The Queen's Price, page 5
As soon as Witch and Karla entered the sitting room across from the Queen’s suite, Daemon glided around them and shut the door—and stood between them and a way out of the room. At least he blocked an easy exit for Karla. Witch’s body was a shadow made out of power and Craft, so she could disappear anytime she pleased. But when dealing with him, she usually observed whatever rules would have applied if she still had a physical body.
Piss and vinegar, Lucivar had said. Well, he was primed to deliver.
He held out the cuff link and engaged the auditory spell in the Red chip beneath the ruby.
Grumbles and deep mutters before those voices roared out with language foul enough to make Lucivar blush when he’d heard it.
Karla looked taken aback before she frowned at the cuff link. “That’s Eyrien, isn’t it?”
Witch, wide-eyed and mouth open in shock, finally said, “Mother Night, it certainly is.”
Karla had picked up enough Eyrien over the years to be able to converse in that language, but Witch was fluent and probably knew all the words that had been said.
“Lucivar and I think this is somehow connected to the two of you, so you are going to help me fix this,” Daemon said. He shook the cuff link at them. Voices muttered and grumbled.
They all stared at the cuff link, waiting.
“Why would this have anything to do with us?” Witch asked.
“Because Lucivar identified those voices as belonging to Andulvar and Prothvar Yaslana, so this was done before they became a whisper in the Darkness. I’m sure Saetan created the original bit of Craft as some kind of lesson for the coven, but something happened and this spell is still working. It was placed in a window, probably in response to the tests you made on window glass.”
“Tests?” Witch said warily.
“ ‘Intruder! Intruder! I’m hit! I’m hit! I’m hit!’ ” Daemon raised an eyebrow. “Remember that?”
“Hell’s fire,” Karla muttered. “How would you know about that?”
“Saetan kept notes about your more memorable adventures.” No need to tell them—yet—that there was a whole filing cabinet filled with those notes.
The look on their faces. His daughter used to call that puffed-up, huffy attitude “going all hissy cat.” In fact, the Scelties still used that phrase when human females got overly exercised about something.
“If the spell is in a window, can’t you remove the window?” Witch asked.
“That was our intention, once we’d confirmed that it was only sound and not something more malevolent—like someone trapped in that window—but the damn spell moved!” Daemon shook the cuff link again, then stopped when it began to mutter.
“Moved where?” Karla asked.
“That is the question,” he replied. “But I’m telling you both now, if that spell shows up in a bedroom window and I end up with twenty-two adolescent girls piling on top of me in the middle of the night, scared out of their wits, I am going to be pissed.”
“You think the boys will hold out?” Witch asked.
Didn’t even take a moment’s thought. “Considering that Daemonar found this and it spooked him enough to have him pounding on my bedroom door, the other pups will be piling in with the girls.” He gave them a sharp smile. “And if that spell shows up in the Beales’ apartment, I am bringing Mrs. Beale and her meat cleaver here so that you can explain this to her.”
They stared at him.
“That’s a threat,” Karla finally said.
“Uh-huh,” Witch agreed.
She tried to look contrite. They both did. Contrition coming from the two of them made him nervous, but he held his ground.
“Can you leave the cuff link here so that we can study the sound?” Witch asked.
Daemon held out the cuff link.
A small crystal bowl appeared in front of him, floating on air. He dropped the cuff link into the bowl. The bowl vanished.
“Something must have activated the spell, if it’s been dormant all these years,” Witch said. “Did something unusual happen at the Hall?”
“Apparently nothing that would be considered unusual when you have a pack of adolescent girls,” Daemon replied. “A bit of Craft went a wee bit wrong, and they punched a hole in a wall.”
“A hole the size of a decorative window or the size of a door?”
He stared at his Queen, the love of his life and his reason for living—because she had asked him to stay among the living for as long as he could. “Does it matter?” he asked too calmly.
“It could,” Karla said.
“Decorative window,” he replied. “Or so I was told.”
“Well,” Karla said. “The sun is up, so it’s past time for me to retire for the day.”
The silence in the room held a hum of anticipation as the three of them acknowledged that a witch who was demon-dead needed to be careful around the High Lord of Hell, even if she was a Gray-Jeweled Black Widow Queen and a friend.
Daemon stepped aside and used Craft to open the door.
Karla walked past him without another word.
“You’re looking a little peaky, Prince,” Witch said. That was as close as he allowed her to come to acknowledging the damage he’d done to his heart and lungs when he had tried to suppress his sexual heat.
“Lack of sleep; that’s all.” That was as close as he came to admitting what they both knew—that the sand that marked his time among the living was falling in the glass day by day.
“Then you should take a couple of hours to sleep and have a quiet meal before you throw yourself into the chaos at the Hall.”
He hesitated, then asked for what he really needed. “Stay with me?”
Witch smiled. “I’ll stay.”
She gave him time to go to the Consort’s suite, strip out of his clothes, and get into bed before she walked in from her adjoining bedroom.
A shadow he couldn’t touch—not while he still walked among the living—but a shape that could touch him. When her hand rested on his chest, his body relaxed in ways it never did when he wasn’t with her.
“How are you, Daemon?” Jaenelle asked softly.
“I’m all right.” He chuckled. “Most days, dealing with the girls is like being run over by a pack of happy puppies. The novelty of living at the Hall hasn’t worn off yet.”
“And the boys?”
“Let’s just say I haven’t had to prove—yet—that I have the biggest cock.”
Jaenelle’s silvery, velvet-coated laugh filled the room. “You left a kiss on Mrs. Beale’s meat cleaver. I think it will be a while before any of the boyos start a pissing contest with you.” Her laughter and amusement faded. “Your daughter?”
Daemon sighed. “She’s . . . adjusting . . . to life at the sanctuary. She’s sent me a couple of letters. She hasn’t said much, but she has written. And I’ve written back. Not much else I can do for her right now.”
“No,” Jaenelle said gently. “Not right now. But the core of who she is, the core you and Surreal helped shape, is still there. She just has to find it again in her own way.”
“Have you seen something in a tangled web?”
“No. I just know you.” She leaned over and gave him a soft kiss on the cheek. “Sleep, Daemon.”
“Yeah. I will.” He closed his eyes. “I left Lucivar at the Hall. He’ll be giving the Craft lessons today.”
“Mother Night,” she breathed.
“And may the Darkness be merciful.”
He drifted to sleep thinking about how thirty-four of those youngsters at the Hall would get their first full experience of dealing with Lucivar Yaslana.
* * *
* * *
After Sadi headed back to SaDiablo Hall, Karla sat on the sofa in the sitting room across from the Queen’s suite and listened to the roaring voices coming from the audio chip in Sadi’s cuff link. “Do you remember what we did that pissed them off so much?”
Jaenelle Angelline, the Queen who was Witch, stared at the cuff link and shook her head. “No, but it had to be more than the window we’d made—although that window did cause a fair amount of excitement.”
“Are you sure this is Andulvar and Prothvar?”
“The voices are . . . bloated . . . or multiplied, but definitely Andulvar and Prothvar.”
“Which means that spell was made . . .”
“Before the purge.”
“That was centuries ago. Even a spell created by Uncle Saetan should have run out of power.”
“Depends on the conditions that were woven into the spell. It could have been dormant until it was found—or until someone else blew a hole in a wall.” Jaenelle jammed her fingers into her short golden hair—hair that looked more like fur—until it was standing on end.
“Besides,” Jaenelle continued, “there’s been another Black-Jeweled Warlord Prince living at the Hall all of these years, feeding his power into the defensive shields. It’s possible Daemon fed this spell, too, without realizing it.”
“And also fed it some of his rage when his control had been slipping?” Karla suggested. “That could account for the way the voices sound.”
“Possible.” Jaenelle looked at Karla. “If Saetan created this spell and set it in a window, he meant for us to find it—and fix it. A lesson in undoing something that had been done.”
“Except we didn’t find it,” Karla pointed out. “So either Uncle Saetan forgot about it . . .”
Jaenelle huffed. “Not likely, since he left notes.”
“. . . or it had originally been in a place where we should have found it. Except something else twined with his work and the spell scampered off to windows unknown.”
“Which means Daemon is right. That spell was originally designed to respond to us and should have been dealt with a long time ago.”
Jaenelle looked at Karla. Karla looked at Jaenelle.
“Well,” Karla finally said. “This will be exciting.”
SEVEN
SaDiablo Hall
Since he had no intention of teaching Craft to a pack of adolescents or following Daemon’s precise schedule for the day’s lessons, Lucivar summoned all the youngsters to the large room usually used for sparring and weapons training. He hadn’t seen all of them together since the day they’d arrived at the Hall, and today he wanted to get a feel for who they were. What they were. And how they were with one another.
This review would have come sooner or later. Daemon’s absence today meant neither man had to come up with an excuse for the youngsters having to deal with him instead of the Warlord Prince they were accustomed to seeing.
The girls walked into the room, speculating about why they’d all been summoned here for their Craft lesson—as if a simple psychic probe couldn’t have told them they were facing Ebon-gray instead of Black, and that should have told them the Craft lesson wasn’t going to be what they expected.
It also raised the question of why they hadn’t done something as basic as a psychic probe before entering the room.
Titian hurried into the room and gave Lucivar a bright smile, quickly followed by a look of wariness.
Yes, witchling, he thought, amused by his daughter’s reaction to his presence. I know about the wall.
Equally wary, Zoey offered him a proper bow—young Queen to a Warlord Prince of his rank.
Jhett, a Black Widow, and Arlene, a Healer—both good friends of Zoey’s—also bowed.
The other four Queens who were now residing at the Hall looked confused by Zoey’s formality, then hesitated a few moments too long before they, too, bowed to acknowledge who, and what, he was.
The lack of understanding about who determined when a meeting could shift from formal to informal was something Daemon would have to correct—and fast. Of course, at this age, they could have a brilliant understanding of Protocol one moment and be completely brainless the next.
Altogether, there were five Queens, three natural Black Widows, three natural Healers, and eleven witches. They had come from different Provinces in Dhemlan. They had been selected by the Province Queens after being recommended by the District Queens, chosen to be trained at the Hall because they were deemed young witches of considerable potential who could be the next generation of leaders in one way or another—and targets for someone who saw them as rivals the way Delora and her coven of malice had done.
Yes, he saw that potential in the way they carried themselves and in their psychic scents.
What he also saw, in the way the girls clustered on one side of the room, were the seeds of five courts instead of one. Trouble? Possibly.
And in more ways than one, he thought grimly as Daemonar led the other thirteen boys into the room, followed by Lord Weston, who was Zoey’s sword and shield, and Prince Raine, an instructor from Dharo.
He watched the way one of the girls stared at the boys—specifically the five Warlord Princes. Daemonar was the only one old enough to be in the first phase of his sexual heat. The other four wouldn’t have to deal with it for a few more years, but they would have to deal with it—and so would any witch who served in a court that held a Warlord Prince.
He watched the girl. Watched the way she swished her skirt to draw the eye to her hips. Watched the way her attention fixed on his son but also flicked to the other four Warlord Princes as if she were sizing up the best piece of meat in the market.
A man didn’t need much experience to guess what he wouldn’t find under that skirt. And he had plenty of experience.
Well, no one had ever accused him of being subtle. Or tactful.
His sharp whistle had all of them looking his way. He focused on the young witch and said, “Leave the room and finish dressing.”
She looked at the other girls, looked at one of the Queens in particular, her feigned bafflement fraying the leash on his temper. Then she lifted her chin. “I don’t know what you mean.”
Lucivar nodded. “All right. Put some underpants on.” The words thundered through the room. “If you start showing off what you’ve got between your legs, I will take a strap to your bare ass. Do you understand me?”
“I—I—”
“Do. You. Understand?”
She burst into tears and ran out of the room.
Lucivar scanned the faces of the other children. Some looked stunned. Some looked shocked.
And five boys, including his son, looked relieved.
Something else he needed to mention to Daemon.
Before he could say anything else, Mikal opened the door and stuck his head into the room.
“Oh. Hey,” Mikal said. “I guess this explains it. Alvita crossed a line?”
“She did,” Lucivar replied. “Someone should escort her back to her room and make sure she doesn’t do something stupid for the sake of drama.”
“The Scelties are taking care of that.”
Lucivar almost felt sorry for her, since one of the Scelties now living at the Hall was a Green-Jeweled Warlord Prince who didn’t see any reason why he had to put up with nonsense from puppies, regardless of their species. “Tell them she should stay in her room until the midday meal.”
Mikal gave him an assessing look. From someone else, it might be seen as a challenge. But Mikal was not only family; he understood the give-and-take required to work in a court—or to work for the Warlord Prince of Dhemlan.
“I’ll tell them.” Mikal shut the door.
Lucivar scanned the children’s faces again. “Listen up. Sexual heat is a wicked bitch to deal with, and it’s just as hard on Warlord Princes as it is on the rest of you. But it’s part of what makes a Warlord Prince who and what he is, and if you are going to rule a court one day or serve in a court or even reside in a village where one of us lives, you’d damn well better learn how to accept that part of our nature and let it flow past you, because sexual heat isn’t an indication of interest in you. If a Warlord Prince is interested in you specifically, you will know and so will everyone else. Believe me. You will know because all that heat and fire and strength will be focused on you. But until that day comes, you will show him the courtesy of not forcing him to defend his body and his honor, because if he has to do that, he will hurt you.”
“Perhaps a review of the Protocol specific to living around and working with Warlord Princes would be appropriate,” Raine suggested. “Unless Prince Sadi wants to handle that personally, I could make that the lesson this afternoon.”
Lucivar nodded. “You do that.” He looked at the young Warlord Princes. “You five. You stay with me. The rest of you . . .” He looked at the girls. “You have until Sadi returns to decide if you have the self-control to stay here and deal with the Warlord Princes who are in residence. If you can’t—or won’t—you don’t belong here, and I’ll make sure you get home safely.”
“Prince?” Jhett raised a hand just enough to catch his attention. “Are you allowed to decide that?”
It was a valid question, since this wasn’t his Territory. “You’re all here because you have been potential victims of Delora and her coven of malice, and the Province Queens were concerned that there might be someone else out there with similar ambitions that we haven’t found yet.” He gave that a moment to sink in. “Am I one of the people who decides who stays or who goes? Yeah, I am, because who you are and what you do here will decide if I’m willing to step onto a killing field to protect you. Children, I watched another group of youngsters live here and train here and learn what it meant to rule the Realm of Kaeleer, and they were magnificent. Prove that you are worthy of being protected by the Demon Prince and the High Lord of Hell. Sadi and I know you’ll make mistakes. At your age, it’s expected. But we will not tolerate some lines being crossed.”
Lucivar took another look at each of them. “That’s enough for today. At least from me. Prince Raine?”
