“Nutcakes? I like nutcakes.”
“Me too.”
“You will share?”
“I will share.”
He coaxed her to the town house. After one startled glance, Helton performed all his duties and more, providing the nutcakes and milk—and then contacting Beale on a psychic thread so that the Hall’s butler could inform Prince Sadi that his mother was in Amdarh.
Daemonar could have reached his uncle on a Green communication thread, and probably should have. But what he’d been told about Daemon’s life in Terreille made him certain that he didn’t want to be connected to that formidable mind in any way when Daemon Sadi heard the word “Draega.”
Surreal stared into Sadi’s glazed, sleepy eyes and felt more fury than fear.
“That’s what that obscenity said?” he asked too softly. “The descendants of Hayll’s Hundred Families would rule Dhemlan one day, and he was helping to bring that day about a little sooner?”
“That’s what the girl remembered. But she was drugged and terrified.”
“You think she made it up?”
“No.”
“Is the girl safe?”
“She’s safe.”
“And the witch who sought help for her friend?”
“All the other customers in that coffee shop may have guessed who sat at my table—and why—but if questioned by her family or the District Queen, no one can say they saw her talking to me.”
“Have the Queens in that Province been negligent?”
She shook her head. “I think the . . . prey . . . is carefully chosen. That girl. She would have been a strong witch. Now all that potential is gone. If she hadn’t had a friend with enough steel in her spine to bring the girl to the District Queen and approach me, we wouldn’t have known about drugs being used at parties to subdue at least some of the girls.”
“You found more like this?”
“I don’t think the staff at the sanctuary specifically asked the girls if they’d started feeling odd at a party before they were broken, but I’ll find out. Until now, there was no reason to connect those girls being broken with families that might want to embrace Hayll’s corruption and bring it here. Whoever is behind breaking these girls has been careful not to draw the attention of the Province Queens—or you—but when you start looking at the potential power that is being snuffed out in a handful of girls each year, it stops feeling like accidents of youthful lust and starts feeling calculated.” She gripped the arms of the chair hard enough to hurt the muscles in her hands. “We have to stop this, Sadi.”
“We will.” He smiled a cold, cruel smile. “Newcomers to the games are so predictable. They always think no one has seen their plots and ploys before. But if they want to play, with Dhemlan and its people as the prize, then I am willing to play.”
For the first time since she’d seen the truth about the man she had married, Surreal looked forward to the moment when the High Lord of Hell—and the Sadist—revealed himself in all his terrible glory.
TWENTY-FOUR
Ignoring the tray of food Helton had brought into the study, Daemon poured coffee into two mugs and handed one to Lucivar.
Yesterday he’d escorted Tersa back to Halaway, then checked on Manny and Mikal. Manny was still spry for a woman her age, but the toll of living as a servant in Hayll for all those centuries was starting to show. And Mikal wasn’t a boy anymore but a young man who should be thinking of living on his own. Oh, there were decades yet before he’d make the Offering to the Darkness, but he’d finished the formal education available at the Halaway school and needed to think beyond that—maybe beyond the village—to what sort of work he wanted to do.
Mikal was content where he was—at least for now. His brother, Beron, was immersed in the acting profession he loved. Jillian was writing another story about the Sceltie who had a pet weeble and a human companion, and hinting that she’d like to live in the village of Maghre on the Isle of Scelt for a year to observe instructors and students at the Sceltie school located there. Young Andulvar was still too young to cause any kind of trouble beyond what the adults expected from an Eyrien boy.
Which left the other three children in the family: Jaenelle Saetien, who was becoming more of a moody stranger every time he saw her; Titian, who might become the most challenging of their children as she followed her heart to unexpected choices; and Daemonar, who was intelligent and loyal and committed to serving a Queen few people knew existed—and was born to stand on killing fields. Like him. Like Lucivar.
The Queen’s triangle, weapons all.
“Was Tersa right?” Lucivar asked after Daemon recounted Daemonar’s meeting with Tersa. “Is Amdarh starting to feel like Draega?”
“No,” Daemon replied. But it could. That was her warning, because the first time she had asked me the question about the sides of a triangle we had been in a park in Draega.
“Not even a full generation later, and the taint is starting to show again? Hell’s fire, Bastard. The children like Orian, who were babes or toddlers at the time of the purge . . . This is all the breathing room we get? A few centuries? Our children fighting the same battles we fought?”
“Not the same battles. Your sons may have to fight to hold the Blood in Kaeleer to the Old Ways, but they aren’t slaves who are also fighting to survive.”
“They could have been,” Lucivar said grimly.
He couldn’t disagree with that. If Orian had acquired a Ring of Obedience and had targeted any boy except Daemonar, she might have gotten away with using it—until Lucivar found out what she’d done and killed her for it.
“We see the threat that could cast a shadow on our children, but for all the short-lived races, there have been generations who have been free of that taint,” Daemon said. He hoped that was true, but he was going to meet with the Queens in other Territories very soon to let them know what he and Lucivar were seeing in Dhemlan and Askavi. “Unfortunately, I’m getting the impression that the aristo Hayllian way of life has been romanticized to the point of seeming desirable, certainly gratifying for those who have power. Corruption without cost. Dorothea achieved that for centuries.”
Lucivar looked at him, memories creating deep shadows in those gold eyes. “If that corruption is in Kaeleer, there will be a cost. I’ll make sure of it. I will drown cities in corpses and blood if that’s what it takes.”
Daemon smiled. “So will I.” He stood. “Shall we slip away to the school before Helton comes in and gives us a nonverbal scold for not eating the food?”
Lucivar looked at the tray of food and sighed. “Why do you have so many bossy servants?”
Daemon shrugged. “Someone has to hire them.”
From her favorite place in the shadows, Delora watched the two men walk across the green. No, that wasn’t right. One of them walked; the other glided.
“Don’t they have something else to do?” Jaenelle Saetien sounded mortally embarrassed when she spotted her father and uncle on school grounds.
Good.
“They must have found out Titian is . . . you know,” Hespera said. “I can’t imagine that has been easy to swallow.”
Clayton and Dhuran sniggered. Krellis just smiled, which was somehow more condemning—and was the reason Delora liked him the best.
“And you never had any hint that Titian and Zoey . . . ?” Leena opened her mouth just enough to let the tip of her tongue lick her upper lip. “The three of you used to be so close.”