The Shadow Queen (The Black Jewels #7)

When neither Beale nor Holt answered him, he nodded. “Three out of three of us, then.”

The Blood survived within a complex dance of power. There was caste, social rank, and Jewel rank, and an ever-changing pattern of who was dominant. Didn’t matter which measuring stick was used, he was the dominant male here at the Hall. In the whole damn Realm, for that matter. But there were times, like this, when it tickled him to know that all the males who lived at the Hall were equal in one way: they all served, and they were very good at assessing one another’s skills and letting the one most likely to succeed take the lead.

Of course, Jaenelle didn’t always appreciate the fact that they worked together so well. Which also tickled him.

Until he remembered what waited for him in the study.

Daemon tipped his head toward the study door. “A pot of coffee and whatever Mrs. Beale might have handy.”

“And then you’ll be unavailable?” Beale asked.

Daemon considered Theran’s claim that he owed the Grayhaven family a favor, and he considered Jaenelle’s certainty that Theran was connected to the vision she had seen.

Jaenelle had been trained by the Arachnians, the golden spiders who were the weavers of dreams, to spin the tangled webs of dreams and visions. Even now, with her power diminished from what it had been, she was the most accomplished—and deadly—Black Widow in Kaeleer.

So he would listen to Theran’s claim, and no matter what he heard, the other Warlord Prince would join him and his Lady for dinner.

Whether Theran Grayhaven would see another sunrise was a different consideration.

He looked at Beale and knew the butler understood the nature of the man who owned the Hall.

“Yes,” Daemon said softly. “I’ll be unavailable.”

Something had changed, Theran thought as he watched Daemon walk back into the study and settle behind the blackwood desk. The sexuality was chained again, thank the Darkness, but the mood was both lighter and more grim than when Theran had first entered the room.

Sadi leaned back in his chair, steepled his slender fingers, and rested the black-tinted forefinger nails against his chin.

“I understand you think I owe you a favor,” Daemon said.

Hell’s fire.

“You are Jared’s descendant, aren’t you?”

“Yes,” Theran replied. “The last of the bloodline that goes back to Jared and Lia, who was the last Gray-Jeweled Queen we had in Dena Nehele.”

“Because of that bloodline, I’m willing to hear you out.”

The words were courteously spoken, but there was a growing chill in the deep voice.

How to explain when it mattered so much, when so much was at stake?

He shrugged out of his coat and vanished it to give himself a little more time. He’d thought of little else during the journey between the Keep and here—what to say, how to explain. Now . . .

“We need a Queen.”

Daemon raised one eyebrow. “I beg your pardon?”

Theran leaned forward, gripping the arms of the chair hard enough to make his hands ache. “You don’t know what it’s been like for my people. Two generations after Lia—just two!—the bloodline failed. The last Grayhaven Queen wore a Yellow Jewel. She wouldn’t have been the Territory Queen at all if she hadn’t been a Grayhaven. After that . . .” He swallowed hard.

“After that,” Daemon said, “the Queens who were willing to sell themselves to Hayll in order to rise to a power they wouldn’t have gained otherwise were the ones who ruled. Those who opposed Dorothea’s bid to control the whole of Terreille were either broken so they had little or no power, or were killed outright so the males would have no one to serve except Dorothea’s pets.”

Theran stared at Daemon. “How did you know?”

“I was a pleasure slave for a lot of centuries, controlled by Dorothea and the Ladies she sold me to. I watched some Territories fall, village by village, court by court, until there was nothing left that was decent, no one left who was honorable.” Daemon smiled bitterly. “Oh, I slaughtered the bitch’s pets. Buried more of them than anyone will ever know. Hell’s fire, there were times when Lucivar and I destroyed entire courts. But Dorothea was like a vile weed with a deep taproot. No matter how much you cut away, her poisonous influence would grow back. It always grew back—until the taint of her and the bitch who backed her was cleansed from the Blood for good.”

Theran licked his lips. “The storm of power two years ago. You know about that?”

Something queer flickered in Daemon’s eyes. “Yes,” he said. “I know about that. I know what it did—and I know what it cost.”

You know what it cost you, Theran thought, feeling hopeful that Daemon might be more sympathetic than he seemed. “We lost half the Blood in Dena Nehele to that storm. We lost half of the survivors while quelling the landen uprisings that followed that storm. There are one hundred Warlord Princes left in the whole of Dena Nehele. One hundred. My Green Jewel is the darkest we have.” Not quite, but he didn’t want to mention Talon.

“Theran . . .”

“We don’t have any Queens.” Theran rammed his fingers through his hair, then ended up fisting them and pulling until his scalp stung.

“Theran.”

He let go of his hair and gripped the chair’s arms again. “All right, we do have some Queens. But they’re old women. Or they’re little girls who are too young to deal with grown men, especially men as volatile as Warlord Princes. And there are a handful of adolescent Queens, but they’re already starting to act like the Queens we’re finally free of, and there’s been some muttering that the Warlord Princes would rather kill them than let a bitch become old enough to rule. If those girls act like the previous Queens and we accept them, we’ve won nothing. All the blood that was shed and the people who were lost would have been for nothing.”

When Daemon didn’t respond, Theran plunged on with the shining coin of hope that Talon had given him. “When Jared was an old man, dying from the wounds of his last fight, he told a trusted friend this one thing. He said, ‘If the need is great and nothing the family can do on its own will help Dena Nehele survive, find Daemon Sadi. Ask him for help. But only once.’ ” Theran closed his eyes for a moment. “Those were the last words Jared spoke. Well, we did all we could. We fought and we bled and we watched our people drown in the filth of Hayll. And now I’m the last one left. The last one. So I’m here, asking for help.”

A long silence, interrupted by a knock on the door. All the items on the desk vanished, replaced by a woven mat as Beale brought in a large tray and set it in the center of the desk.

“Thank you, Beale,” Daemon said.

After Beale left the room, Daemon poured coffee for both of them, then leaned back in his chair, ignoring the thin sandwiches and nutcakes that were also on the tray.

“You say you need a Queen,” Daemon said. “What, exactly, are you looking for?”

Theran took a sip of coffee to wet his suddenly dry throat, then took a deep breath—and told him.

Dinner was over; the strained effort to be a courteous and entertaining host was finished—at least for tonight.

Daemon stood in front of the dresser in the Consort’s suite and stared into the mirror.

“You’ve had worse days, old son,” he told his reflection. “You know you’ve had worse days.”

But being pummeled by Theran’s words had made him feel soiled and weary, and listening to that particular blend of hope and despair had stirred up memories until they swelled and burst in his mind like pus coming out of a wound gone septic.

He’d heard it before. Heard it for centuries. He’d watched young men grow old and break under that blend of hope and despair.

It didn’t help that Theran looked so much like Jared, as if all the generations in between had been erased. But Theran wasn’t Jared, and there was some internal difference that Daemon recognized but couldn’t name—and that difference was the reason he had considered Jared a friend and would never consider Theran as more than an acquaintance. Nothing indicated he wasn’t a good man committed to helping his people, but . . .

A knock on the door that connected his bedroom with Jaenelle’s. “Come,” he said, turning away from the mirror.

She came in, wearing a silky sapphire robe.

His stomach clenched. He’d been the one who had hinted this afternoon—shit, more than hinted—that he was interested in sex tonight. But that was before he’d talked to Theran, before the barbs of memories had hooked into his mind and heart. Now he hoped she was too tired to want more than a cuddle.

“You didn’t want to talk about it before dinner,” Jaenelle said, “but I need to know what sort of favor Theran wants.” She stretched out on the bed, propped her head in one hand, and studied him. “Daemon, do you feel all right?”

“I’m fine.” He wasn’t fine, he was nowhere close to fine, and he needed to tell her that instead of trying to hide it.

Talk. She wanted to talk. That, at least, he could do.

He removed his wallet from the inside pocket of his black jacket and dropped it on the dresser before he shrugged out of the jacket and hung it on the clothes stand so that his valet could decide if it needed to be cleaned, pressed, or simply aired. He’d done without a personal valet for a lot of years, and there were times when he missed the independence of having his wardrobe be his. On the other hand, Jazen managed to keep his favorite shirts hidden, leaving others out as bait when Jaenelle went foraging in his closet. For that reason alone he was willing to follow his valet’s rules about where to leave the clothing that had been worn.

“Theran wants my help to convince a Queen from Kaeleer to go to Terreille and rule Dena Nehele,” Daemon said, returning to the dresser. He positioned himself in the mirror so that he could see Jaenelle’s face, but his own reflection hid the rest of her.