Dreams Made Flesh

TWELVE

1

Daemon shrugged into his black jacket and adjusted the cuffs of his white silk shirt. He didn’t want to go to this party, didn’t want Jaenelle anywhere near the aristo Blood who would be crowding the rooms. But her plan to try to draw out whoever was behind the rumors sounded safe enough, especially with Lucivar and Surreal in attendance.

That didn’t mean he liked it. And he wasn’t sure he could do it.

To distract himself, he silently rehearsed the phrase in the Old Tongue that he’d painstakingly pieced together over the past few weeks. He’d learned a few phrases of the Blood’s ancient language over the centuries from scholars who still had some knowledge of those fluid words, but nothing he’d known had come close to what he wanted to say. Something private. Something erotic. Something he could whisper to Jaenelle to tell her what she meant to him.

Unfortunately, there were only two people in all of Kaeleer who were fluent in the Old Tongue. He couldn’t ask Jaenelle to help him translate the phrase since he wanted to surprise her, and Saetan ... Well, no matter how sophisticated the relationship, no matter how adult the people involved, there were some things a son just couldn’t ask his father.

So he’d struggled with the books he’d found in Saetan’s private study deep beneath the Hall, books that were filled with the grammar and vocabulary of that old language. What they didn’t tell him was how to pronounce those words.

Maybe he could talk Jaenelle into giving him a few lessons while they were on their honeymoon. After all, he was going to offer to teach her a few things, too.

A quiet click. The bathroom door opened.

He turned to face her as she entered the bedroom. He’d seen desire mingled with the heat of lust in other women’s eyes, and had hated them for it because they saw only the body, wanted only the bedroom skills he’d had no choice in learning. But seeing those feelings in her . . .

A different kind of heat flowed through him, and all those bedroom skills finally had a purpose.

“You look beautiful,” he said as he crossed the room and held out his hand.

“So do you.” She blushed.

Watching the color wash over her cheeks made him hungry.

Drawing her into his arms, he nuzzled her temple. “What would you like to do on our honeymoon?” The look she gave him made him grin. “Besides that.”

Her blush deepened.

He eased back enough to trace a finger over the gold chain that held Twilight’s Dawn. “I was thinking we could see what skills you might have now with a different Jewel.”

A touch of wariness filled her eyes. “Craft?”

“I was thinking more along the lines of cooking.”

Her eyes widened. “Cooking? But I can’t cook.”

His fingers followed the chain back up to her neck. “You couldn’t before. But you couldn’t call in your shoes before, either.”

“I don’t know, Daemon.”

The words were doubtful, but her expression was eager.

His hands caressed her back. His lips brushed her cheek. “We could start with something simple. A roast.”

“A roast,” she repeated, as solemn as any student learning her first difficult spell.

“We start with a choice cut of meat.” His hands caressed her hips, her ribs, gave her breasts a teasing brush before circling back up to her shoulders. “Rub it gently with herbs to season it and bring out the flavor.” Since her head had tipped back, exposing her throat, he took the invitation and left a trail of delicate kisses from her throat to her ear. “Then we give it heat, but carefully, slowly, so the juices rise and tremble on the surface to be savored.”

“Are you sure we’re talking about cooking?”

He licked her ear, enjoying the little tremors going through her.

“My legs are weak,” she said, sounding breathless.

He froze, fighting against the panic that the strain of the past few days had been too much for her. But before he could think of a careful way to ask, she added, “When your voice gets that purr in it and you kiss me like that, my legs get weak.”

His body relaxed in one way, tightened in another. He brushed his lips over hers. “We could skip the party, stay home, and”—the tip of his tongue touched her bottom lip—“discuss the merits of basting.”

She stared at him. “I’m supposed to be annoyed with you. How am I going to be annoyed with you?”

“By remembering the second part of the evening’s entertainment.”

“What’s that?”

“The kiss-and-make-up part.” He smiled as phantom tongues delicately licked her nipples.

She wobbled, then held on to him to stay upright. “Mother Night.”

“Ready?” he purred.

“For what?”

She sounded nervous. He never wanted her to fear him, but nervous ... Oh, he knew exactly how to play with a light case of nerves.

Since he could think of a dozen answers to her question— and only one of them would get them out of the bedroom—he stepped back enough to guide her toward the door.

“For the party, of course.”

“The party. I remember.”

He grinned. Strange to feel savagely volatile and light-hearted at the same time. “Let’s collect Surreal and Lucivar and go play party games.”

2

Surreal scanned another room full of milling people. It felt like every aristo in Amdarh was stuffed into this house. “Parties like this were more fun to attend when I was a whore.”

Standing beside her, Lucivar also scanned the room. “Why?”

“Watching all the prissy bitches trying not to act scandalized that I was there was almost as entertaining as watching the men I’d slept with sweat over what I might say to the prissy bitches. Now that I’m considered part of an aristo family, these little evenings aren’t as interesting.”

“You’re not ‘considered’ part of an aristo family,” Lucivar growled. “You are part of an aristo family.”

“Whatever.”

“We’ve been here an hour. You don’t have to stay.”

“I’m not here for the food or the entertainment. Thank the Darkness.”

She didn’t catch most of the low, snarling response except for the words “moon’s blood.”

“It’s the fourth day,” she said with insulting precision. “I can wear my Jewels again.”

“The males here don’t know that,” he snapped. “They’ll just pick up the scent. You might as well hang a sign around your neck that says, ‘I’m vulnerable. Hurt me.’ ”

She gave him a razor smile. “Exactly. Any male who looks at me and sees ‘prey’ is a man I want to have a private chat with.”

He gave her a long, assessing stare. She knew that look. This was Lucivar assessing a warrior’s potential to step onto a killing field and be able to walk away from it once the fight was done.

“You have your knives with you?” he asked.

“I used to be an assassin as well as a whore, remember? Yes, I have my knives.”

“Are they honed?”

“Yes, they’re honed. Would you like me to test one on you to prove it?”

He just stared.

Surreal sighed. Since he was Eyrien, a Warlord Prince, and a relative, getting pissy with Lucivar about weapons was pointless. She decided to change the subject. “What’s wrong with Daemon and Jaenelle? They were snuggly in the carriage on the way to this party, and now . . .” She frowned. “Now Daemon has this look on his face—”

“His court mask.”

The sudden tension in Lucivar’s body and the wariness in his voice made her uneasy. “His what?”

“That’s the way he always looked in the Terreillean courts when he was a pleasure slave. Cold. Bored. His face was a mask that revealed nothing of what he was really thinking. It was a look that said, ‘You can touch my body, but you’ll never touch me.’ ”

That distracted her. “He actually let the bitches touch him—and they lived?”

“I didn’t say they lived,” Lucivar replied grimly.

Surreal shivered and went on to the second part. “Then there’s Jaenelle. One moment everything is fine, and the next it’s like she almost believes the rumors.”

“Hell’s fire,” Lucivar said. “This is the game. Daemon told me they were going to try to flush out whoever was behind the rumors. This is how they’re doing it.”

She thought it over, and her stomach churned at the possibility. The last time she’d been involved in one of Daemon’s “games,” the Sadist had scared the shit out of everyone in that Hayllian camp.

“It’s a game,” Lucivar repeated. “He knows his role— Mother Night, he’s played it enough times over the centuries.”

“And Jaenelle is pretending to waver between refusing to believe the rumors and wondering if there’s some truth to them?”

“That’s my guess.” He sighed. “Come on. We’d better find them.”

“I prefer watching the Sadist’s games from a distance.”