“Ask me if I need a Healer,” she muttered as she hurried to her own room and dressed in her warmest clothes. “As if I’m some feeble female who will collapse after a long bout of lusty sex. Who does he think he is, anyway? He doesn’t want me? Fine. Who asked him to want me? If I have feelings that aren’t returned, well, that’s my problem, isn’t it? I didn’t ask him to love me.” But I want him to. Oh, I do want him to—and all he wanted was to get away from me.
She had to move, had to work. If she didn’t do something, she’d curl up and cry until her heart broke. And that would be the worst thing of all. If he knew she’d given him her heart as well as her body, he might feel uncomfortable about her staying even as his housekeeper.
Work didn’t cure a bruised heart, but it gave her an outlet for all that fretful energy. Moving quickly, she fetched the snow shovel from the mud room. When she’d found it in one of the merchant shops, she’d been delighted. It was easy enough to use Craft to remove snow from pathways and streets, but Craft couldn’t take the place of exercise to warm and strengthen the body. Today she wanted to shovel snow until she couldn’t lift another bladeful. Today she’d sweep and scrub and polish the eyrie until she was too tired to think.
She opened the front door and stared at the waist-high snow. If she wanted to get out without shoveling snow into the eyrie, she’d have to use Craft to clear a space to stand in. Vanishing a block of snow as wide as the front door and as long as the shovel, she called it back in and let it drop in the yard beside the eyrie. Then she stepped outside.
*Marian!*
She didn’t have to look far to find Tassle. His face filled a rough opening in a large mound of snow.
“Tassle?” Was he trapped under the snow? She lifted her hand, prepared to vanish more blocks of snow to reach him, when his face disappeared from the opening. Moments later, he scrambled out of the mound and bounded to the top of the snowbank next to her, dancing in his delight to see her.
Dancing. On top of the snow.
“How are you doing that?” Marian asked.
*I am air walking.* Tassle danced a little more to show off his skill.
Well, that explained the times when she’d seen Tassle trot over muddy ground and still enter the eyrie with clean paws.
*Yas can teach you,* Tassle said. *The Lady taught the kindred to air walk, and she taught Yas and her human friends, too.*
She wasn’t sure Lucivar would be willing to teach her anything at this point. She didn’t want to think about that, so she focused on the wolf. “Did you manage all right during the blizzard?”
*Yas left food and water for me, and he said I could stay in the front room of the eyrie, and I did stay there at night, but Kaelas and the Lady taught the wolves who live with the High Lord how to make dens out of snow. Kaelas is Arcerian, and they make snow dens to live in during the winter. So I made a den.* He paused. *Now that you and Yas have mated, are you going to have puppies?*
Mother Night. She hadn’t considered that, hadn’t done anything to prevent that. After a quick, desperate counting of days, she breathed a sigh of relief. She was well past her fertile time. She couldn’t imagine how Lucivar would react to being told a woman he no longer wanted was pregnant with his child. She’d learned enough about his past to feel certain his response would be less than friendly.
Work. Hard labor would keep her thoughts from wandering toward things that wouldn’t be.
She dug in and started flinging shovelfuls of snow as far as she could, ignoring Tassle’s repeated offers to use Craft to clear the path for her. Why should he care if the path was cleared. He, and a certain Eyrien Warlord Prince, could just walk above the snow.
*Marian?*
The only person who was trapped in the eyrie by the snow was the female, who was only good for mating and . . . making puppies.
*Marian!*
The whine in that sending finally made her stop and look at the wolf—who looked back at her with woeful eyes, his head and shoulders covered with the snow she’d flung in that direction.
Then someone quietly cleared his throat to gain her attention.
Marian looked to her left—and considered flinging herself into the deepest drift and just staying there.
The High Lord, standing on air, looked down at her. A snow goatee hung from his chin, and his clothes were liberally spattered with the snow she’d thrown at him. Unknowingly, to be sure, but still . . .
“Good morning, High Lord,” Marian said.
He brushed the snow from his chin and clothes. “Good morning, Lady Marian.”
She couldn’t tell by his tone if he was amused or annoyed.
“Would you like a cup of tea?” she asked meekly.
“That would be welcome.”
Hell’s fire, Mother Night, and may the Darkness be merciful. Could the day get any worse?
Of course, watching him walk down the snow as if he were descending stairs only he could see produced a spurt of resentment that she quickly tamped down. It wasn’t his fault Lucivar hadn’t thought to teach her anything as useful as air walking.
Pushing that thought aside, she vanished the shovel and her cape and boots as she hurried to the kitchen. Saetan paused in the front room long enough to hang his cape on the coat tree before joining her.
As she filled the teakettle, she said, “Prince Yaslana isn’t here at the moment.”
“I know,” Saetan replied, leaning against the counter. “I came to see you.” He paused. “Do you need a Healer?”
“Do I look like I need a Healer?” she snapped, slamming the kettle down on the stove. Witchfire flared up beneath it. Cursing silently, she pulled the fire back to its proper level.
“Nooo,” Saetan replied dryly, “but the question has to be asked.”
She turned on him. “I can’t be the only woman who spent most of the past three days in bed. Are they going to be asked if they need a Healer?”
“Probably not. But they didn’t spend that time with a Warlord Prince in rut.”
She turned away to get out cups and saucers. “I’m all right.”
“Physically, I tend to agree. But you’re not all right, Marian. You’re upset about something, and most likely, it has to do with the rut.”
She kept silent while she made the tea and set a cup in front of him when he took a seat at the pine table. She didn’t join him. A week ago, she would have. But right now, she felt more like a paid servant than she’d felt in all the months she’d worked for Lucivar.
“He ran away,” she said, feeling her heart ache as she said the words. “He could barely stand to look at me before he . . . bolted out of the eyrie.”
“He’s afraid,” Saetan said quietly.
Baffled, she studied the man watching her. “Of what?”
Temper flashed in Saetan’s eyes. “You have no idea what it’s like to be caught in the rut, to be driven by something that eclipses everything else, to lose the veneer of civilized behavior that makes it possible for Warlord Princes to live with other people.”
“I know what it’s like to be with that kind of man,” Marian flashed back.
“Do you remember everything that happened from the time the rut began until it ended?”
“Of course I do!”
“He doesn’t.”
She watched Saetan rein in his temper, watched the visible effort to chain strong feelings.
“He doesn’t,” Saetan said again. “Warlord Princes are not held accountable for anything they do during the rut, but that doesn’t mean we don’t have . . . regrets . . . about things that happen.”
We. It hit her like a fist. Saetan was a Warlord Prince, too, and had gone through the rut.
Her nerves danced. She licked her dry lips. “How can a woman know what it’s like for you if you never tell her?”
He shuddered. The High Lord of Hell actually shuddered. That, more than anything, made her wonder what Lucivar remembered about the past three days.
Setting the tea aside, Saetan rose. “Well. I have things to see to.”
Another strong man tucking his tail between his legs and running away because of the rut.
“Thank you for stopping by, High Lord.”
He gave her a wan smile. “It was my pleasure, Lady.”
She doubted that, but she smiled and stayed in the kitchen until she was sure he was gone. After making a cup of tea for herself, she sat at the table for a long time.
It must have required a kind of steely courage for the High Lord to come to the eyrie, not knowing what he might find, what kind of damage he might have to try to repair. Remembering the stories she’d heard about Warlord Princes, she had to admit he and Lucivar both had a valid reason for asking if she needed a Healer. It hadn’t occurred to her that Lucivar wouldn’t know she didn’t need one.
Maybe Lucivar’s bolting this morning hadn’t been meant as a rejection. If he hadn’t cared, at least a little, he wouldn’t have been as concerned about what had happened during the rut, would he?
She sighed. There was nothing she could do to settle things between them until he came back, so she might as well get some work done.
After bundling up again, she opened the front door—and stared. There wasn’t so much as a flake of snow on the entire flagstone courtyard except for Tassle’s den.
Taking the hint, Marian went back inside. She’d clean Lucivar’s bedroom and make some soup. And she wouldn’t allow herself to wonder if he was afraid to come home because of things he couldn’t remember.
Saetan waited throughout the day, knowing Lucivar would come to him before going to the eyrie. It had been easy enough to keep track of his son. It hadn’t been easy to resist summoning Lucivar to the Keep to offer what reassurance he could. But a summons of any kind would be misunderstood, and Lucivar’s fear had bordered on panic too many times during the day to dare give him any kind of push.