It was late in the evening before Lucivar got the chance to slip out to the back garden. Daemon had gone out a few minutes before, after an abrupt, snarling disagreement with Lady Cornelia.
Moving with a hunter's caution, Lucivar followed the ribbon of chilled air left by Daemon's passing. He turned a corner and stopped.
Daemon stood in the middle of the gravel path, his face raised to the night sky while the delicate breeze riffled his black hair.
The gravel under Lucivar's feet shifted slightly.
Daemon turned toward the sound.
Lucivar hesitated. He knew what that sleepy, glazed look in Daemon's eyes meant, remembered only too well what had happened in courts when that tender, murderous smile had lasted for more than a brief second. Nothing, and no one, was safe when Daemon was in this mood. But, Hell's fire, that's what made dancing with the Sadist fun.
Smiling his own lazy, arrogant smile, Lucivar stepped forward and slowly stretched his dark wings their full span before tucking them tight to his body. "Hello, Bastard."
Daemon's smile thawed. "Hello, Prick. It's been a long time."
"So it has. Drunk any good wines lately?"
"None that you'd appreciate." Daemon studied Lucivar's clothes and raised an eyebrow. "You've decided to be a good boy?"
Lucivar snorted. "I decided I wanted decent food and a decent bed for a change and a few days out of Pruul, and all I have to do is lick the bottom of Zuultah's boots when she returns from the stable."
"Maybe that's your trouble, Prick. You're not supposed to lick her boots, you're supposed to kiss her ass." He turned and glided down the path.
Remembering why he'd wanted to talk to Daemon, Lucivar followed reluctantly until they reached a gazebo tucked in one corner of the garden where they couldn't be seen from the mansion. Daemon smiled that cold, sweet smile and stepped aside to let him enter first.
Never let a predator smell fear.
Annoyed by his own uneasiness, Lucivar turned to study the luminescent leaves of the fire bush nearby. He stiffened when Daemon came up behind him, when the long nails whispered over his shoulders, teasing his skin in a lover-like fashion.
"Do you want me?" Daemon whispered, brushing his lips against Lucivar's neck.
Lucivar snorted and tried to pull away, but the caressing hand instantly became a vice. "No," he said flatly. "I endured enough of that in Eyrien hunting camps." With a teeth-baring grin, he turned around. "Do you really think your touch makes my pulse race?"
"Doesn't it?" Daemon whispered, a strange look in his eyes.
Lucivar stared. Daemon's voice was too crooning, too silky, too dangerously sleepy. Hell's fire, Lucivar thought desperately as Daemon's lips brushed his, what was wrong with him? This wasn't his kind of game.
Lucivar jerked back. Daemon's nails dug into the back of his neck. The sharp thumbnails pricked his throat. Keeping his fists pressed against his thighs. Lucivar closed his eyes and submitted to the kiss.
No reason to feel humiliation and shame. His body was responding to stimulation the same way it would to cold or hunger. Physical response had nothing to do with feelings or desire. Nothing.
But, Mother Night, Daemon could set a stone on fire!
"Why are you doing this?" Lucivar gasped. "At least tell me why."
"Why not?" Daemon replied bitterly. "I have to whore for everyone else, why not you?"
"Because I don't want you to. Because you don't want to. Daemon, this is madness! Why are you doing this?"
Daemon pressed his forehead against Lucivar's. "Since you already know the answer, why ask me?" He kneaded Lucivar's shoulders. "I can't stand being touched by them anymore. Ever since . . . I can't stand the feel of them, the smell of them, the taste of them. They've raped everything I am until there's nothing clean left to offer."
Lucivar wrapped his hands around Daemon's wrists. The shame and bitterness saturating Daemon's psychic scent scraped a nerve he had refused to probe over the past five years. Once she was old enough to understand what it meant, would that sapphire-eyed little cat despise them for the way they'd been forced to serve? It wouldn't matter. He would fight with everything in him for the chance to serve her. And so would Daemon. "Daemon." He took a deep breath. "Daemon, she's come."
Daemon pulled away. "I know. I've felt her." He stuffed his shaking hands into his trouser pockets. "There's trouble around her—"
"What trouble?" Lucivar asked sharply.
"—and I keep wondering if he can—if he will—protect her."
"Who? Daemon!"
Daemon dropped to the floor, clutching his groin and moaning.
Swearing under his breath, Lucivar wrapped his arms around Daemon and waited. Nothing else could be done for a man enduring a bolt of pain sent through the Ring of Obedience.
By the time it was over and Daemon got to his feet, his beautiful, aristocratic face had hardened into a cold, pain-glazed mask and his voice was empty of emotion. "It seems Lady Cornelia requires my presence." He flicked a twig off his jacket sleeve. "You'd think she would know better by now." He hesitated before he left the gazebo. "Take care, Prick."
Lucivar leaned against the gazebo long after Daemon's footsteps had faded away. What had happened between Daemon and the girl? And what did "Take care, Prick" mean? A warm farewell . . . or a warning?
"Daemon?" Lucivar whispered, remembering another place and another court. "Daemon, no." He ran toward the mansion. "Daemon!"
Lucivar charged through the open glass doors and shoved his way through gossiping knots of women, briefly aware of Zuultah's angry face in front of him. He was halfway up the stairs leading to the guest rooms when a bolt of pain from the Ring of Obedience brought him to his knees. Zuultah stood beside him, her face twisted with fury. Lucivar tried to get to his feet, but another surge from the Ring bent him over so far his forehead pressed against the stairs.
"Let me go, Zuultah." His voice cracked from the pain.
"I'll teach you some manners, you arrogant—"
Lucivar twisted around to face her. "Let me go, you stupid bitch," he hissed. "Let me go before it's too late."
It took her a long minute to understand she wasn't what he feared, and another long minute before he could get to his feet.
With one hand pressed to his groin, Lucivar hauled himself up the stairs and pushed himself into a stumbling run toward the guest wing. There was no time to think about the crowd growing behind him, no time to think about anything except reaching Cornelia's room before . . .
Daemon opened Cornelia's door, closed it behind him, calmly tugged his shirt cuffs into place, and then smashed his fist into the wall.
Lucivar felt the mansion shudder as the power of the Black Jewel surged into the wall.
Cracks appeared in the wall, running in every direction, opening wider and wider.
"Daemon?"
Daemon tugged his shirt cuffs down once more. When he finally looked at Lucivar, his eyes were as cold and glazed as a murky gemstone—and no more human.
Daemon smiled.
Lucivar shivered.
"Run," Daemon crooned. Seeing the crowd filling the hall behind Lucivar, he calmly turned and walked the other way.
The mansion continued to shudder. Something crashed nearby.
Licking his lips, Lucivar opened Cornelia's door. He stared at the bed, at what was on the bed, and fought to control his heaving guts. He turned away from the open door and stood there, too numb to move.
He smelled smoke, heard the roar of flames consuming a room. People screamed. The mansion walls rumbled as they split farther and farther. He looked around, confused, until part of the ceiling crashed a few feet away from him.
Fear cleared his head, and he did the only sensible thing. He ran.
4—Terreille
Dorothea SaDiablo, the High Priestess of Hayll, paced the length of her sitting room, the floor-length cocoon she wore over a simple dark dress billowing out behind her. She tapped her fingertips together, over and over, absently noting that her cousin Hepsabah grew more agitated as the silence and pacing continued.
Hepsabah squirmed in her chair. "You're not really bringing him back here?" Her voice squeaked with her growing panic. She tried to keep her hands still because Dorothea found her nervous gestures annoying, but the hands were like wing-clipped birds fluttering hopelessly in her lap.
Dorothea shot a dagger glance in Hepsabah's direction and continued pacing. "Where else can I send him?" she snapped. "It may be years before anyone is willing to sign a contract for him. And with the stories flying, I may not be able to even make a present of the bastard. With so much of that place burned beyond recognition . . . and Cornelia's room untouched. Too many people saw what was in that bed. There's been too much talk." "But . . . he's not there, and he's not here. Where is he?"
"Hell's fire, how should I know? Nearby. Skulking somewhere. Maybe twisting a few other witches into shattered bones and pulped flesh."
"You could summon him with the Ring." Dorothea stopped pacing and stared at her cousin through narrowed eyes. Their mothers had been sisters. The bloodline was good on that side. And the consort who'd sired Hepsabah had shown potential. How could two of Hayll's Hundred Families have produced such a simpering idiot? Unless her dear aunt had seeded herself with a piece of gutter trash. To think Hepsabah was the best she had to work with to try to keep some rein on him. That had been a mistake. Maybe she should have let that mad Dhemlan bitch keep him. No. There were other problems with that. The Dark Priestess had warned her. As much good as it did.
Dorothea smiled at Hepsabah, pleased to see her cousin shrink farther into the chair. "So you think I should summon him? Use the Ring when the debris in that place is barely cooled? Are you willing to be the one to welcome him home if I bring him back that way?"
Hepsabah's smooth, carefully painted face crumpled with fear. "Me?" she wailed. "You wouldn't make me do that. You can't make me do that. He doesn't like me."
"But you're his mother, dear," Dorothea purred.
"But you know . . . you know . . ."
"Yes, I know." Dorothea continued pacing, but slower. "So. He's in Hayll. He signed in this morning at one of the posting stations. He'll be here soon enough. Let him have a day or two to vent his rage on someone else. In the meantime, I'll have to arrange a bit of educational entertainment. And I'll have to think about what to do with him. The Hayllian trash and the landens don't understand what he is. They like him. They think that pittance generosity he shows them is the way he is. I should have preserved the image of Cornelia's bedroom in a spelled crystal and shown them what he's really like. No matter. He won't stay long. I'll find someone foolish enough to take him."