The lightning-streaked black mist in the chalice contained power that slithered along his nerves, snaked around his spine, and sought its release in the sudden fire in his loins. It was a molten force, catastrophic in intensity, savage beyond a man's comprehension . . . and he wanted it with all his being.
"Look," Tersa said, pointing to the chalice's lip.
A hairline crack ran from a chip in the chalice's lip to the base. As Daemon watched, a deeper crack appeared.
The mist swirled inside the chalice. A tendril passed through the glass at the bottom into the stem.
Too fragile, he thought as more and more cracks appeared. The chalice was too fragile to hold that kind of power.
Then he looked closer.
The cracks were starting from the outside and going in, not starting from the inside and going out. So it was threatened by something beyond itself.
He shivered as he watched more of the mist flow into the stem. It was a vision. There was nothing he could do to change a vision. But everything he was screamed at him to do something, to wrap his strength around it and cherish it, protect it, keep it safe.
Knowing it would change nothing that happened here and now, he still reached for the chalice,
It shattered before he touched it, spraying crystal shards over the makeshift altar.
Tersa held up what was left of the shattered chalice. A little of mist still swirled inside the jagged-edged bottom of the cup. Most of it was trapped inside the stem.
She looked at him sadly. "The inner web can be broken without shattering the chalice. The chalice can be shattered without breaking the inner web. They cannot reach the inner web, but the chalice . . ."
Daemon licked his lips. He couldn't stop shivering. "I know the inner web is another name for our core, the Self that can tap the power within us. But I don't know what the chalice stands for."
Her hand shook a little. "Tersa is a shattered chalice." Daemon closed his eyes. A shattered chalice. A shattered mind. She was talking about madness. "Give me your hand," Tersa said.
Too unnerved to question her, Daemon held out his left hand.
Tersa grabbed it, pulled it forward, and slashed his wrist with the chalice's jagged edge.
Daemon clamped his hand over his wrist and stared at her, stunned.
"So that you never forget this night," Tersa said, her voice trembling. "That scar will never leave you."
Daemon knotted his handkerchief around his wrist. "Why is a scar important?"
"I told you. So you won't forget." Tersa cut the strands of the tangled web with the shattered chalice. When the last thread broke, the chalice and web vanished. "I don't know if this will be or if it may be. Many strands in the web weren't visible to me. May the Darkness give you courage if you need it, when you need it."
"The courage for what?"
Tersa walked away.
"Tersa!"
Tersa looked back at him, said three words, and vanished.
Daemon's legs buckled. He huddled on the ground, gasping for air, shuddering from the fear that clawed at his belly.
What had the one to do with the other? Nothing. Nothing! He would be there, a protector, a shield. He would!
But where?
Daemon forced himself to breathe evenly. That was the question. Where.
Certainly not in Maris's court.
It was late morning before he returned to the house, aching and dirty. His wrist throbbed and his head pounded mercilessly. He had just reached the terrace when Maris's daughter, Marissa, flounced out of the garden room and planted herself in front of him, hands on her hips, her expression a mixture of irritation and hunger.
"You were supposed to come to my room last night and you didn't. Where have you been? You're filthy." She rolled her shoulder, looking at him from beneath her lashes. "You've been naughty. You'll have to come up to my room and explain."
Daemon pushed past her. "I'm tired. I'm going to bed."
"You'll do as I say!" Marissa thrust her hand between his legs.
Daemon's hand tightened on Marissa's wrist so fast and so hard that she was on her knees whimpering in pain before she realized what happened. He continued squeezing her wrist until the bones threatened to shatter. Daemon smiled at her then, that cold, familiar, brutal smile.
"I'm not 'naughty.' Little boys are naughty." He pushed her away from him, stepping over her where she lay sprawled on the flagstones. "And if you ever touch me like that again, I'll rip your hand off."
He walked through the corridors to his room, aware that the servants skittered away from him, that an aftertaste of violence hung in the air around him.
He didn't care. He went to his room, stripped off his clothes, laid down on his bed, and stared at the ceiling, terrified to close his eyes because every time he did he saw a shattered crystal chalice.
Three words. She has come.
3—Hell
Once, he'd been the Seducer, the Executioner, the High Priest of the Hourglass, the Prince of the Darkness, the High Lord of Hell.
Once, he'd been Consort to Cassandra, the great Black-Jeweled, Black Widow Queen, the last Witch to walk the Realms.
Once, he'd been the only Black-Jeweled Warlord Prince in the history of the Blood, feared for his temper and the power he wielded.
Once, he'd been the only male who was a Black Widow.
Once, he'd ruled the Dhemlan Territory in the Realm of Terreille and her sister Territory in Kaeleer, the Shadow Realm. He'd been the only male ever to rule without answering to a Queen and, except for Witch, the only member of the Blood to rule Territories in two Realms.
Once, he'd been married to Hekatah, an aristo Black Widow Priestess from one of Hayll's Hundred Families.
Once, he'd raised two sons, Mephis and Peyton. He'd played games with them, told them stories, read to them, healed their skinned knees and broken hearts, taught them Craft and Blood Law, showered them with his love of the land as well as music, art, and literature, encouraged them to look with eager eyes upon all that the Realms had to offer—not to conquer but to learn. He'd taught them to dance for a social occasion and to dance for the glory of Witch. He'd taught them how to be Blood.
But that was a long, long time ago.
Saetan, the High Lord of Hell, sat quietly by the fire, a hearth rug wrapped around his legs, turning the pages of a book he had no interest in reading. He sipped a glass of yarbarah, the blood wine, taking no pleasure in its taste or warmth.
For the past decade, he'd been a quiet invalid who never left his private study deep beneath the Hall. For more than 50,000 years before that, he'd been the ruler and caretaker of the Dark Realm, the undisputed High Lord.
He no longer cared about Hell. He no longer cared about the demon-dead family and friends who were still with him, or the other demon-dead and ghostly citizens of this Realm, the Blood who were still too strong to return to the Darkness even after their bodies had died.
He was tired and old, and the loneliness he'd carried inside him all his life had become too heavy to bear. He no longer wanted to be a Guardian, one of the living dead. He no longer wanted the half-life a handful of the Blood had chosen in order to extend their lifetimes into years beyond imagining. He wanted peace, wanted to quietly fade back into the Darkness.
The only thing that kept him from actively seeking that release was his promise to Cassandra.
Saetan steepled his long, black-tinted nails and rested his golden eyes on the portrait hanging on the far wall between two bookcases.
She'd made him promise to become a Guardian so that the extended half-life would allow him to walk among the living when his daughter was born. Not the daughter of his loins, but the daughter of his soul. The daughter she'd seen in a tangled web.
He'd promised because what she'd said had made his nerves twang like tether lines in a storm, because that was her price for training him to be a Black Widow, because, even then, the Darkness sang to him in a way it didn't sing to other Blood males.
He had kept his promise. But the daughter never came.
The insistent knocking on the door of his private study finally pulled him from his thoughts.
"Come," he said, his deep voice a tired whisper, a ghost of what it once had been.
Mephis SaDiablo entered and stood beside the chair, silent.
"What do you want, Mephis?" Saetan asked his eldest son, demon-dead since that long ago war between Terreille and Kaeleer.
Mephis hesitated. "Something strange is going on."
Saetan's gaze drifted back to the fire. "Someone else can look into it, if anyone so desires. Your mother can look into it. Hekatah always wanted power without my interference."
"No," Mephis said uneasily.
Saetan studied his son's face and found that he had a hard time swallowing. "Your . . . brothers?" he finally asked, unable to hide the pain that the question caused him. He'd been a flattered fool to cast the spell that temporarily gave him back the seed of life. He couldn't regret Daemon's and Lucivar's existence, but he'd tortured himself for centuries with reports of what had been done to them.
Mephis shook his head and stared at the dark-red marble mantle. "On the cildru dyathe's island."
Saetan shuddered. He'd never feared anything in Hell, but he'd always felt an aching despair for the cildru dyathe, the demon-dead children. In Hell, the dead retained the form of their last living hour. This cold, blasted Realm had never been a kind place, but to look upon those children, to see what had been done to them by another's hand, for there to be no escape from those blatant wounds. . . . It was too much to bear. They kept to their island, unwilling to have any contact with adults. He never intruded on them, having Char, their chosen leader, come to him once in a while to bring back the books, games, and whatever else he could find that might engage their young minds and help wile away the unrelenting years.