Her father—some part of her father—had returned.
Daemon stepped off the landing web and glided toward the open front door, his gold eyes glazed and sleepy, his lips curved in a sweetly murderous smile as the screams and sounds of fighting reached him.
His sexual heat, free of all restraint, rolled through the Hall, ensnaring everyone, making them all desperately pliable to whatever game he wanted to play—even if the game killed them.
His sexual heat wasn’t the only aspect that was free of all restraint.
As the Sadist stepped into the great hall, he cataloged the people, the power, the invaders who had soiled his home. With each step, the air around him grew colder. The pond of blood on the floor froze as he surveyed everyone within sight and let Black psychic threads locate everyone else.
The Green-Jeweled Warlord Prince. He knew that psychic scent, knew the Sadist was not permitted to touch the boy who met his eyes briefly before making a small bow to acknowledge dominance. He noted the face made older by pain and the way the boy held himself. Injured. Well, that would require some discipline, but not from him.
The other males who were still among the living were swiftly wrapped in phantom chains of Black power. So were the girls who were his enemies. The girls who stood behind a shield that flickered with the Rose through Green of Twilight’s Dawn? They would be gently confined until he was ready to step away from the killing edge and deal with them.
The Red-Jeweled Warlord he’d left in charge appeared at the far end of the great hall, along with an Opal-Jeweled Warlord. He knew these men. He’d still kill them with the slightest provocation, but he knew them.
Power sizzled behind him. The Sadist pivoted toward the open door to meet this new enemy.
A bolt of lightning, blacker than the night, struck the landing web—and the Demon Prince strode across the gravel drive and walked into the Hall. His eyes were wild, but the hand holding his war blade was steady.
Their eyes met. Held. Before the Sadist could decide if this required a dance, a midnight voice rose from the abyss.
How many sides does a triangle have?
The tone was conversational, as if they were in her sitting room at the Keep.
He heard the words. So did the Demon Prince. So did the Green-Jeweled Warlord Prince, the third side of this triangle that served Witch.
They served as he served. They could be trusted because she trusted them.
The Demon Prince walked around him and looked toward the girl on the floor who was gasping with the effort not to draw their attention. The Demon Prince bared his teeth in a snarl, and his gold eyes went molten with fury. Then he leashed his temper, vanished the war blade, and said, “I’ll deal with her. You can have the bitches.”
One flick of the Demon Prince’s fingers shattered the Twilight’s Dawn shield. He grabbed the girl on the floor and half carried, half dragged her toward the front door. The Sadist obligingly released the shield on the door, and the Demon Prince went out with the struggling, screaming girl.
Zoela. The girl’s name was Zoela.
A winged girl took a step toward the door, catching his attention. She stopped moving, her wings flaring in an effort to keep her balance on a floor that was now slick as ice.
“Please,” she said.
“No,” he replied, turning again to meet the Gray power that rushed through the open door.
The Assassin. His second-in-command. Not his wife. She wasn’t the Sadist’s wife. Sometimes she was wife and lover and friend. But not tonight.
“Hell’s fire,” Surreal said, taking in the blood and the bodies. Then she looked at him, wary.
“Surreal,” he crooned. “Escort Lady SaDiablo to her suite—and then seal those rooms with a Gray lock and shields.”
Surreal tipped her head in acknowledgment of her orders, stepped out of the shoes now stuck in the frozen gore, and used Craft to stand on air. She walked over to the girl who looked so like her, grabbed an arm, and pulled the girl to the back of the great hall and the servants’ staircase that would eventually take them to the family wing.
“Lord Beale.”
Beale bowed. “High Lord.”
“Escort the invited guests to their rooms.”
“Some of the young Ladies should be seen by a Healer,” Beale said.
The Sadist looked over his shoulder at the young Warlord Prince, then back at Beale. His smile made the Red-Jeweled butler shudder. “The Ladies are not the only ones who require the Healer. Summon her.”
Beale hesitated. “There was an attack in the kitchen. There has not been time to remove that body.”
Meaning Beale had been dealing with other bodies. How interesting.
“Leave it there until I come down.”
“Very well.”
Beale collected the witches who were guests the Warlord Prince of Dhemlan had allowed in his home and shouldn’t be harmed without sufficient cause.
“Lord Holt.”
“High Lord,” the Opal-Jeweled Warlord answered.
“Do you know where to take these intruders?”
“I do. Some of them are already occupying those accommodations.”
The Black chains he’d put around his enemies would drain their Jewels if they tried to use their power or any kind of Craft. Holt should be safe. But he didn’t underestimate an enemy, so he wrapped them all in bubble shields, including the dead, and connected the shields so that Holt could take them all, like beads threaded through a single cord.
Finally, he turned to the Eyrien boy, who vanished the war blade and watched him in silent wariness.
“You’re injured,” he said silkily as he approached the boy and used a psychic tendril to make his own assessment of the damage. “The Queen will not be pleased.”
“Couldn’t you scold me instead?”
The question surprised him, amused him enough for the Sadist to take a step back.
“Oh, boyo,” Daemon said. “I will not deprive the Queen of the pleasure of hearing you explain, in person, why you were so careless with someone she values.” He leaned in, almost close enough for his lips to brush the boy’s. “But better to explain this lapse to the Queen than to have to explain it to your auntie J.”
Lucivar dragged Zoey to the snow-covered grass beyond the gravel drive. It was a cold night and the girl wasn’t dressed warmly enough to be outside. Wasn’t dressed for what was coming either, but he couldn’t let that matter. Not right now. One look at her, collapsed on the floor of the great hall, had told him what had been done.
He created a domed Ebon-gray shield around them, large enough for the area inside the shield to be a sparring ring. He added warming spells to bring the air from freezing to chilly. And he added an aural shield so that whatever was said would not be overheard.
The moment he released her, Zoey rushed to get away, slammed into the shield, and turned to face him. A cornered little animal hating herself for her own need and desperation.
“Sex or violence,” he said. “Those are the only ways to burn out the drug they gave you.”
“I’m not having sex with you,” she rasped.
“Damn right you’re not.”
He called in two Eyrien sparring sticks. One was his personal stick. The other was smaller and lighter—and an appropriate size and weight for a female Zoey’s size and age. He tossed it to her. She caught it and bared her teeth.
“So that leaves violence,” Lucivar finished. The next words came out as both order and challenge. “Come on, witchling. If you don’t want to end up under someone tonight, show me you’ve got enough spine to fight.”
She screamed and launched herself at him. At first her moves were frenzied, mindless, desperate. He countered them with enough force that she would know he was neither playing with her nor mocking her attempts to defend herself. When she began to understand that he would let her fight, she settled into actual sparring, unleashing anger and unwanted sexual arousal as she beat at him and beat at him and beat at him.