Her face turned alarmingly pale. “You mean that.”
“Yes, I mean that. Everything has a price, Lady. That will be the price if you try to reclaim the Ebony.”
A heartbeat. Another. Then he was no longer facing Witch. It was Jaenelle studying him with haunted eyes.
“But . . . Rainier,” she said.
“I’ll remind you of a few things you’ve obviously forgotten.” His voice slipped into that tightly controlled scolding tone that could intimidate any child. Even this one. “When you were seventeen, you put Lucivar back together. Considering the condition he was in when Prothvar brought him to your cottage in Ebon Rih, he shouldn’t have survived at all. But you not only healed the broken bones and internal damage; you rebuilt his wings out of the few healthy scraps that were left.”
“I wore the Black then and had a reservoir of thirteen Jewels to tap,” Jaenelle said, her voice full of frustration. “And Lucivar was all-or-nothing. Systemic healing. He came out of it whole or he died.”
“The Black isn’t Ebony,” Saetan said. “You’ve never used Ebony for healing because it was too dark, too powerful. You used the Black.”
“Well, Twilight’s Dawn isn’t the Black,” she snapped.
“No, but there is a Black thread in your Jewel. Compared to a true Black, you’ve got a thimbleful of power at that level, but it’s there. You also have two Black-Jeweled Warlord Princes and an Ebon-gray Warlord Prince who would have given you whatever power you needed for a healing web. And if you’d needed that kind of strength to add to a healing brew, Daemon or Lucivar would have given you the blood. The power was available, witch-child. This has nothing to do with the Jewels you no longer wear.”
“Then why isn’t Rainier healing?” Jaenelle paced, circled—and began snarling in a way that made Saetan wish he could put a shield between them without insulting her. “He was healing. He was.”
“Could he dance again?”
“Yes!” She paused. Thought. “Not everything. Not the demanding dances he and I used to do sometimes as a special performance. His leg muscles will never be able to support that kind of demand. But all the social dances, yes. All the kinds of dances he taught.” She looked cold and bitter. “But he’s done enough damage to those muscles now that he won’t be able to do that.”
“Then whatever is wrong with Rainier has nothing, or little, to do with the healing itself,” Saetan said quietly. “I don’t think it’s his leg that needs to heal so much as his heart.”
He opened his arms. She stepped into the embrace and held on.
“Would you like some advice?” he asked.
She nodded.
“Let Lucivar deal with Rainier.”
She raised her head and narrowed her eyes. “Why?”
“Because I think Lucivar will be able to figure out the right motivation to help Rainier heal.”
“Lucivar will scare the shit out of him.”
“Precisely.”
She laughed and rested her head on his shoulder.
He savored the embrace. Since the day he’d met her—a seven-year-old girl who had walked through Hell without fear—he’d had to share her with so many others. Quiet moments when it was just the two of them had been rare, and he cherished every one.
“Papa?”
“Witch-child?”
“I won’t destroy the life your daughter dreamed of having.”
His breath caught. “Is that a promise?”
“Would you see a promise like that as a gift?”
“Yes, I would.”
She looked at him and smiled. “Then it’s a promise.”
FIVE
Surreal looked at the fat, fluffy, lazy flakes of snow, then at the fire in the sitting room’s hearth, and decided the fire had more appeal. Especially after she coughed and felt the burn in her lungs.
All right, she should have mentioned the burning sensation and continued shortness of breath weeks ago when Jaenelle was first healing the poisoned wound in her side. But she’d thought she’d shaken off the effects of the backlash spell that had trapped her and Rainier in that damn spooky house and that the shortness of breath was because of the poison.
You can take care of this now or you can flirt with pneumonia all winter, Jaenelle had told her.
She didn’t want to flirt with anything at the moment, and since the “cure” was drinking a healing brew three times a day, limiting her time outdoors when the air was bitter cold, and stopping physical activity before she became fatigued, she wasn’t about to argue.
Especially since she planned to have Jaenelle put those instructions in writing so she could wave them in front of Lucivar when she went to Ebon Rih after Winsol. She couldn’t get out of everything he had planned for her, but even Yaslana wouldn’t challenge Jaenelle as Healer.
Maybe she could take up knitting or something.
She tried to picture herself sitting on the sidelines making a badly knit blanket while everyone else was doing something interesting.
Maybe not.
A quick knock on the sitting room door announced Helton, the butler at the SaDiablo town house. Entering with a full tray, he said, “I’ve brought the hot water for your healing brew, and a piece of berry pie still warm from the oven.”
There was also a sandwich and a small plate of cheese and grapes. After all, it had been at least two hours since she’d eaten the broth he’d insisted she have to “warm her up” when she returned from shopping that morning.
Everything has a price, Surreal thought. And the price for not being completely well was having her butler fussing over her more than his duties would normally allow.
She settled on the sofa and called in a small hourglass timer and the glass jar that held the healing mixture. After filling a tea ball with the mixture, she put the ball in the pot of hot water and turned the timer.
Helton started to leave, then stopped, his head turned in a way that indicated he was talking to someone on a psychic thread.
“Prince Rainier is here,” he said.
“Send him in.” She glanced at the tray.
Helton studied the tray too. “I should bring in another serving.”
“Just another piece of berry pie.” Surreal bared her teeth in a smile that had Helton shifting a little closer to the door. “I’ll share the rest, but not the pie.”
A twitch of his lips. A twinkle in his eyes. “Very well, Lady.”
“Are you all right?” Rainier asked sharply as soon as Helton ushered him into the sitting room and closed the door.