“I can fly, you know,” he called as she left the room.
She didn’t know what Witch had said to him in her absence, but Daemonar looked a little less hollow by the time she returned with the large tray that had appeared at the metal gate that marked the Queen’s part of the Keep.
She warmed and drank a glass of yarbarah while she and Witch watched Daemonar consume a staggering amount of food. When he couldn’t find a single thing left to eat, he let out a sigh, sounding content. Not full, but content.
“What?” he said when they stared at him. “I was hungry.”
“And now it’s time for you to go, boyo,” Witch said, putting a hand on his shoulder.
Daemonar wasn’t the only person who needed to feel that hand made out of illusions and Craft, and Karla wondered how soon Daemon Sadi would be arriving at the Keep, equally raw from what Tersa had done and the price she had demanded that neither man had been willing to pay.
Karla escorted Daemonar to one of the courtyards that had a stone landing web and watched him leave before she returned to the Queen’s part of the Keep.
“Tersa broke the tangled webs to prevent anyone else from seeing the visions,” Karla said. “She did it so that Sadi won’t know what’s coming, won’t know the shape of the knife that is going to nick his heart.” She studied the Queen who had been her friend since they were children. “But you know what’s coming.”
“Tersa doesn’t walk any roads in the Twisted Kingdom that I haven’t seen.”
“Sadi won’t thank you for not telling him and giving him time to prepare.”
Witch’s sapphire eyes were filled with sorrow and icy determination. “Yes, he will.”
Daemon pressed a hand over his heart and studied the tangled web he’d spun in an attempt to find some answers.
It was impossible to re-create a tangled web. If even the smallest thread was missing or out of place, it wouldn’t be the same web, wouldn’t reveal the same vision. He’d hoped that, using the warning Tersa had distilled from her webs as his starting point, this web would show him some of what his mother had seen.
This web had shown him entirely different truths about his heart.
The first truth, a bitter one, was that he couldn’t save his daughter from whatever was coming because of choices she had made. The only thing he could do now was shake her willful blindness to the consequences of her own actions by responding to her in the same way he would to any witch who continuously undermined his trust until there was no trust at all.
The second truth confirmed something Witch had told him centuries ago. Most men probably would feel sorrow or regret. All he felt was relief.
Jaenelle Saetien vanished her books and marched toward the exercise field where Daemonar usually held the morning workouts for a dozen girls and a handful of boys, plus Prince Raine. Everyone thought a tutor joining the workout was a little weird and was bound to get Raine in trouble with Lady Fharra sooner or later. Since the participants all worked up a sweat—her cousin didn’t think a workout was successful unless you sweated—they all had to rush to take showers and put on fresh clothes before hurrying to their first class.
Fine for the boys, with their short hair, but what about the girls? Did Daemonar even consider how long it took to dry and style long hair, especially in the winter, even if you used Craft to help with the drying and styling?
That wasn’t the point. Not today. The point was he’d missed a day of classes, and when he’d returned early this morning, the only thing he’d told her was to expect Shelby to confiscate something of hers that the puppy could smell when she wasn’t around. But when she’d pushed, because something about the visit to the Hall and Halaway had upset her cousin a lot and had kept him away from Amdarh overnight, he’d just said Tersa wasn’t well and needed some quiet time to recover.
Puppies at the cottage wouldn’t help Tersa have quiet time. Which made her wonder if the puppies—Shelby at least—should be relocated to the town house, where she could play with him and work with him every day after her classes. It sounded reasonable, didn’t it? Of course, that would leave the staff at the town house to deal with the puppy’s potty training since she wouldn’t be around that much—and she wouldn’t be around at night, although Daemonar was living at the town house, so he might be talked around to taking care of the middle-of-the-night piddle if she . . .
“Are you avoiding me?” Delora asked.
She spun around, surprised to find the girl just a couple of steps behind her. “No.”
“I called your name half a dozen times. I thought I’d done something to upset you and you were ignoring me.”
She didn’t recall hearing Delora say her name—or say anything else for that matter. Had she been that lost in thought? “My grandmother isn’t well. It’s worrying.” That was true enough, but she felt a bit guilty, as she always did, about not mentioning Shelby. Delora might really enjoy hearing about the puppy’s progress. Except then she might want to see the puppy, and Shelby was still too impressionable to be exposed to too many humans.
Yes, that was it. She wasn’t keeping Delora away from Shelby. She was keeping everyone away from the puppy. Even Zoey and Titian, who knew about the puppy.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” Delora said. “Any illness is a concern when someone is elderly, but she’s not too ill, is she?”
During their late-night talks, had she given Delora the impression that Tersa was elderly? She didn’t think so. And not being well wasn’t the same as being ill.
“No, she’ll be fine in a day or two. She just needs rest.”
Delora looked relieved. “That’s good, because I wanted to talk to you about something important.”
Wondering why Hespera and the other girls weren’t with Delora as usual, Jaenelle Saetien followed her friend to one of those shadowy places that Delora preferred when she watched the comings and goings on the green.
“I’ve been thinking about Zoey and Titian and the other girls, and I feel awful,” Delora said. “The boys go too far sometimes, but Hespera and I were just teasing with the nicknames. We didn’t realize Zoey and Titian were taking the words seriously and were hurt by them.”
“They were hurt enough that I wasn’t allowed to invite you to the Winsol party,” Jaenelle Saetien pointed out.
“Exactly! And your calling Krellis and the other boys to task about some of the things they said made me see that we’ve really been unkind and need to make amends.”
“That’s a good idea.”
“Calling me and my friends the coven of malice isn’t kind either, but I guess it was meant as retaliation, only I didn’t understand that.” Delora’s smile looked . . . too big. “So now I need your help.”
Jaenelle Saetien blinked. “With what?” Delora should be able to work out what she wanted to say as an apology.
“With getting Zoey’s friends and my friends together so that we can do something away from school and maybe start over.”
“You want to have an afternoon party at the town house?” She’d definitely need her father’s permission to have more than a couple of friends spending an afternoon at the town house, but maybe he’d warm to Delora if he had a chance to talk to her and see that she wasn’t anything like that Dorothea woman who had hurt him when he was young.
“Not at the town house. That’s so close to the school, all the students would be trying to get in to see the place and devour the food.” Delora looked so earnest. “I was thinking of an overnight house party at the Hall. You keep saying how big the place is, and no one except those who were invited would know where the gathering was being held, and even if other students found out, they’re unlikely to come all that way. Oh, please say you’ll talk your father into letting us have a house party. I really want a chance to settle things with Zoey, and I can’t do that around the school.”