“I’ve never seen anything like this,” the Healer said.
“It’s like your daughter is caught in a tangled web of dreams and visions,” the Black Widow said, standing at the foot of the bed. “But this is more. Lady Surreal, you wear Gray. Your daughter’s Jewel has some measure of Green. You should be able to feel her in the abyss.”
“There’s nothing,” Surreal whispered. She stepped away from the bed where Jaenelle Saetien lay. Think, damn you, think!
An extraordinary healing, centuries ago. Marian falling into a kind of healing sleep that Nurian couldn’t recognize. But Tersa . . .
“I warned the girl,” Tersa said, walking into the room. “I told the girl that if he asked, she would answer. He asked—and this is her answer.”
The Healer frowned. “Who asked? Who answered?”
Surreal stared at Tersa. Mad, broken Black Widow whose mind, like her power, did not follow paths the rest of them could see, let alone reach. “Do you know where Jaenelle Saetien is?”
“A dark place,” Tersa replied. “A place where she will pay her debt. Then what is left of her can return.”
“That doesn’t answer the question of who asked and who answered,” the Black Widow said, but her voice was careful and respectful.
“My boy asked. His Queen answered.”
Fear and fury burned through Surreal. *Sadi!* she called on a Gray thread. *SADI!*
*Surreal.* He sounded cold in a way that told Surreal she wasn’t talking to Daemon Sadi.
*You asked Witch to punish our daughter?*
*It was Jaenelle Saetien’s only chance to stay alive.* Before she could protest, he snarled, *Would you rather have me come to the Hall and perform the execution? That’s what the Dhemlan Queens want.*
She knew that. She had seen the letter demanding the executions. It had made her sick to see Zhara’s signature among the rest. She’d expected him to find a way around the executions, but she hadn’t expected this.
*You need to come home. Now.*
*I can’t.*
*Can’t or won’t?*
*Until I have the Queen’s permission to return to the Hall, I am required to stay away.*
Surreal blinked away tears before they could fall. *You’ll always choose her over the rest of us, won’t you?*
A beat of silence before he said gently, *You’ve always known I would.*
He broke the link between them.
She turned to the other women. “There’s nothing you can do now. There’s nothing any of us can do now except wait.”
The Healer looked puzzled. The Black Widow stared at her, all the color drained from her face.
“He asked,” the Black Widow said. “And his Queen answered? Prince Sadi’s Queen?”
“Yes,” Tersa said. “My boy is one of her weapons.”
“I thought . . .” The Black Widow swallowed hard. “We all thought . . .”
“It is best not to ask too much of someone who stands so deep in the abyss.” Tersa’s voice held a quiet warning. “The Queen no longer sees the living Realms in the same way.” She looked at Surreal. “There is no cure for the pretty poison.”
Surreal’s legs went out from under her. She knew that place, had seen that place. But it didn’t exist anymore. Hadn’t existed for centuries.
Except in the memory of someone who had been haunted by that place all her life.
Briarwood. Somehow, Witch had sent Jaenelle Saetien to Briarwood—and the Darkness only knew what the girl would be like when she returned.
The next room held two redheaded girls who sat side by side in a patch of turned earth, wearing blood-soaked dresses.
“Myrol and Rebecca,” Rose said. “This is the carrot patch where the uncles buried the redheads.”
“You ate the carrots after . . .”
Rose pointed to another girl at the end of the garden. “That’s Dannie. They served her leg for dinner one night.”
Jaenelle Saetien retched.
“This is what happened after a witch like Delora gained power,” Rose said, viciously cheerful. “Sand is running in the glass. Ready to see the rest?”
She had to get out of this place. And that meant seeing what was in each room until she found the way out.
“Let’s go,” she said. “It can’t get any worse.”
Rose laughed.
“Why don’t you find something to do with all that rage?”
Daemon reviewed the notes Lord Marcus, his man of business, had given him. “You’re sure about this?”
Marcus nodded. “Lady Fharra and a handful of the senior instructors own the school. They receive salaries for their work there, but they also receive the profits from the hefty fees. It is a private school, so there is nothing unethical about how they’ve structured the return on their investment.”
“But they looked away from trouble that might take a bite out of those profits,” Daemon said. “They ignored the bullying and abuse—and worse—that a group of aristo children inflicted on so many other children at that school.”
“I couldn’t find any indication that Lady Fharra or those instructors had any affinity for Hayll or for the way Dorothea SaDiablo’s cruelty had eventually twisted the Blood in the whole Realm of Terreille.”
“They still provided the fertile ground for a girl like Delora to prosper and gather a following while eliminating anyone she considered to be a rival.”
“What are you going to do?” Marcus asked.
Daemon created a tongue of witchfire. He held one corner of the paper to the fire and watched it burn until he dropped the last scrap into a marble bowl on his desk. Then he smiled a cold, cruel smile as he finally knew exactly what to do with all the rage that had been building inside him. “I’m going to call in a debt.”
Jaenelle Saetien didn’t recognize the bedroom or the girl on the bed who was flailing weakly and begging for it to stop. But she recognized Clayton—and she realized he and the girl were having sex.
No, not sex. Not when the girl was begging him to stop and he seemed triumphant when the girl screamed and . . . became less.
Rose studied her. “Nothing? You didn’t feel him pounding between your legs, driving you down to your inner web, using pain and fear to make you fall and shatter that inner web? That’s how it’s done, you know. That’s how witches are broken on their Virgin Night.”
Jaenelle Saetien stared at Rose, horrified. “But that’s . . .” Clayton. One of Delora’s friends. A boy I thought was also my friend.
“If you didn’t feel the rape, then you didn’t have a hand in that girl ending up under him. Some of your friends won’t be so lucky.” Rose paused. “You might want to take a good look at her face. She comes from a minor aristo family. You might see her again. Or what’s left of her after he was done.”
See that girl and remember this? No. Never.
“There’s the door,” Rose said. “Time to move on.”
“Can’t we find a room where we can rest for a while?” Jaenelle Saetien asked.
“You have no body here, nothing that requires rest.”
What about a heart, a mind?
“You want to stay here?” Rose demanded.
And watch Clayton doing . . . that? “Let’s go on.”
Daemon walked onto the school grounds and let his Black power flow beneath all the minds still in residence.
He’d met Lady Fharra and knew what her mind felt like. She wasn’t at the school. He’d bet the other instructors who owned a percentage of the school weren’t there either. But there were still plenty of other people within the grounds. Students and instructors. The grooms who took care of the horses—and the horses.