Twilight's Dawn

“It iss a cold day,” Draca said. “You should eat ssomething hot.”

“I just wanted to talk to Geoffrey about . . .” Daemon studied the Seneschal. “Thank you. That would be welcome.” And he was going to eat it whether he wanted it or not.

He also understood that he was supposed to stay where he had been put. Too bad this particular room was singularly uninteresting. Maybe that was the reason she had put him here.

Slipping his hands in his trousers pockets, Daemon wandered over to a window. Another courtyard. Here the plants slept under a cover of snow.

He knew this was Terreille, but he felt more uneasy, more vulnerable, than when he’d been foolishly wandering around the Keep in Hell.

He turned when the door opened and watched a servant set a tray at one end of the blackwood table and retreat, pausing in the doorway to let Geoffrey enter.

The Keep’s historian/librarian looked around the room, then looked at him with black eyes that glittered with sharp humor. “What did you do to end up here?”

“Wandered where I wasn’t supposed to.”

The black eyes still glittered, but the humor was gone. “A dangerous thing to do.”

“Yes,” Daemon replied quietly. “And not something I’ll do again without permission.” It suddenly occurred to him that most people who stumbled into the Dark Realm never returned to the living—and he had too much to live for to be so careless.

“In that case, is there something I can do for you?”

“Surreal wants whatever family information you can find about Falonar.”

“That might take a little while, but I should be able to tell you something from the registers,” Geoffrey said. “Eat your meal while it’s hot.” When he reached the door, he stopped and turned back. “Pondering this should keep you out of trouble for a while.”

As soon as Geoffrey left the room, a large piece of parchment appeared above the blackwood table, then drifted down to cover half the surface.

Not exactly a map, Daemon decided, feeling an excited chill. Two webs, one drawn in black ink, the other in red. The center point was labeled “Ebon Askavi” in his father’s handwriting.

He picked up the bowl of soup and ate while he walked back and forth, studying the markers. The Keep. SaDiablo Hall. The Khaldharon Run and the Blood Run. The cildru dyathe’s island. The Harpies’territory. The thirteen Gates. Not a map showing terrain or boundaries. Not a map useful to anyone who couldn’t ride the Black Winds, but he learned a great deal about Hell in the hour he spent perusing that piece of parchment, including the locations of the most benign and most dangerous sections of the Dark Realm.

Then the parchment vanished, the door opened, and Geoffrey returned.

“I found some information that might be of interest to you,” Geoffrey said. “You can review the material in the private section of the library. Then you will go home.”

Daemon let out a huff of laughter. “I guess I overstepped a few boundaries. Are you going to mention this to my father?”

“That you’re looking into Falonar’s bloodlines? Why should I?”

Messages received and understood, Daemon thought as he and Geoffrey went to the private section of the library.

Geoffrey hadn’t shown him that parchment because he was the High Lord’s son. Geoffrey had shown him that parchment because he was the High Lord’s heir.

EIGHT

Her chest hurt like a wicked bitch, it was damn hard to breathe, and whatever she was lying on was too cold and too hard for any comfort.

Surreal moved her hands slowly, testing the surface beneath her. When her left hand found an edge and then air, she carefully rolled to her side so she wouldn’t fall off whatever she was on. As she pushed herself upright, she felt an odd, painful pressure in her chest, and when she touched the spot . . .

She ripped her shirt open and stared at the rough, swollen, black lump between her breasts. Her muscles clenched, and the thing seemed to swell.

“What in the name of Hell . . . ?”

“Not Hell,” said a lilting, lyrical voice full of caverns and midnight skies. “This is the Misty Place.”

Apt name, Surreal decided as she looked around. Mist and stone, and nothing else except the altar she was sitting on.

“Where, exactly, is the Misty Place?” she asked.

“In the abyss.”

“I’ve never seen it before.”

“Very few can survive this place, and none without invitation.”

What walked out of the mist was female but not human. Medium height, slender, and fair-skinned. An erotically beautiful face framed by a gold mane that was somewhere between fur and hair. Delicately pointed ears and a small spiral horn. Human torso and limbs, but also a fawn’s tail and dainty horse’s hooves. Human hands that had cat’s claws instead of fingernails.

Surreal didn’t recognize the body, but she recognized those sapphire eyes.

Living myth. Dreams made flesh. Witch. This was the Self who lived within Jaenelle’s human skin.

“You brought me here?” Surreal asked. “Why?”

“Because of that.” Witch pointed to the black lump.

“Poison?” She gingerly pressed the skin around the lump. Hell’s fire, it hurt.

“Not a physical poison, but a poison all the same. A poison of the heart. You can’t see it in the physical world, but it will cripple you, Surreal—has been crippling you for months now. So it’s time to cleanse the heart.”

Oh, that didn’t sound good. “Should I lay down so you can cut it out?”

Witch shook her head. “This is up to you now.”

“You expect me to cut it out of myself?”

“Not cut. Push. A kind of birthing, if you prefer.”

“I don’t prefer,” she muttered. “What if I don’t do this?”

“You were in so much emotional pain, you broke the connection between your Self and your body in order to escape. If you don’t heal this now, you won’t be able to mend that separation, and your empty body eventually will wither and die.” Witch bared her teeth and snarled. “Show some balls and do this!”

Surreal bared her teeth and matched Witch’s snarl. Then her chest muscles clenched. The skin at the top of the lump split, and a thick, black pus pushed out of the opening. When she forced her muscles to relax, the pus retreated.

Shit shit shit.

“You have to clean it out, all the way to the core,” Witch said urgently. “If you don’t, your dreams will never find fertile ground.”

“What dreams?”

“The ones you’re not ready to know. The ones I’ve seen in a tangled web.”

The pressure in her chest was becoming unbearable, and she wanted to back down, wanted to say she didn’t care what happened to her body. Then she imagined Lucivar trying to explain to Daemonar why Auntie Surreal never woke up after playing with him. “What do I need to do?”

“Push them out. Let them go. Forgive yourself for what you couldn’t do.”

Surreal shook her head, not understanding. Her chest muscles clenched again. Pus rose, but not far enough.

“Tell me their names,” Witch said as she pointed to the black lump.

“Whose names?”

“The ones you couldn’t save.”

Suddenly she knew what the lump and pus had formed around—the feelings of blame, regret, sorrow. “I can’t.”

“Yes, you can,” Witch insisted. “Tell me their names!”

A boy defying an order. Wings. Blood spraying the walls and floor. “Kester.”

Her muscles clenched. Black pus burst out of the lump and soiled her shirt.

She relaxed her muscles and took a breath. Hell’s fire, that stuff smelled putrid.

A boy screaming and screaming. A plucked eye rolling off the shelf.

“Trist,” she cried, bearing down to push out more of the pus. “Ginger.”

“Not your fault,” Witch said.

“I should have been stronger, faster, something.”

“You were injured and then poisoned. You did far more to defend and protect than the enemy had believed possible.” A beat of silence. Then, “Who else didn’t you save?”

The pressure in her chest kept building and building. Now that the wound was open, the older, harder pus was pushing up. “Marjane, who was my friend Deje’s girl. You remember Marjane.”

“Yes, I remember Marjane. I remember Rebecca and Myrol, Dannie and Rose. They were just some of the girls who died in Briarwood.”

More pus burst from the lump as Witch spoke each name.

“They were dead before you knew they existed,” Witch said. “Yet you carry their names. Who else didn’t you save?”

“You.” Panting and sobbing, Surreal looked at the dream whose existence had changed so many lives. “I didn’t get to Briarwood in time to save you.”

“You weren’t in time to save me from the rape, but you got me away from that place, and that saved my life.”

Black pus continued pushing out of her chest, fouling her clothes and the altar. As an assassin, she had killed a lot of men as payment for girls whose names she never knew. She didn’t carry the weight of those girls because she had settled the debt that was owed for their pain, for their loss.

More pressure, but this pus was so old, had been in her for so long, it was rough and hard, scraping the skin around the open sore.

“You’re down to the core,” Witch said. “The last name. Tell me the name of the first girl you didn’t save, the name that has hurt your heart for so many years.”

She clenched her muscles and pushed. Had to get the core out of her or it would all come back.

“Tell me.”

“I don’t know!”

“Then I’ll tell you.” Witch reached out and rested one claw above what was left of the black lump. “Her name was Surreal.”

Pain. Agony. Twelve years old and hiding from whoever had killed her mother. Trying to survive in dirty alleyways. Raped but not broken. She hadn’t been able to protect her body, but she’d been able to protect her Green Birthright power and her inner web. Twelve years old and beginning both careers—whore and assassin.

The hard black core pushed out, pushed out, pushed out until Witch hooked it with a claw and pulled it out the rest of the way.

Surreal lay back. Her chest hurt, and it felt hollow—and it felt clean. For the first time in too many years, she felt clean.

She closed her eyes. The altar felt much warmer and softer now. Comfortable.

“Rest now, Surreal,” Jaenelle said. “Rest.”

She snuggled farther under the spell-warmed covers, breathed an easy sigh, and slept.

NINE

“Daemonar!”

Surreal jerked awake and struggled against the hand pressing on her shoulder, holding her down. Then a tenor voice said, “Be easy, cousin. Be easy. The boy is well.” Then a tenor voice said, “Be easy, cousin. Be easy The boy is well.”

She flopped back, boneless with relief as the voice and words were absorbed. Then she looked at the man who released her shoulder and took her hand, hiding none of the Gray-Jeweled strength behind his gentle touch. Long silver hair and slightly oversized forest blue eyes. Delicately pointed ears and a slender, sinewy build that was much stronger than it looked. “Chaosti?”

The Warlord Prince of the Dea al Mon smiled. “Welcome back.”