“Revenge on me and mine because Haeze fought back,” she said. “Exchanging one child’s life for another’s.”
“Yes. But he didn’t count on you and Tildee—that you would fight him and Tildee would be able to take Mikal out of his reach. He didn’t count on Beron charging in to attack.” Daemon paused. “Beron ripped off the mesh and saw the enemy’s face.”
He and Lucivar suspected that was why the Healer had been destroying Beron’s ability to communicate. From what Jaenelle had told him, the bitch had a little of the Hourglass’s skills—enough to strip Beron of even psychic communication by locking him within his own mind, which she would have done if Jaenelle hadn’t intervened. A boy like that would be at the mercy of a predator.
How many of the recent cildru dyathe had arrived in Hell in the same condition?
“Do you think Haeze’s brother is still alive?” Sylvia asked.
“No,” Daemon replied. “But having seen the servant’s child and believing their own boy was still alive, they decided to sacrifice your child instead, knowing what that bastard intended to do to Mikal.”
“They didn’t have a choice,” Sylvia said.
“Yes, they did.” Daemon’s voice held a hint of ice.
“What choice?” The fire in Sylvia’s voice challenged the ice in his.
“They could have gone to the District Queen for help. Haeze’s father could have gone to the Queen’s Master of the Guard if he didn’t think the village guards would help him. Someone could have gone to the Province Queen or come to me when the first child in that village went missing. They had other choices, Sylvia, and the choice they made resulted in Beron being injured and you being killed.” He shoved out of his chair. “Save your pity for someone who deserves it. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a butcher to hunt.”
He walked out of the room, walked out of the Keep, and caught the Black Winds that would take him home.
Sylvia watched Lucivar fill up a plate with breakfast foods before wandering out of the room. He made it look casual, but it wasn’t. She didn’t think Saetan had caught up with Daemon before Sadi left the Keep, but Yaslana was getting off the battlefield before the High Lord returned.
Moments after Lucivar left, Saetan came back into the room. He walked over to the table beside her wheeled chair, picked up her glass of yarbarah, and warmed it over a tongue of witchfire before handing it to her.
“Finish that,” he said.
She bristled at the disapproving chill in his voice. “I’m entitled to an opinion.”
“And we’re entitled to think you’re being a softhearted ass for having that opinion,” he snapped.
“You’re not a mother!”
“No, but I am a father, and I am the High Lord of Hell. I’ve seen that bastard’s victims, Sylvia, and I gave mercy to some of them because they were so damaged that was the only thing I could do.”
“Haeze’s mother was just trying to save her son!”
“He’s dead!” Saetan roared. “No Face was never going to give her back a living boy. He was dead before you arrived for that visit.”
Sylvia shrank back in her chair, trembling. “You can’t be sure of that.”
“Oh, but I am sure of that. And before you say Daemon and I don’t have a personal stake in your sons, I suggest you consider how our families are connected.” He walked out of the room, slamming the door behind him.
She didn’t need to consider or think. She knew all about the connections.
When Jaenelle was fifteen and had tried attending school with other children, Beron had been her friend. Even now, when he was still an adolescent and she was a grown woman married for more than a decade, they were still friends, and he told Jaenelle things he wouldn’t think to tell anyone else. Mikal spent as much time with Tersa as he did at home, and because of that, Daemon was the adult male he had the most contact with outside of Sylvia’s own First Circle.
Many years ago, her father had come to Halaway to find work and a wife. He’d found both, and he’d been enormously proud of his daughter, the Queen. He was a good man, and he loved her as much as she loved him. But their love had been strained by her love of another good man—because that man was the High Lord of Hell and the patriarch of the SaDiablo family. Her father saw things one way; Saetan saw things another. Neither was wrong, and both cared deeply for family, but it had scraped against her father’s pride that her sons had found the SaDiablo way of thinking more appealing, even though its rules and code of honor were more demanding.
Having a man so old and powerful and lethal as her lover and her sons’ surrogate father had not sat well with the man who had raised her. Of course, he had thought the two Consorts who had sired her sons were great fellows because they fit into the social circles that minor aristos like her father found comfortable, and she suspected he’d been behind the interest Mikal’s sire had been showing in his offspring recently.
Daemon and Jaenelle would make room for her father and brother because they were her family, but whether her blood relatives liked it or not, her sons had become absorbed into the SaDiablo family, and the SaDiablos took care of their own.
She drained the glass of yarbarah and set it aside. Then she pulled up the long skirt and looked at what remained of her legs.
The SaDiablos took care of their own. Would Saetan have given anyone else a vial of Jaenelle’s blood so that a Healer could shape shattered bone and ripped flesh into clean stumps? Or heal her fingertips so that she could have full use of her hands? She knew enough about the restrictions he placed on the demon-dead to understand that he’d bent many of his own rules to give her this much.
If another woman had come to the Keep asking for his help, most likely he would have summoned his sons or trusted demon-dead Warlords to save the children, and he would have provided the blood that would have given the woman enough sustenance to keep the Self inside the flesh until she had the reassurance that her children were safe. What would have happened to her after that? Most likely, in a few days or weeks, that woman’s power would have faded and she would have become a whisper in the Darkness. Saetan was realistic. He had to be. Hundreds of Blood died every day. He couldn’t take care of all of them personally.
But he could, and did, protect the living from the dead. And wasn’t that part of Saetan’s—and Daemon’s—anger? No Face was demon-dead and was still hunting in a living Realm, was hunting now in Dhemlan.
Instead of recognizing the rage growing in two Warlord Princes, she had remained focused on another woman’s fear as if it were her own—even though she knew that woman’s choice would not have been hers. She would have gone to the District Queen or the Province Queen or broken down the door at SaDiablo Hall if that was what it took to get help. She wouldn’t have sacrificed another woman’s child, even at the cost of her own.
Sylvia lowered the skirt and carefully arranged the folds. She was a spectator now, nothing more. As hard as it was to wait, she had to trust the living to take care of the living.
FIVE
Beron walked along Halaway’s streets, looking into shop windows and wishing he’d brought along a few coins so he could suggest buying dishes of flavored ice.
“I have money,” Jaenelle said.
He looked at her. Long golden hair and sapphire eyes, wearing one of those peculiar outfits that were too big for her. Only fifteen years old, but her eyes were ancient.