Surreal stepped into the doorway far enough to see them—Daemon sitting in his chair behind the desk, one arm around the girl, who leaned against him.
“You did an excellent job preparing these requests. You’ve included all the information I need to make an informed decision, which is the kind of decision a father wants to make.” Releasing his daughter, Daemon reached for a pen.
“You should sign them properly, like you do the papers for Holt,” Jaenelle Saetien said.
“Quite right.” He signed three papers on his desk. “Should I add my personal seal as well?”
Jaenelle Saetien grinned. “Yes!”
Surreal watched man and girl as they worked together to melt a stick of red wax and apply the seal Sadi used for his personal correspondence. She was about to drop the sight shield and step into the study when Jaenelle Saetien said, “Papa? Are you angry with Mama and me?”
Daemon set aside the seal and the remainder of the wax stick and put his arms around his daughter. “No, I’m not angry with either of you.”
“You didn’t come home with us.”
“Your uncle Lucivar needed my help.” Daemon gently brushed the hair away from Jaenelle Saetien’s face. “And there was another reason I didn’t come home with you. I thought it was a small thing, but it wasn’t. It isn’t.” He hesitated. “I haven’t been well, witch-child.”
“You’re sick?”
Surreal felt her daughter’s alarm like a knife between the ribs.
“Not sick the way you mean, but I haven’t been well. It’s going to take a while before I’m well again. That means a couple of times a month I’ll have to spend some time at the Keep. That’s where a special kind of healing can be done.”
“Can I come with you?”
Daemon shook his head. “This kind of healing needs to be private.”
“Are you better?”
“I am.”
“Does Mama know?”
Surreal dropped the sight shield and stepped into the study. “I know enough, but your father and I have some things to discuss.”
Daemon met her eyes, then turned his attention back to the child. “Witch-child, could you and Morghann take a short walk?”
“Yes, Papa.” Jaenelle Saetien looked around. “Where is she?”
“Morghann,” Daemon said quietly. “Kindly oblige me.”
The Sceltie walked around the desk, gave Jaenelle Saetien a small tail wag, and followed the girl out of the room.
Surreal closed the door and approached the desk, noting that Daemon remained seated—and watchful.
“You are better,” she said. “I can feel the difference—just like I felt the difference when you began the decline into . . . this. I wish I’d said something.”
“I understand why you didn’t.”
“Do you?” What do you think you understand? “We have things to discuss, but your attention is required elsewhere for the next few hours.”
Daemon looked at the stacks of papers on his desk and smiled wryly. “I noticed.”
She felt like she was walking across a frozen lake, with the ice cracking beneath her feet with every step and the shore a long ways away. One wrong move and she would break through and go under—and never find her way back to safe ground.
“Jaenelle Saetien has been joining me for dinner these past few days, but if you prefer not to listen to chatter, I could have her eat in her room tonight.”
“I’d like her to join us. Besides, after listening to the yappy horde, listening to one child should be easy enough.”
“Don’t count on it. She’s been waiting to tell you everything she did during her stay with her cousins.”
His laugh sounded genuine, so she asked the question she really wanted to ask. “Will you stay with me tonight?”
A heartbeat of hesitation before he said, “It will be my pleasure.”
“Then I’ll let you deal with some of this, and we’ll see you at dinner.”
Leaving the study, Surreal met up with Jaenelle Saetien and Morghann as the two returned from their walk. Morghann headed straight for the study door. When it didn’t open, she lay down in front of it and sighed.
“Come on.” Surreal put an arm around her daughter’s shoulders. “We’ll see your papa at dinner.”
As they went up to the family room, Surreal felt Sadi’s words gather weight and settle around her heart. “It will be my pleasure.” A Consort said that to a Queen. Sometimes he meant it. Other times it was an acknowledgment of duty.
Genuine pleasure or simply duty? She wasn’t sure which way Sadi had meant the words.
Daemon stood under the shower, letting the hot water pound some of the tension out of his neck and shoulders. He’d been glad to have Jaenelle Saetien as a chatty buffer at dinner. While he’d been dealing with avalanches of emotion—his own and others’—his girl had had a good time with her cousins. Unfortunately, in the middle of describing one of her adventures, she lobbed a question at him he would have preferred to ignore.
“Papa, why did you ask Tarl to pile up all those rocks at the end of the garden?”
“Those are for your mother.”
“Why does Mama need rocks?”
For reasons he wasn’t about to explain to a child.
After drying off and styling his hair, he slipped into a pair of black silk pants and the matching robe. He wasn’t sure what Surreal expected from him—or wanted from him tonight. He wasn’t sure what he wanted to offer—and he couldn’t say with any honesty that he was looking forward to spending the night in his wife’s bed.
When he walked out of the bathroom, he found Jazen waiting for him. His valet looked pointedly at the room’s other occupant.
He’d asked Beale to bring Morghann’s cushioned bed up to his room. With Tagg now living with Mikal and Tersa, and Khary still in Ebon Rih, he felt concerned that Morghann would feel abandoned, especially after making the choice to hide and starve when she couldn’t find him.
It wasn’t the bed or the Sceltie herself that was the reason for Jazen’s annoyance. It was . . .
٭That’s my shirt?٭ he asked, seeing a white cuff between the Sceltie’s front paws. The rest of the material was under her, making him think of a broody hen sitting on a silk egg—a thought he kept to himself, since he didn’t think dog or valet would appreciate the comparison.
٭Yes, that’s the shirt you removed a few minutes ago—the one I was going to take down to the laundry room,٭ Jazen replied. ٭She growled at me when I tried to take it back.٭
Daemon looked at Morghann, who gave him a tail-tip wag.
Sighing, he looked at Jazen. ٭Let her have the shirt.٭
٭You will explain that she can only have one shirt at a time. She can’t hoard them.٭
He stared at Jazen, but his valet didn’t back down, leaving him in the middle of a farce where Sceltie and valet would play a continual game of hoard and retrieve with his clothes.
٭I’ll talk to her,٭ he said, fighting the urge to laugh.
٭Very well.٭
٭There’s no need to get huffy.٭
٭I’ll remind you of that when you complain about not having any clean shirts in the closet.٭
٭Hell’s fire, man, just order more shirts and go away tonight.٭
Judging by the look on Jazen’s face before the man made a quick exit, Daemon realized he’d been herded into agreeing to exactly what his valet wanted.
“Damned impertinent,” he muttered. But there was something to be said for impertinence. A man couldn’t be completely terrifying if his valet was willing to argue with him about shirts.
Going over to the cushioned bed, he crouched in front of Morghann. It would crush her if he said she had done a wrong thing. Instead, he tugged the other sleeve out from under her and laid it over her like an arm casually draped around her.