He nodded. He waited until the Black Widow left before dropping the Ebon-gray shield and turning to his daughter.
“Did you eat any of the food that Zoey ate?” he asked.
Titian shook her head. “I put a little on my plate because she likes that dish so much, but she started feeling sick after two bites, so I never had a chance to eat anything.”
“What about the other girls?”
“I don’t know, Papa.”
“All right.” That one dish had so much powdered safframate dumped over it, he wasn’t surprised that it had taken just two bites to hit Zoey that hard. If the other girls had taken the tiniest taste, they’d be showing some reaction to the drug by now. Wild rage or inappropriate—and desperate—amorous feelings. Something the servants—and the Scelties—would have to watch for tonight.
The Healer gave him a timid psychic tap.
“Witchling, what does Zoey sleep in?” When she gave him a wary look, he huffed out a breath. “I’m not saying you broke your uncle’s rules, but I don’t believe for a minute that you keep your preference of nightclothes a secret from each other. So find what she would wear so the Healer can help her get dressed.”
“Oh.” Titian hurried to the small chest of drawers, opened the second drawer without hesitation, and pulled out a long fleece top and matching long pants. She closed that drawer, then opened another one and pulled out a pair of thick socks. “The room feels cold.”
“I’ll increase the warming spell in this room,” he said mildly. “In yours too.”
She looked relieved.
He would talk to Beale about getting some food for Titian and the other girls. They all needed something hot to warm up their insides and something sweet to help them deal with the shock of the attack.
He took the nightclothes and handed them to the Healer, who waited at the bathroom door.
“She’s in bad shape,” the Healer whispered.
“I know.” The muscle pains and strains would be the least of it and, for Zoey, the most understandable. But what that much safframate was doing to her? Hell’s fire, he’d slaughtered entire courts and exploded the buildings that held those courts, trying to burn out an equivalent dose of safframate. He’d pushed Zoey as hard as her body could stand to help her get rid of some of it, but she was going to suffer tonight because of Delora and her coven of bitches.
It was tempting to suggest that every one of them be given the same dose, then locked up and left to scream. They wanted to embrace Hayll? Let them embrace it.
But he didn’t think Daemon would agree because of one of Delora’s friends. Daemon knew the pain caused by excessive doses of safframate, so Lucivar didn’t think Sadi could be persuaded to pour a dose down Jaenelle Saetien’s throat.
He had other duties, but Beale waited in the kitchen with his wife. She had killed a guest—a hostile guest who was attacking another person, but still a guest—and there would be a price for that choice. Prince Sadi could be reasoned with, even when he was angry, but this High Lord, who was a lethal blend of sex and death, was a dangerous unknown because Sadi had been so careful, so considerate, to keep himself away from the staff when this side of his temper was dominant.
No more. High Lord and Sadist would walk together from now on. Beale hoped that, once things calmed down, Daemon Sadi, rather than the High Lord, would reside at the Hall most of the time, just as he’d done before tonight.
The High Lord stepped into the kitchen, his gold eyes glazed and cold, his face a beautiful mask that revealed nothing. He glanced at the girl still hanging in the bubble shield Mrs. Beale had created.
Mrs. Beale stood by her worktable, her hand white-knuckle tight around the handle of her meat cleaver.
The High Lord walked up to her, lifted that fisted hand—and pressed a kiss on the back of it. Then he turned his head slightly and pressed his lips to the side of the meat cleaver. He looked Mrs. Beale in the eyes and stepped back, stepped away. Turned and walked out of the kitchen.
He didn’t say a word, but a moment after he left, the dead girl vanished.
Beale stared at his wife, not knowing what to say. She stared at the meat cleaver—and the impression of a kiss now engraved on the side of the blade.
*Beale,* Daemon called when he reached the dining room. *Please attend.*
While he waited, he let psychic tendrils flow through the Hall, cataloging the location of everyone inside.
When his butler approached, he saw wariness and regret—and resignation.
“I failed in my duty,” Beale said.
“Did you?” Daemon asked gently.
“If I had ignored the order given by a . . . child . . . Lady Zoela would not have been harmed.”
“If I had ignored the plea to let the party continue instead of hauling all the girls back to the school . . .” He sighed. “Were any of the girls raped?”
Beale’s shock crashed against his inner barriers.
“No, High Lord.”
“No,” Daemon agreed. “You chose to cherish and protect the Ladies who were left in your charge instead of obeying a command that was an insult to both of us. And you contained the enemy until I returned.”
Beale hesitated. “Two of the boys, friends of Lady Zoela’s, were not taken to the cells beneath the Hall. One is the boy who was attacked in the kitchen. The other was shielding another Lady from a hostile guest with a knife. The boys are currently in the staff room across from the square of guest rooms occupied by the young Ladies.”
“Where is the hostile guest? In the cells?”
“She will be making the transition to demon-dead,” Beale said. “The shadow Jaal was given the order to capture, not kill . . .”
“Even a shadow of Jaal would never obey that order when a young female was being attacked.”
“No.”
“Very well.” Daemon thought for a moment. “The young Ladies are going to need some food. Regretfully, nothing that is in the dining room can be trusted. All of it should be taken out and burned.”
“I’ll see to that at once.” Beale pursed his lips. “Mrs. Beale had made a beef soup for the staff. Would that do?”
Daemon nodded. “I’ll be in my study, if Lucivar and Surreal have trouble finding me.” He doubted they would, but all the Black shields might mask his location in the Hall.
“Tarl wants to know if he should continue to hold the messenger he has locked in the stables.”
“Yes, I still want to have a chat with that messenger before I take the dead to Hell.”
“I will inform him.” Beale hesitated for a moment. “Tarl said the boy seemed grateful to be captured, that he wasn’t trying very hard to reach the landing web and leave. And the boy keeps asking if you’re going to hurt his younger brothers because he brought the message.”
“Is that why he brought the message?” Daemon asked too softly. “Because someone had threatened to harm his brothers if he didn’t obey?”
“Tarl thinks so.”
How many times had he done something that had violated everything he was because Dorothea had threatened to harm Lucivar if he didn’t comply? How could he blame this messenger for doing what he would have done in order to save someone he loved?
“Make sure the boy is fed, and have Tarl find out whatever he can about where the boy’s family lives and who made the threat against the brothers.”
Daemon walked to his study, feeling the leashes that usually controlled temper, power, sexual heat, and the Sadist slip back into place. Loose, yes, but he felt them again. Which meant he was no longer riding the killing edge.