A sultry voice. Almost a sexual purr. Daemon excelled at using sensuality to intimidate, and right now the boy was doing an excellent job.
Except he wasn’t sure intimidation was the response Daemon intended to evoke.
“Did you enjoy your gift?” Daemon asked.
“My gift?”
“You asked for solitude. We stepped back so you could celebrate Winsol Eve in your own way.”
With Jaenelle. With Witch.
“Lucivar and I talked it over, and we decided that you had a point—and a lesson we wanted to embrace now instead of later.”
“That’s good.” Maybe. He might sound more enthusiastic if he were more awake—and if Daemon’s hand resting on his hip didn’t feel more and more like a cat’s paw pressing on a mouse’s tail.
“We decided to give the first six days of Winsol to our public obligations as rulers of Dhemlan and Ebon Rih. Winsol Day will be for family. And the last six days will be private. Quiet. Jaenelle and I are going to Scelt for a couple of days, and then tuck in at the Hall.”
“That’s good,” Saetan said. And it was.
“Today, being Winsol, is for family,” Daemon said. “All of us, together. Here at the Keep.”
“All ... ?”
Sounds just outside the bedroom door. Then Daemonar shouted, “Wake up, Granpapa! Wake up!”
He heard Lucivar’s rumble, followed by giggles and squeals that moved away from the door.
“All of us,” Daemon said. “Even Tersa.”
Honoring the day with his children without the intrusion of the world and its demands. He felt foolishly sentimental—and very happy.
“Just family,” he said, his voice husky as he remembered the family members who were no longer with him.
“And Rainier. It seems he was going to be alone tonight, so Surreal declared him an honorary cousin for the occasion.”
Too much sentiment, too much feeling. And it wasn’t just him. The sensuality was a game, but having the family gathered like this meant a great deal to Daemon too.
Figuring they both needed a moment to step back from deep feelings, he said, “You got through this much of the day without opening any gifts?” If they’d managed that with a boy Daemonar’s age in their midst, they had steel balls and no nerves.
Daemon twitched his shoulders. “We let him open his, and the adults each opened one of theirs.”
Saetan studied his son—the flushed skin, the sudden avoidance of looking him in the eyes. “So. How long did it take Daemonar to get the bug out of the box?”
Daemon’s expression went absolutely blank. Then he muttered, “We found it before Marian did.”
He could picture Lucivar and Daemon scrambling around to find the exploding beetle before Marian—or Surreal—found it. Since he didn’t think either man was going to find anything amusing about that little adventure—at least for another decade or two—he’d wait until he was safely in the shower before he laughed at them.
“Then it sounds like Daemonar likes his gift. What about you?” He twisted around to plump up the pillows. “Since you were so eager to open it a few days ago, I assume you opened the gift I gave you.”
When there was no response, he stopped plumping pillows and looked at Daemon’s sulky expression. “Didn’t you like your gift?”
“I don’t know,” Daemon growled. “I haven’t been able to unravel the Craft lock you put on the damn box.”
Saetan blinked. He’d used that same lock on his sons’ gifts when they were young. It used to take Daemon less than five minutes to unravel the thing.
Winsol gifts weren’t just found in the boxes. They were the moments, and memories, treasured by the heart. Like this one.
He tried to swallow the butterflies tickling his throat. Seeing the look on Daemon’s face, he tried hard.
Then he gave up, plopped back on the pillows—and laughed.
SHADES OF HONOR
This story takes place before the events in The Shadow Queen.
ONE
Prince Falonar stood outside his eyrie, restlessly opening and closing his dark, membranous wings as he stared down at the village of
Riada. Within minutes of her arrival, he’d felt Gray-Jeweled power ripple through the village and up the mountains like a challenge—or a warning.
Surreal SaDiablo had returned to Ebon Rih.
He had made two mistakes when he came to Kaeleer two years ago. The first was agreeing to serve Lucivar Yaslana, whom he’d despised from the moment they’d met as boys training in the same hunting camp. He’d thought he could swallow taking Lucivar’s orders for five years in exchange for living in Ebon Rih and being in a position to catch the attention of the Queen of Ebon Askavi. He’d been confident that she would see the value of having a true aristo Eyrien Warlord Prince in her First Circle and take over his service contract. Serving in the same court as Yaslana would have rubbed him a bit raw, but he would have accepted having to treat Lucivar as an equal—at least until he could persuade the Queen to find another way for Lucivar to serve her that would keep the man away from Askavi, leaving the Eyriens free to live without the constant embarrassment of acknowledging a half-breed bastard. Whether Yaslana’s Hayllian father acknowledged him now or not, Lucivar would always be a bastard with no standing in Eyrien society. And nothing would change the fact that Lucivar was a half-breed, and being a half-breed was, in many ways, even worse than being a bastard.
Desperate to find a position in Kaeleer and avoid being sent back to Terreille, Falonar had signed the five-year service contract, gambling that he wouldn’t be under Lucivar’s control for most of it. But the following spring, Witch had unleashed her power to purge the Realms of Dorothea and Hekatah SaDiablo’s taint, and she’d been injured so severely by the backlash of her own power that she was no longer capable of ruling Ebon Askavi. That left Falonar with the choice of bending to Lucivar’s will for the full term of the contract or being tossed back to Terreille, where he had no future of any kind.
His second mistake had been responding to Surreal’s initial interest in him—and his interest in her—and having sex with her. Oh, she was terrific in bed—strong and experienced and so knowledgeable when it came to playing with a man’s body to give him the sharpest release. She was worth every gold mark she’d charged as a whore in Terreille, and he’d had her for the asking. She had also been a sharp, interesting companion outside of bed—when she wasn’t trying to acquire skills that should be kept exclusive to warriors.
Except the sex hadn’t been as free as he’d thought. At least, not after they came to Ebon Rih and he’d invited her to stay with him in his eyrie. He had been thinking of the relief of having as much sex as he wanted with a woman strong enough to handle being with a Sapphire-Jeweled Warlord Prince. But he hadn’t considered that the SaDiablos, by allowing Surreal to use the family name, really would think of her as family. In Terreille, that was something no true aristo family would have done, because no matter how skilled she was and how exclusive the Red Moon houses were where she had plied those skills, the fact was that Surreal was still a half-breed whore who had started her career in dark alleys and dirty rooms.
Unfortunately, he had realized too late that even whores could have unrealistic romantic notions. About the time he wanted Surreal to find other accommodations, leaving him free to express his interest in Nurian, the Eyrien Healer, he discovered that Surreal thought they were a step away from a handfast—and that Lucivar thought the same thing. As much as he’d enjoyed her, he wasn’t about to make any commitment to a woman who wasn’t Eyrien, let alone a woman who’d seen so many balls she was now trying to grow a pair of her own.