“What did you have in mind?” Karla asked.
He told them.
“This is permanent?” Witch asked.
“No. If it was permanent, I could do it on my own.” And he wouldn’t need to work with a tangled web to extract the price owed for the destruction. “I would like this to be temporary and for a very specific amount of time. I don’t have the delicacy of skill to do that.”
Karla smiled at him, then looked at Witch. “He’s become quite terrifying when he’s pissed off.”
“He always was.” Witch returned Karla’s smile, but the icy rage Daemon saw in her sapphire eyes reminded him that he was not the most terrifying individual in the room.
The smile he gave them in return was equally sharp, equally cold—and it delighted him to be in their presence. “Shall we begin?”
TWENTY-FIVE
Jaenelle Saetien fell halfway out of bed as she tried to kick off the covers and turn on the bedside lamp. For a moment, she thought it had been a bad dream. Then she heard more screams.
She ran out of her room in the dormitory, then stopped. Girls were hovering in the hallway like little animals that were reluctant to move too far from their burrows.
More screams.
Not knowing what else to do, Jaenelle Saetien headed for Delora and Hespera, who stood in front of Amara’s door, looking frightened and furious.
“What happened?” she asked as a scream changed to a wail behind the door. “Is Amara hurt? Should I fetch the school Healer?”
The door opened. Borsala and Leena guided Amara out of the room.
Jaenelle Saetien stared at Amara’s hands. Not only were the hands clenched so tightly the fingernails were cutting into the palms; they were curled inward to such a degree it was a wonder that something in Amara’s wrists didn’t tear from the strain.
Tacita came out of another room, leading Dahlia, a girl who had been on the periphery of their little group. Her hands were fisted and curled like Amara’s.
Other girls were led from their rooms, their hands useless.
Someone must have alerted the school’s Healer because now there were shocked adult voices mingling with the cries and wails.
Once the afflicted girls were taken to the healing rooms and the dormitory settled into a wary quietness, Jaenelle Saetien felt the fury pumping out of Delora and followed the other girl’s line of sight—to Titian, who looked shocked, and Zoey, who looked stunned and yet not completely surprised.
“What did you do?” Delora snarled, taking a step closer to Zoey.
“Nothing.” Zoey faced Delora. “But they must have done something.”
“Couldn’t keep your mouth shut, could you, fat bat?” Hespera said, spitting the words at Titian. “Had to go whining about a little teasing.”
Jaenelle Saetien looked at her friends, then at her cousin. Titian had been upset about something that had happened at the pottery shed yesterday, and Papa and Uncle Lucivar had been quite angry about it. But Delora and Hespera said it wasn’t anything significant and asking Titian about it would give the girl notions of being important beyond her scope. So she hadn’t crossed the green to where her cousins and Zoey had stood. She hadn’t asked what happened. She couldn’t be blamed if she didn’t know.
And she wasn’t going to ask who had shaped the punishment for whatever had happened in the pottery shed.
Not wanting to be pulled into taking sides between Zoey and Delora, Jaenelle Saetien hurried back to her room—and wondered whether things would have been different this morning if her father and uncle hadn’t been at the school yesterday.
Daemon hadn’t gotten more than a couple of hours of sleep between finishing the tangled web that held the punishment spell and returning to Amdarh—and the school.
After he activated the spell, there was nothing more for him to do except wait for Lady Zhara’s request for an audience.
Helton was startled to find him walking into the town house shortly after dawn, but there was coffee available since Lucivar had left for Ebon Rih barely a quarter of an hour earlier. Apparently, Daemonar had chosen to remain at the school last night to give Lord Weston a hand at squelching any trouble, should any arise.
That told him Zhara had taken her little chat with Lucivar seriously.
He had his first cup of coffee while reviewing the correspondence that had been left on his desk. He enjoyed the second cup in the dining room while he tucked into a hearty breakfast.
The urgent knocking on the town house’s front door came as he finished the last bite. A message from Lady Zhara.
He didn’t rush—he was the Warlord Prince of Dhemlan, after all—but he didn’t make the Queen of Amdarh wait long before he arrived at her home and was escorted into the morning room, where Zhara and the court Healer waited for him.
“Ladies,” he said pleasantly.
“There has been a troubling occurrence at the school,” Zhara said. “Zoey was shaken by it and wasn’t making a lot of sense when she contacted me on a psychic thread, but from the report Lord Weston provided, I gathered some girls were mysteriously injured.”
“Ah.” Daemon took a seat and crossed his legs at the knees. “Guilt can manifest itself in odd ways. Physical ways. Perhaps the girls who are afflicted were involved in some intended cruelty and are now paying the price. Perhaps your Healer could suggest to the school’s Healer that such an affliction in girls that age is temporary, although restoring the hands to their full use will probably be painful.”
He watched the muscles in Zhara’s throat work.
“This affliction is temporary?” she asked.
He smiled. “This time.”
A clock in the room ticked, ticked, ticked while he waited.
“If it’s temporary . . .” The Healer stopped, then seemed to gather her courage. “Do you know how long this affliction lasts?”
“About seven days,” he replied, his voice still brutally pleasant.
Tick, tick, tick.
“Thank you for the information, Prince,” Zhara finally said. “We’ll make sure it’s passed on to the school.”
He rose and bowed to Queen and Healer. “Ladies.”
He’d almost reached the morning room’s door when Zhara said, “Prince? Zoey sent a note yesterday afternoon, telling me that the gift she’d been making for her mother had been among the work that had been destroyed in the pottery shed. Including Zoey and Titian, how many girls had their work damaged?”
He looked back at her and said too softly, “Seven.”
TWENTY-SIX
For seven days, Amara and the other girls afflicted with Curling Hands had needed help getting dressed. They’d needed help being fed, blowing their noses, wiping their asses.
Disgusting.
Delora knew the source of that spell. Oh, yes, she knew. No one in the school, instructors included, had the skill to do something like what was done to Amara and the other afflicted girls, so that left two possibilities. One, really, since the girls hadn’t had their hands chopped off.
Prince Sadi’s interference had cost her the loyalty of her second-tier followers. Girls like Dahlia, whom she’d been breaking down bit by bit since they were girls—since the day they’d searched for the missing kitten. Now, on the eighth day, as the muscles and tendons in their hands started to relax, she saw the moment the girls who had been in the pottery shed with Amara realized this had been a specific punishment for a specific bit of mischief—and fear of another round of punishment from someone brutal enough to do this to them would remain stronger than fear of whatever she might inflict on them for losing her favor.