Lucivar opened the front door of his eyrie and smelled vomit.
Shit, he thought as he used Craft to remove the winter cape. Had Surreal come down with that stomach illness?
He didn’t have time to wonder, didn’t even have time to turn and hang up the cape. The wolf pups rushed him, so panicked their attempts to communicate were completely incoherent. Then Tassle appeared and ...
“Papa! I’m sorry, Papa! I’m sorry!”
He heard Daemonar’s voice, heard the slap of boots on stone, felt the change in air as something launched at him.
As he dropped the cape and reached out, he formed a skintight Ebon-gray shield around himself. His hand filled with fabric, and in the heartbeat he had to decide whether to shove something away or pull it close, he realized he’d grabbed Daemonar and pulled his boy close.
Little arms wrapped around his neck in a choke hold. “I’m sorry!”
Mother Night. When had Daemonar learned to create a sight shield? He was much too young for that level of Craft.
*Sorry sorry sorry!* the wolf pups wailed.
That probably explained how the boy had learned it.
“Okay, boyo,” he said soothingly. “What are you sorry about?” From the smell of him, the boy had wet his pants, proving he wasn’t as housebroken as Lucivar had thought.
“I broke Auntie Srell!”
Lucivar’s legs went out from under him. He sank to his knees, clutching his son, trying to make sense of the words. He looked at Tassle.
*Graysfang is with her. She will not hear us, Yas. She cries like she is being torn up in a trap, but we cannot smell a wound.*
Sweet Darkness, have mercy.
He pried Daemonar off him. “Listen to me, boyo. You have to drop the sight shield.”
“I don’t know how!” Daemonar wailed.
“All right. Tassle will help you. You stay with him. I have to help Auntie Surreal. Stay here, Daemonar.”
He whistled sharply as he headed toward the family’s rooms. Graysfang howled in reply.
He found Surreal in the parlor on the floor, crying in a way that went beyond simple pain. He dropped to his knees and gathered her in his arms.
“Surreal? Surreal! It’s Lucivar. You’re all right now. You’re all right!”
“He’s just a little boy!” she screamed, feebly beating on his chest. “How could you leave me with a little boy?”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t realize . . .” What? That she wasn’t easy around children? That she’d been fine playing with Daemonar at Winsol as long as Marian or Jaenelle was also there, but she’d joined the adults the moment she was the only one with the boy? He just hadn’t considered why she’d responded that way.
Her breathing wasn’t good. It sounded like she’d torn something in her chest.
“I couldn’t save them,” she whimpered.
He cuddled her because it was the only thing he could do at that moment. “Surreal.”
Words poured out of her. Names that made him sick just to hear them. Marjane. Rebecca and Myrol. Dannie. Rose. He knew those names. How could he not? He’d heard them whenever Jaenelle had nightmares about a place called Briarwood.
Trist. Kester. Ginger. The children who had died in the spooky house.
He held on to her, not sure she knew she wasn’t alone.
When Marian suddenly appeared in the parlor doorway, he said, “Get Nurian. And Father.” Late enough in the day for Saetan to be awake, and he wanted the strongest Black Widow available to examine Surreal.
Words poured out with a pain he couldn’t imagine. How had she kept this inside her for so long?
She stopped speaking in midword, and he hoped that she was finally aware that he was there, that he would help.
She sagged in his arms, and there was a sudden, and terrible, silence.
SEVEN
Lucivar paced the length of the eyrie’s large front room, back and forth, back and forth. The parlor would have been warmer but not more comfortable—not while he could taste Surreal’s pain in the air and imagined he still heard the echoes of her crying.
Needing the movement, he continued pacing and kept an eye on Daemon, who had taken a position at the glass doors and done nothing but stare at the snow that had been trampled by Daemonar and the wolf pups over the past few days. Too silent and too still. Lucivar found this side of Daemon’s temper the most frightening because there was no way to gauge the ferocity hiding under passivity—or how that temper would show itself when the passive surface broke.
“It wasn’t Daemonar’s fault,” Lucivar said. “Or the wolf pups’. They were playing a game. They didn’t know—”
Hell’s fire. Who could have known Surreal would react by tearing the eyrie apart and scaring the youngsters so badly the wolf pups forgot how to drop the sight shield?
Daemon turned away from the glass doors, his gold eyes changing from blank to annoyed. “Of course it wasn’t their fault. They’re just children.”
“If you’re going to blame someone, blame me.”
Daemon’s annoyance held a sharper edge. “For what?”
Lucivar stopped pacing and faced his brother. “She didn’t want to stay with the boy. Not by herself. But, Daemon, I swear by the Jewels and all that I am, I didn’t realize she was afraid to stay with the boy.”
“None of us realized that. She wasn’t troubled being around him when we were all at the Keep for Winsol.”
“Because we were there. She wasn’t responsible for keeping him safe. For keeping him alive.” Lucivar started pacing again. “Before she collapsed, she kept talking about the dead children, how she couldn’t save them.”
“That answers the question of what’s been eating at her these past few weeks,” Daemon said, his voice bleak and angry.
“I can understand her feeling raw about the children who died in the spooky house, but she’s been shouldering the weight of children who were dead before she knew they existed.”
Saetan walked into the room.
Lucivar pivoted and Daemon moved with him. When they stopped, they stood shoulder to shoulder as they faced the High Lord.
“Nurian says there is nothing physically wrong with Surreal,” Saetan said.
“Wasn’t she listening to Surreal breathe?” Lucivar snapped. “If she’s that incompetent, I’ll kick her ass out of Ebon Rih.”
“There is nothing wrong with Nurian’s skill as a Healer,” Saetan snapped back. “But if you need to kick someone’s ass, kick your own for not considering the condition of Surreal’s lungs when you insisted that she spend several weeks in the mountains during deep winter.”