Dillon took the envelope, opened it, and riffled the notes inside. Three thousand gold marks. Three thousand. Even more than the compensation he’d received from Blyte’s father.
“Yes, sir.” His voice sounded brave, sad, and understanding. Sounded perfect. “I wish Lady Carron all the best.” He paused. “If you will excuse me, sir, I think the sooner I’m gone, the easier it will be for all of us.”
As soon as he left the man’s study, Dillon vanished the envelope. He walked a block before hailing a horse-drawn cab and returning to his hotel. Anticipating the need to get out of this city quickly—there was always the possibility that Carron’s intended husband would challenge him to a fight—he vanished his already-packed trunks, settled his bill, and went to the Coaching station to buy a seat on a Coach heading for a town he was sure his family hadn’t visited before. With any luck, no one in that town would have heard of Carron—or Blyte.
FOUR
Jillian stood outside the front door, taking another minute to breathe in fresh air before she entered the Yaslana eyrie. No school today, so she had planned her arrival for after breakfast—and hoped Prince Yaslana was already out and about.
After a week of discomfort, she was getting used to the feel of the sexual heat washing over her when she was near him, was getting used to the punch of it when she first walked into his home. It was like an odor permeating the eyrie’s stone walls, but more intense when he was physically present. No, the diaper pail was an odor. Yaslana’s sexual heat was a spicy, potent, alluring scent. Not all that different from his physical and psychic scents, actually, but sexual. Definitely sexual.
But not for her. He couldn’t help being who and what he was—and who and what he was had gotten her and Nurian out of the service fair and had made it possible for them to live in Ebon Rih, had made it possible for her to go to school and also receive training in the use of Eyrien weapons. If she thought of the sexual heat as being similar to a cologne some men wore to be more appealing to women, then it wasn’t any different from the scent Nurian sometimes wore when she wanted to feel more feminine. Wasn’t any different from a bowl of potpourri that Marian used to freshen rooms in the winter.
Jillian grinned. Sex potpourri. Something to be enjoyed for a moment and then forgotten as a background scent.
She walked in, hung her cape on the coat-tree, and went to the kitchen. The table had been cleared, but the dishes weren’t done.
٭Marian?٭ she called on a distaff thread.
٭I’m changing the baby. Again.٭
Poopy diapers. How fun.
٭The children are picking up their rooms,٭ Marian continued, ٭and Lucivar is in his study.٭
٭I’ll do the dishes.٭
٭There should be a couple of meat pastries in the cold box for you if the men in the house didn’t stuff them into their faces the moment I left the kitchen.٭
Daemonar might have grabbed for another one before they were put away—the boy had a staggering ability to eat—but Yaslana would have stopped him. And to be fair, if told the pastries had been saved for her, Daemonar probably would have left them alone, because taking care of the women in the family was a man’s privilege. Of course, not eating something that had been saved was seen as an insult and resulted in hurt feelings.
Boys could be so peculiar.
After filling one side of the double sink with soap and water, she washed the breakfast dishes and was rinsing the bowl that had been used to make the pastry when she heard the eyrie’s front door open. Curious, because the family was accounted for and anyone else should have knocked, she grabbed a dish towel to dry the bowl as she walked to the archway between the kitchen and the big front room—and then forgot what she was doing.
She’d seen him plenty of times before, but, Mother Night, he was beautiful! That almost painfully exquisite face and mouthwatering body. The thick black hair was a little long and artfully disheveled, and the gold eyes . . .
Those eyes looked at her, recognized something in her, and started to glaze as the room began to chill in warning.
“Witchling?” Yaslana’s voice, coming from the corridor that led to the rest of the eyrie. “Jillian?” Sharper now. Commanding.
She blinked and turned her head to look at Yaslana as he entered the front room. For a moment, for just long enough, the sexual heat that was becoming familiar created a barrier between her and Prince Sadi’s darkly seductive sexual heat.
“I . . . I have to do something.” Jillian hurried to the pantry, leaned against a shelf, and hugged the bowl she’d been drying. Prince Daemon Sadi was . . . Mother Night! She was pretty sure the bones in her legs had just melted from his heat curling around her.
Potency and power. The darker the Jewel worn by a Warlord Prince, the more potent the sexual heat. Sweet Darkness, he was potent!
She frowned. It was more than that. If you put aside the sexual heat, because only Warlord Princes had that as part of their nature, Prince Sadi was still exciting because he was sophisticated and educated and . . . other stuff that Eyrien males didn’t care about at all but that seemed desperately important all of a sudden.
Even if he wasn’t married and unavailable, it would take a strong, sophisticated, educated woman to be his lover. And she was too young to be anyone’s lover. But . . .
Wouldn’t it be wonderful to be courted by a Warlord who was like Prince Sadi in most ways?
Lucivar led the way back to his study. “What brings you to Ebon Rih so early?”
Daemon’s psychic scent felt jagged, and that was a worry. Sadi’s mind had been shattered, and repaired, twice, and any sign that he might be slipping toward the border of the Twisted Kingdom was cause for concern. Daemon was Saetan’s true heir and, as Saetan had before him, ruled the Dark Realm as the High Lord of Hell—and he was more dangerous and lethal than their father had ever dreamed of being. Since Saetan had once committed genocide, destroying a place called Zuulaman and everyone from that race, anything that threatened Daemon’s control of his temper or power needed to be stopped before it went too far.
“I wanted to check the supplies at the cabin,” Daemon replied easily. “I’ll spend a day or two there once Surreal is back at the Hall and available to be the parent on duty.”
Lucivar settled in one of the visitor’s chairs instead of the chair behind his desk. “Where is she now?”
Daemon took the other seat. “Checking up on the other estates.”
Lucivar studied his brother. Daemon had been different since Jaenelle Saetien’s Birthright Ceremony. Happier. Warmer. Closer to the way he’d been when he’d been married to Jaenelle Angelline. Now Daemon felt jagged—and there were shadows in the depths of those gold eyes.
“You okay?” he asked.
Daemon shrugged, a dismissive move. “Have a bit of a headache.”
“What’s the witchling done now?”
Daemon laughed. “She has been pestering to have a special-occasion cake made. She made a sufficient nuisance of herself that Mrs. Beale came to my study to discuss it.”
“Did Mrs. Beale bring her meat cleaver?”
“Of course she did.” Daemon crossed his legs at the knees. “Since I have my own kitchen in the family wing, which is still a sore spot as far as Mrs. Beale is concerned, I offered to help Jaenelle Saetien make the cake if she wanted one so badly.”
“Sounds fair.” His children often made the biscuits while he prepared another part of the meal on Marian’s resting nights. The biscuits were edible most of the time.