do you ever hear from Witch?”
Chaosti didn’t reply for a long moment. Finally, “Dreams made flesh cannot become demon-dead. You know that.”
“That much power didn’t disappear when the flesh died,” he whispered. “Witch’s Self is still in the Misty Place—and still here in the Keep.”
“Why do you think that is so?”
Not a denial. Not telling him it wasn’t possible.
Daemon vanished his shirt, then shrugged out of the jacket enough to reveal the gauze bandage around his biceps. “I pissed her off. This was her response.”
A thoughtful silence. “You needed her particular healing skills so much that she reconnected with the living to help you? What needed healing?”
“The crystal chalice—and other things.”
He saw a flash of fear in Chaosti’s eyes, there and gone. Proof enough that the man knew what that meant.
“Was she successful?” Chaosti asked.
“For the most part. But everything has a price.”
“Is this why you need to make some changes?”
“Yes. She said Kaeleer is going to need everything that I am. In order for me to stay sane and be who I am, I need her help. And yours.”
“Then I will give what help I can. After all”—Chaosti smiled and gestured toward Daemon’s arm—“I have no desire to rile my cousin’s temper.”
“I wasn’t trying to rile her,” Daemon muttered. “I thought I was dreaming.”
“Tell me what you need. I will do what I can.” Chaosti looked toward the Altar room. “You have business in Hell?”
“Not tonight. But unless there’s also a storm in Hell that makes riding the Winds dangerous, I can ride the Black Wind back to the Hall and go through the Gate there to return to Kaeleer.”
“Unless you need to return to the Hall right away, why don’t you tell me about these changes you need to make and what help you’d like me to give? Hopefully I will have some answers for you when you return in the morning.”
Daemon told him about the headaches and the sex and the heat and the months of pain that had led to the crystal chalice cracking again and Witch’s power restricting his ability to tighten the leashes beyond what she deemed safe after repairing what she could. It surprised him that Chaosti didn’t express much sympathy for Surreal.
“You are nothing now that you haven’t been in all the years I’ve known you—and in all the years Surreal has known you,” Chaosti said. “I can understand how a woman can need to live away from that much power part of the time. Gabrielle needed time away from my Gray Jewels, especially after my sexual heat settled into that last phase. I do not doubt it is harder for a wife or lover to live with the Black.” He paused. “Unless, of course, your wife is the living myth and outranks you to such a degree that she has to be reminded that the Black is a very dark Jewel. We all found it amusing that you had to work so hard sometimes to seduce your wife. Occasionally Gabrielle would nudge Jaenelle and point out that you would like to give your wife some husbandly attention.”
“Enough,” Daemon said, laughing.
Chaosti laughed with him and then sobered. “Her power was vast—is still vast, from what you’ve said. As her Consort and husband, you should have felt the crushing weight of being intimate with someone who wielded that much power.”
“I never did.”
“No, you never did. Neither did the rest of us, even before she somehow set aside all of that power to wear Twilight’s Dawn. Jaenelle never feared you, any more than she feared Uncle Saetan. Maybe that’s one reason why this is harder for you. You didn’t expect Surreal to fear you as a husband. Now you’ll have to find out how much can be mended—and if you both can accept what can’t be mended.”
Daemon nodded. “I’ll be back to talk to Lady Perzha first thing in the morning. Then I’ll return here to talk to Lucivar—and to listen to your suggestions.”
Entering the Altar room, Daemon lit the candles in the four-branched candelabra, opening the Gate to Hell. Once he reached the Dark Realm, he caught the Black Wind and rode it to Dhemlan and the Gate that stood within the grounds of SaDiablo Hall.
TWENTY-NINE
That girl pushed her thumb into that cake on purpose, and Dillon just laughed like it was funny to ruin someone else’s treat,” Jillian said after telling Surreal the whole story of going to the Sweet Tooth and everything that happened afterward. “Why didn’t he say something to the girl, tell her she was wrong to do that?”
“I don’t know,” Surreal said. “Sometimes a person makes a bad choice. Even the most honorable men make mistakes, Jillian.”
“I guess.” Disillusioned, Jillian watched the rain. It looked like one of those hard, fast storms that rolled down the valley and would be gone in an hour. But for that hour, everyone would be stuck where they were. There was an extra sizzle in the lightning this time, and Prince Yaslana had already sent a command that reached all the Blood in Ebon Rih that no one was to try to ride the Winds or fly until the storm passed.
A regular storm shouldn’t have affected the Webs of power that the Blood used to travel through the Darkness, but that warning meant there was another kind of storm combined with a regular storm. But who was strong enough to make it unsafe to ride the Winds? Not Yaslana, since he was the one who issued the warning, but there was one other man in Ebon Rih right now whose temper might be feeding the storm.
She glanced at Surreal, who looked pale and worried but was trying to hide it. Jillian had seen plenty of adults try to hide the same kind of fear or worry when bringing a sick or injured child to Nurian’s eyrie, so she recognized that look.
“Do you think Dillon has been less than honest with you?” Surreal asked.