The Shadow Queen (The Black Jewels #7)

Daemon felt Saetan recoil. Lucivar had drawn the line and would hold it with everything he had in him. And something about meeting Lucivar on a killing field was making the High Lord stumble away from that line.

Saetan sat on the table, called in a handkerchief, and blew his nose.

Cornered. Trapped.Nowhere for Saetan to turn that wouldn’t bring him up against an adversary he didn’t want to fight.

Grandson. Sons. Daughter.

Jaenelle had chosen her weapons well.

“You prick,” Saetan finally snarled. “You’d really do it.”

“Damn right I would,” Lucivar said. “If you’re going to scare the shit out of your sons, you deserve to be threatened.”

Good. Fine. Wonderful. Let’s just start a pissing contest and threaten the High Lord of Hell while he’s in the Twisted Kingdom and might not remember who we are. Damn you, Lucivar.

Except it worked. The madness-driven rage faded, replaced by exasperation and annoyed amusement—maybe because no one but Lucivar would dare piss on the High Lord’s foot.

Saetan took those last steps across the border and walked out of the Twisted Kingdom. His shoulders sagged. He looked exhausted, but he rallied enough to hold out a hand. “Give me the damn brew.”

Lucivar pulled off the stopper and handed Saetan the bottle.

Saetan gulped down the brew and handed the bottle back. “Well,” he said several moments later, “at least this brew of hers doesn’t kick like a demented draft horse.”

“Lucky for you.” Lucivar vanished the bottle and hauled Saetan to his feet. “Come on, Papa. We’ll all have a nice nap and then play round-robin snarling.”

Daemon rolled his eyes and tucked a hand under Saetan’s other elbow. Whatever was in that brew was hitting the High Lord hard and fast. They didn’t bother trying to get him to his bedroom. The room they were in had a sofa long enough to accommodate a grown man, so they stripped off Saetan’s tunic jacket and his shoes and settled him on the sofa, tucking blankets around him.

Barely awake, Saetan struggled to focus on them. “Lucivar . . .”

Lucivar grinned. “Nah. I won’t let the little beast in the library until you’re feeling frisky enough to chase him.”

“You pri—”

They watched their father sleep for a couple of minutes to be sure he really was settled.

Lucivar shook his head. “She said he’d go down fast. I’m glad she was right.”

Daemon tipped his head, an unspoken question.

*Not here,* Lucivar said on a psychic thread.

They found another sitting room nearby. One moment, they were staring at each other. The next moment, they were holding each other, shaking.

“You stupid prick,” Daemon said. “What were you thinking of, drawing a line like that?”

“Me?” Lucivar squeezed hard enough to leave Daemon breathless. “You’re the one who left yourself open to every kind of attack. Hell’s fire, Bastard. You didn’t even try to shield.”

“Couldn’t take the chance of igniting his rage.”

“I know.”

Daemon eased back enough to rest his forehead against his brother’s. “Scared me, Lucivar. Seeing him like that. Watching you draw that line. All of it. Really scared me.”

“Scared me too.” Lucivar hesitated. “You would have killed him. If it came down to that, you would have killed him.”

Daemon closed his eyes. “Yes. Would have tried to anyway. Actually, I figured the best I could do was weaken him enough before he crippled me, so that you would be able to finish it.”

“Well, that’s good to know.” Another hesitation, then Lucivar said,“We’re not the only ones who have scars. He hides his better than most men, but he’s got some.”

“Yeah.” He wasn’t about to forget this particular scar anytime soon.

“Daemon . . .” Lucivar eased back a little more, but still kept his hands on Daemon’s shoulders. “There’s something I’d like to ask you. If you can’t tell me, I’ll understand.”

“All right,” Daemon replied, not liking the wariness now filling Lucivar’s eyes.

“I meant what I said about Jaenelle’s temper riding the scary kind of bitchy.”

“Not the side of her temper a smart man would choose to tangle with.”

“It was Witch’s side of her temper. More than that. The look in her eyes . . .” Lucivar shook his head, frustrated. “For a moment, when I looked into her eyes, it felt like the abyss had opened up right under me and . . . I haven’t felt that kind of power since . . .” He sighed. “Hell’s fire. I don’t even know what I’m asking.”

Yes, you do, Daemon thought. Making a choice, he brushed lightly against Lucivar’s inner barriers, asking to enter his brother’s mind.

Lucivar hesitated a moment, then opened all his inner barriers, giving Daemon access to everything he was. Leaving himself completely vulnerable.

Daemon moved carefully and went deep because what he was about to give his brother was information that had to be kept secret.

When he reached the most protected part of Lucivar’s mind, he offered two images: Saetan’s memory of a tangled web that turned dreams into flesh, and his own memory of the Misty Place and a spiraling web of power—the power Witch had chosen to give up in order to have a more ordinary life.

“Mother Night,” Lucivar whispered, his eyes widening. “Then the power is still there.”

“It’s still there.”

“Could she claim it again?”

Didn’t Lucivar understand?

“Could she survive if something pushed her into claiming it again?” Lucivar asked.

“I don’t know if her body can still be a vessel for that much power. I think she could reclaim it . . . but I don’t think she would survive very long.” He swallowed hard. “That’s why I’m going to make sure she never has to make that choice.”

Lucivar gave his shoulders a friendly squeeze. “We’re going to make sure she never has to make that choice.”

Of course.

Daemon huffed out a laugh that also held a few tears. “I love you, Prick.”

“I love you too, Bastard.” Lucivar stepped back and rolled his shoulders. “We’re going to camp here today and keep an eye on him? Make sure he really is stable when he wakes up?”

“Yes.”

“So let’s send a message to the scary little witch so she stops being scary, and then see what we can find to eat.”

Neither of them would shake off the past hour quite that easily, but Daemon felt some of the weight slide off his shoulders. He smiled and slipped his hands in his trouser pockets. “Let’s do that.”

CHAPTER 28

TERREILLE

With his ears still ringing from Gray’s yappy list of instructions, Theran knocked on Cassidy’s door. He hoped she’d still be taking a bath or otherwise occupied, so he’d have a little more time to figure out what to say, but she opened the door before he decided to knock a second time.

“Prince Theran.”

Wary. Surprised to see him. And the look in her eyes told him plain enough that she remembered the other time he’d come knocking.

“May I come in?”

Hesitation. Then she stepped aside to let him enter her sitting room.

Who was with her? Not that it was any of his business. He was First Escort, not Consort, and the Queen could command the attention of any man in her court.

Except it would kill Gray if Cassidy had taken another lover.

“Am I intruding?” he asked when he heard some movement in her bedroom.

Her look said Of course you are, but she replied, “Not at all.”

Which was when Vae nudged the bedroom door open and joined them.

“Just females here?”

“Gray isn’t here, if that’s what you’re asking.” Her voice had a snippy edge to it.

He knew that defensive tone. He’d used it enough times in his youth when Talon had called him on something and he’d tried to slide around admitting he’d done something he wasn’t supposed to do.

What did she think he was going to do if she was with Gray? Go running to the Keep to tell Yaslana so he could storm down here and pound on everyone?

Maybe that’s exactly what she thought. They had to work to get along on their best days, and he had given her enough reasons to dislike him. But getting into an argument now would end with her stomping out to the garden, and that wouldn’t make Gray happy.

Theran scratched his head and resisted the temptation to pull out some hair. “Look, it’s like this. Gray is putting together a surprise for you, and my part of the task is to keep you occupied for a few hours.”

Her face tightened, the pleasure of learning Gray was planning a surprise gone before it had been fully realized. She took a step back.

He almost asked why she was acting that way when he considered what he’d said and where they were.

“Not that way,” he growled.

“That’s good, because the sun will shine in Hell before that happens.”

She didn’t need to be so vehement about it. He gave a good accounting of himself in bed.

He bristled. Before he said something about the amount of work a man had to do in bed being in direct proportion to the attractiveness of his partner, he remembered why he’d come to Cassidy’s suite to begin with.

“I thought we could go into town—not for an official visit or anything like that, but to . . . I don’t know . . . shop . . . or whatever females do.”

“ ‘Whatever females do’? Haven’t you ever spent an afternoon with a girl when you didn’t want sex?”

His temper slipped the leash, and he didn’t try very hard to rein it in. “I grew up in the rogue camps in the Tamanara Mountains, not in some comfortable village where girls flirt with boys in order to have a packhorse for the afternoon’s shopping.”