Except . . . Tersa got her power back. Not in any usual way, and not in a way that enabled her to wear a Jewel. She had paid for regaining the Hourglass’s Craft with her sanity. The Darkness only knew what price she and the rest of the family would have to pay in order to receive the answer to his questions.
The door opened. Mikal scowled at him and said, “Hell’s fire. Now she’s sent you to pester me about the puppy?”
“The puppy is the excuse for me being here today,” Daemonar said quietly. “But give me something I can take back so that Jaenelle Saetien doesn’t pester me.”
Mikal continued to block the doorway. “Tersa is having some trouble holding on to the threads of daily life, and over the past couple of days, she’s been spending a lot of time in the attic. Something’s wrong. Don’t make it worse.”
“I’ll try not to, but Prince Sadi needs some answers.”
Mikal finally stepped back and muttered, “Good luck with getting those.” In a louder voice he added, “Well, come on back and meet them. Actually, it’s good you’re here. They haven’t seen an Eyrien.”
He followed Mikal to the kitchen. The puppies were in their basket. Two cute little bundles of fur who stared at this two-legged creature who was strange and might be frightening. Then . . .
Bark, bark, bark. Yap, yap, yap.
“This is Lord Shelby and Lady Breen,” Mikal said, raising his voice to be heard over the yapping. “Hush, you. This is Prince Daemonar.”
Nope. Not hushing.
He slowly spread his wings, knowing he would suddenly look different from any human they had seen.
They both cringed away from him, and there was silence for one, two, three . . .
Bark, bark, bark. Yap, yap, yap.
He wasn’t sure how they could have gotten louder. Remembering what Uncle Daemon had dryly referred to as a bribe for the female puppy, Daemonar folded his wings and crouched. Calling in the square of neatly folded linen with the initial S embroidered in one corner, he held it out to Breen.
Bark, bark . . . She stopped. Sniffed. Moved closer. Sniffed again. Moved closer.
All right. Odd way to make friends, but . . .
Breen latched her teeth into the handkerchief and tried to pull it out of his hand.
Mikal sighed and said on a psychic spear thread, *Let her have it.*
Daemonar moved his hand forward to loosen the tension on the cloth, then released it.
Having her prize, Breen sat in the basket with the handkerchief under her front paws. She growled at him, as if daring him to try to take it back.
Shelby sniffed his hand, but since he wasn’t carrying a scent the fuzzy Warlord found sufficiently interesting, Shelby settled down with the chew treat Mikal handed out to both pups.
He and Mikal retreated to the cottage’s sitting room.
“Is she going to let me take it back?” Daemonar asked. Uncle Daemon hadn’t said anything about letting the puppy keep the handkerchief.
Mikal laughed. “You want to find out just how possessive a Sceltie puppy who’s a witch can be, go ahead and try. At least a handkerchief is easier to replace than shirts and not as embarrassing as other things.”
Daemonar perched on the arm of a chair. “Oh?”
“Oh. I’ve heard stories. Morghann, the first Sceltie who was a special friend for Uncle Daemon, used to ‘acquire’ his shirt before Jazen could remove the used clothing. When Uncle Daemon’s scent faded, she’d go digging in the clothes for another shirt. Another of his special friends had a passion for socks, which made Jazen crazy because that Sceltie figured out how to stuff more socks into a sock and turn it into a sniff-and-chew toy.”
He. Would. Not. Laugh.
“The most difficult one was the Sceltie who developed a passion for Uncle Daemon’s underwear.”
His jaw was clenched so hard, he was going to break a tooth if he didn’t laugh.
“That one trotted into the study one afternoon when Uncle Daemon was meeting with some aristo Ladies. Let’s just say the underwear the pup retrieved from the clothes hamper wasn’t the sort to provide what could be called modest coverage.”
Daemonar snorted.
“No one had the spine to ask, but the Ladies wondering what kind of underwear Uncle Daemon had on that afternoon added some zing to the meeting.”
Daemonar burst out laughing. “You’re making that up.”
“Hand on heart,” Mikal said. “I heard this from a reliable source. More than one, actually. So you might mention to Jaenelle Saetien that when a Sceltie becomes someone’s special friend, he likes to keep something that belongs to her that holds her scent. Something that can be washed is a good idea.”
“I’ll tell her.” He felt a change in the air, the approach of fractured power. Keeping his movements casual, he stood and turned toward the door—and wondered if he should call in his war blade.
Mikal sucked in a breath.
Daemonar stared at Tersa, who looked back at him, at them, with no recognition.
She’s gone deep into the Twisted Kingdom. How do we get her back?
Then, belatedly, he realized the wet patches on her green dress came from her bleeding wrists. “Tersa!”
“No.” Her voice was guttural, feral. Mad. She moved toward a rectangular table that was positioned against the sitting room’s back wall.
*Fetch the Healer,* Daemonar told Mikal. *And tell Beale that Prince Sadi needs to come home now.*
Mikal hurried out of the sitting room. Daemonar moved toward Tersa. Carefully. Cautiously. Until she remembered who he was, he couldn’t help her—and even broken, she was formidable enough that he didn’t dare touch her.
Tersa pointed to the table’s empty surface, her blood dripping on the wood.
“Tersa, you hurt yourself. Will you let me put something on those wounds?”
“How many sides does a triangle have?”
“If I answer, will you let me help you?” How much blood had she lost before coming downstairs? How much time did they have before she lost too much?
“How many sides does a triangle have?”
Not an idle question, he realized. He placed his forefinger lightly on the wood. As he traced a triangle, he said, “Father, uncle, nephew.” He set his finger in the center of the triangle. “And the one who rules all three.”
She nodded. Then she pointed to the bottom side, the nephew side, of the triangle. “This one stands between, stands for the other two. They will be feared, but he is still young, still approachable. He will be the first blade in this fight. Not the deadliest, but his heart will make him the fiercest.”
He watched the blood drip, drip, drip from her wrists. “Tersa . . .”
“The boy must wait for the knife that will nick his heart. Then he will have the answer.”
The boy. Uncle Daemon. “All right. I’ll tell him.”
“You want to know about the girl who is gone.”
Daemonar hesitated, chilled by the warning she’d already given him.
She held out her arms. Daemonar breathed a sigh of relief and called in two clean handkerchiefs to bind the wounds.
“You want to know about the girl Tersa had been before she was Tersa.”
“Sure, but first . . .”
She stepped back, drew her arms out of reach. “The Tersa who is now can’t survive the telling. The boy must promise she won’t be forced to survive.” A beat of silence. “Choose.”
He stared at her. Choose what?
He knew. The knowledge made him sick, but he knew. If he let her bleed out and die, here and now, she would make the transition to demon-dead and be able to hold on to what was left of her sanity long enough to tell Daemon Sadi about two young witches named Tersa and Dorothea before one was broken because of the machinations of the other. And then Daemon Sadi, the High Lord of Hell, would be required to give his mother mercy and send that completely shattered witch to the final death so that she could become a whisper in the Darkness.