“He never—”
“Went with you to the country houses and the parties there?” Jillian nodded. “He couldn’t. With his sexual heat being as potent as it is, if he showed up at one of those parties, every female past puberty would have been on him like starving cats that had found a bowl of cream, and if he couldn’t get away from them fast enough, his temper would have slipped the leash and your happy little party would have turned into blood-soaked ground and corpses who would have had the unpleasant experience of meeting him again when they made the transition to demon-dead and learned why you shouldn’t piss off the High Lord of Hell.”
Jillian filled small bowls with the salad before dishing out beef and noodles for both of them.
“If I’d been a Queen—”
“Your education wouldn’t have been any different. Well, as I understand it, you would have been required to learn more and would have been required to practice your lessons in Protocol every time you were in public—which, come to think of it, your father did insist on except during playtime with your friends. And that’s no different than any other child after the Birthright Ceremony. The real training begins after that ceremony, and the rules become a lot stricter.”
“If I’d known about that war and Dorothea—”
“What?” Jillian snapped, losing patience. “Kaeleer’s history, which includes that war, is supposed to be taught in the schools. If the school in Halaway is neglecting that part of the children’s education, Prince Sadi should be informed.”
“He didn’t tell me he’d been . . .” Saetien grabbed a piece of bread and scooped up enough butter to generously cover three slices. “And she didn’t tell me that she’d been . . .”
“Maybe Daemon and Surreal thought you weren’t mature enough to understand their pasts, and they were waiting until you were older,” Jillian countered. “Or maybe because so much of the family’s history circles around a Queen you don’t want to know about, you always dragged Titian away when Daemon, Lucivar, Marian, and Surreal told stories about their lives before they came to Kaeleer. No one forced you to come back and listen, because the adults figured you weren’t ready to listen. And those stories were told in steps, depending on the age of the listeners. How many times have you heard Lucivar say, ‘You’re not old enough to hear that story. Someday, but not now’? Plenty of times.”
“My father should have stopped the party!”
“As I understand it, he intended to return all of you to the school in Amdarh when he had to leave to investigate a reported attack, but you whined about being allowed to stay and have the party. And when Beale, who stood in your father’s stead and is strong enough and ruthless enough to turf out the intruders, told those boys to leave because they were not supposed to be there, you undermined his authority and set up half of the girls at the party to be attacked, including your cousin and a young Queen. So if you’re feeling sorry about what this has cost you and want to point the finger and say ‘It’s your fault’? Well, it is your fault, Saetien. Your father carries some of the blame, and he knows it. Lucivar would have hauled all of you into the Coach and taken you back to the school, regardless of what you wanted, instead of hoping you had a glimmer of honor left.”
Jillian set her fork down, too churned up to eat. But she’d had a few weeks to think about this and realized something that felt like truth. “In a way, I understand why you did it. You were born into the SaDiablo family, but you don’t really belong to that family because Saetan and his sons have been committed to serving and protecting the Black-Jeweled Queen of Ebon Askavi from the moment Saetan made a promise to stay connected to the living for as long as it took for her to appear in the Realms. You think a promise that held for over fifty thousand years is going to fade away now?” She shook her head. “And it’s all there in the Hall—the history, the promise, the choice to serve. Some people fit into the family, and it has nothing to do with being related by blood. They feel the connection, feel the echo of a promise in the very marrow of their bones. Daemonar feels it. Marian. Lucivar. Mikal and Beron. So do I. So did all the Territory Queens who served in the Dark Court. But my sister, Nurian, doesn’t fit into what would have been the First Circle or even the Second Circle. Because of connections, she is welcome and included in gatherings when she wants to be, but she remains distant enough that she doesn’t have to face the raw power in the family on a daily basis, not alone. She wouldn’t be able to cope with the Black in a cold rage. And that’s all right. Not everyone can.”
“You didn’t mention . . .” Saetien hesitated. “Surreal.”
“I think Surreal is like Nurian, needing enough distance from what drove—and still drives—Lucivar and Daemon. It just took her some years to remember that.” Now Jillian hesitated, then decided to say the rest. “You love your father—I know you do—but you’re never going to be comfortable being around him, never going to be able to accept him, when he’s anything but the courteous and controlled Warlord Prince of Dhemlan. There was a time when you might have. I don’t know. But that’s not the case anymore. And maybe something in you recognized that you couldn’t survive a tight connection to the SaDiablo family. So you did something that broke the bonds, that set you on the outside and has allowed you to get away from your father—and get away from the memories of the Queen who still rules the family. I think if you’d told Daemon that you were having trouble living at the Hall and had been honest about why you were struggling, he might have found another way for you to be independent.”
Jillian reached across the table and patted Saetien’s hand. “You’re not the first who needed to leave in order to survive. I doubt you’ll be the last. Just stop pretending that you weren’t the one who made the choice, even if you didn’t understand the truth of it at the time.”
Saetien sat on the side of her bed, willing the tears not to fall. She didn’t know who she was anymore, didn’t know what she wanted—except to be free of this burden of blame.
“I made a mistake,” she said quietly. “I wanted something so much, I didn’t listen to anyone who tried to tell me I was wrong about Delora, about the other girls. About the boys who were close to those girls.”
Shelby, the Warlord Sceltie puppy who was her special friend, sat at her feet watching her closely. *But we are learning now, and we will listen to our teachers. Then we will know when humans tell us to do a wrong thing.* He paused. *And we will bite them.*
The puppy sounded a bit too pleased with that idea. “I don’t think biting would be acceptable.”
*Sometimes we need to bite.* He sounded so sure of that.
Maybe she should talk to the adult Scelties who lived at the sanctuary to find out if—or when—biting was considered an acceptable response to some human behavior.
When her bedroom door opened, Saetien wished she’d locked it after returning from Jillian’s house. Most of the girls locked their doors before trying to sleep, which wasn’t surprising. This place housed girls who had been raped in order to break their power. Many of them struggled with an aversion to being in a bed for any reason, and sleep was precious when it came at all—and it was a rare night when everyone wasn’t awakened by a girl screaming herself out of a nightmare.