TEN

Daemon looked up when the study door opened, and watched Surreal walk toward the blackwood desk. Judging by that particular expression on her face, he knew he was in trouble. He just didn’t know why.

“You’re the parent on duty this morning,” he pointed out.

“I’m aware of that, Sadi.” Surreal pressed her hands on the desk and leaned toward him. “Before I decide if you deserve to have your ass kicked, I want to know one thing: Did you give Jaenelle permission to ride the horsie all by herself?”

Why was she pissed off about that? “The wheeled toy horse in the playroom?”

“No, the big live one outside.”

He blinked. Sat back. “What, exactly, are we talking about?” Because she couldn’t mean what she said. Jaenelle was much too young to mount a horse and ride alone.

“A black horse showed up this morning. When Jaenelle went outside to play, they made friends. Now they’re cantering around the backyard, having a grand time.”

“A groom put her up in front of him?” He couldn’t approve of that, since the man hadn’t asked permission from him or Surreal first, but Jaenelle loved the horses and she could be a persuasive little witchling. Of course, a groom being present didn’t fit with Jaenelle being “all by herself.”

“There’s no groom,” Surreal said. “There’s no saddle or bridle. And he’s not from our stables. His name is Nightwind, he comes from the Isle of Scelt, and he’s an Opal-Jeweled Warlord Prince.”

Daemon shot to his feet. Seeing the look in Surreal’s eyes, he sank back down. She hadn’t called in a weapon—yet—but he knew better than to push her when she was in a riled-mother frame of mind.

“She’s riding an unfamiliar horse—,” he began.

“Who is an Opal-Jeweled Warlord Prince,” she added.

“—bareback?”

“Yes. The grooms tried to approach him, but every time they got close, he took off—with her. The humans have retreated because they’re afraid he’ll bolt or try to jump something in his path. No one is sure how she’s keeping her seat, although the stable master assures me that she’s riding as if she’d been born knowing how to ride. Fhinn and Sorca are watching her, since the horse doesn’t mind Scelties running along with him. So Jaenelle is fine for the moment, which is why we have time to discuss this.”

He shot to his feet again. “Hell’s fire, Surreal! Why haven’t you done something?”

“Like I said, I wanted to make sure you hadn’t given her permission.”

“Why would you think I would give my permission?”

“Because you have a firm no and a soft no, and I had the feeling that Jaenelle heard whatever you said about the horsie as a soft no.”

“There was no no, and there was no yes,” Daemon snarled. “I didn’t know about him!”

“Now you do. This one isn’t about who’s on duty, Sadi. This is about a pissing contest between two Warlord Princes and establishing now that Prince Nightwind gets his orders from you and not Jaenelle.”

Daemon narrowed his eyes. Surreal didn’t need him for this. She wore the Gray. She could slap that horse from one end of the estate to the other if that was what it took to convince Nightwind that he had to follow the rules they set for their daughter. Convincing the daughter, on the other hand . . .

“Why do you want me to be the strict parent who draws the line?” he asked.

“Because a line has to be drawn and held. She’s too young to be galloping off without supervision. When that line gets drawn, there are going to be tears. She’s having a wonderful time right now, so you know there will be tears. And we both know you tend to buckle when there are tears.”

“I don’t buckle,” he snarled.

Surreal just looked at him.

“Not always.” Actually, it wasn’t the tears that gave him trouble; it was his fascination with how her little mind worked that usually tangled him up. He’d been stumbling over Jaenelle’s logic since the day she figured out how to string words into complete sentences adults could understand. “All right. Fine. I’ll draw the line.”

“And I’ll back you up all the way,” she said sweetly.

He came around the desk and headed for the door. “You owe me.”

Surreal laughed.

As he entered the great hall, he noticed Beale and Holt, but they didn’t try to talk to him, so he kept going. If Jaenelle was having a grand time with the horsie, she was going to be one unhappy little witch when he put a stop to her playing with her new friend. And wouldn’t that be pleasant to deal with?

He would be calm but firm with horse and child. After all, it wasn’t that long ago that his little witchling had needed to hold on to him in order to walk. Of course, now she was running all over the place, and the Scelties were the only ones besides himself and Surreal who could keep track of her. But that didn’t mean she could go riding by herself. No, it did not.

He stepped out on the back terrace, saw his little girl and the young black stallion, and thought, Shit.

They looked beautiful together—and they reminded him of another young girl and a horse named Dark Dancer who had looked just as beautiful as they flew over the ground.

But it wasn’t the same. Jaenelle Angelline had been twelve at the time, not a little girl like Jaenelle Saetien. Still, he had to admit Surreal was right—he’d have a much harder time holding this particular line if he wasn’t the one drawing it.

“Papa!” Jaenelle raised a hand and waved at him—and wobbled on that bare back so dreadfully far above the ground.

Daemon’s heart bounced down to his knees and back up to his throat, but he kept his movements smooth and easy as he approached the horse, who had slowed to a walk and kept an eye on him.

“Papa! Look at me!”

“I see you, witch-child.” But he was watching the stallion. “Come on, now. Let me help you down so you can introduce your new friend properly.” And once he got her down, he would decide if she was ever getting near the horse again.

“Go over to Papa now,” she said. “We’ll get hugs!”

A Warlord Prince was a Warlord Prince, whether he walked on four legs or two. And this youngster was feeling just as possessive and territorial as Daemon.

Well, that wasn’t quite true. No one could feel as possessive and territorial about his daughter as he did.

He waited, letting the stallion move toward him, giving Opal a chance to show respect for the Black—and remain among the living.

Once Daemon had his girl safely in his arms, he looked into those gold eyes shining with excitement. It wasn’t the thought of tears that defeated him. It was the thought of how dull those eyes would be if he didn’t allow the boundaries of her world to keep expanding.

Sighing, he looked at the horse and got down to the delicate business of negotiating the rules.

Surreal stepped out of Daemon’s study and found Holt and Beale in the great hall, waiting for her.

Holt shook his head. “You’re both so strict about the on-duty rule, I didn’t think you could talk the Prince into going out there, not when you could deal with a kindred visitor.”

“You just have to know the right thing to say,” Surreal replied. And knowing when Daemon needs to set the boundaries for his daughter doesn’t hurt either—especially when being the one to set those boundaries is as much for his sake as for hers.

“You talked him into handling it,” Holt said, still shaking his head.

“I did—which means I win the bet.” She grinned and held out a hand. “That will be ten silver marks each, gentlemen. Pay up.”

ELEVEN

Surreal walked down the steps to the sunken garden that held two statues. She’d built her own little garden for quiet reflection, and came to this one only once a year on this particular day. Daemon came here often, and it held so much of his sorrow and grief she wondered how the groundskeepers could stand tending the flower beds and trimming the lawn—and cleaning the fountain where a woman with an achingly familiar face rose out of the water.

She glanced at the statue of the male, then looked away. She couldn’t help the male, so she went over to the other statue and lifted the mug she’d brought with her.

“I brought you coffee.” She poured the contents on the grass near the fountain. “Daemon’s gone to your cottage in Ebon Rih, like he does every year on the anniversary of your death. He’ll stay for a day or two, remembering you. When he comes home, he’ll sleep in his own bed for a few days while he wrestles with the question of whether having sex with me is being unfaithful to you or if still loving you is somehow being unfaithful to me. I think he’ll always wrestle with that question at this time of year. It’s not easy being the second wife, not when you were the first. I wouldn’t give it up, though.”

She vanished the mug, then stuffed her hands in the pockets of her coat. “Jaenelle Saetien is a lot like you. I think that helps Daemon. I know it helps me, because watching him deal with her reminds me of you and Uncle Saetan. Hell’s fire, you should have seen him the first time he said no and she tried to negotiate to get parts of that no turned into a yes. I can’t laugh at him when he’s losing ground, because I need him to back me when I make rules, but it is fun to watch him deal with her. And not just fun for me. Beale and Holt are often in prime position to watch our little dramas. She’s not shy the way you were. I blame her uncle Lucivar for that. I think she absorbed some of his Eyrien arrogance while she was in the womb, just by my being around him. She throws herself at the world and is confident the world will catch her. And maybe it always will.”

A tear suddenly spilled over. Surreal wiped it away. “I know you’re gone and can’t hear me, but I’ll ask anyway. You were Kaeleer’s Heart, and you were Daemon’s heart.Your death left a hole in him, and I don’t know if it will ever heal.”

“It will.”

Surreal jolted, then looked toward the stairs. “Tersa.”

Daemon’s mother joined her and smiled at the statue that wore Jaenelle Angelline’s face. “She knew Daemon’s rise out of the Twisted Kingdom needed to be a slow journey in order for his mind to heal. The same is true of his heart. A slow journey, Surreal. Be patient. It will take time, but the hole inside him is filling—and you’re one reason why it can.”

Surreal licked her lips and asked the question that had been circling in her mind ever since Nightwind showed up a few months before. “Has Jaenelle Angelline come back as Jaenelle Saetien?”

Tersa shook her head. “No. Of that I am sure.”

“But they’re so alike in some ways.”

“Yearnings can be strange things. What kind of daughter did you yearn for in the long hours of lonely nights?”

The question made her uneasy, but she answered it. “Someone like the golden-haired child I once knew, without the pain.”

“Then you have the daughter of your heart. And isn’t she also exactly the kind of daughter Daemon needs in order to heal?”

Surreal didn’t know how to answer that.

“You worry without reason,” Tersa said. “One is like the other but is not the other.”

“How can you be sure?”

Tersa brushed her fingers along Surreal’s cheek. “Witch told me.”

Daemon closed the cottage door and pressed his forehead against the wood. Most days the pain was a dull ache in the background of his life, a constant and faithful lover. Most days he barely noticed it while he was busy taking care of his family and the SaDiablo estates, and the Territory of Dhemlan.

Most days. But not on the anniversary of the day he lost his Queen, his lover, his heart. Then the pain roared back, sharp and cutting. It wasn’t fair to Surreal, but he couldn’t be around her on this day. Couldn’t even be around Jaenelle Saetien, mostly because he didn’t want to explain the tears and the hurting to his little girl.

Being invited to Jaenelle’s private place had been special, a pocket of time when they could be nothing more than a man and woman in love. He cherished those memories, just as he cherished the memories of the time they took for themselves each Winsol. He tried not to think about them too much during the rest of the year. He’d made a promise to Surreal to be a husband, and he did his best to keep that promise. But on this day, he wandered the acre of land that belonged to the cottage or sat in the front room and let the memories flow—the ones that made him laugh, the ones that made him cry.

Later in the evening, he ate the food Marian left for him in the cold box. Then he lay down on the bed and closed his eyes. The dream would come—the one where he was dead and had a hole in his chest where his heart had been. It didn’t plague him as often anymore, but it would come tonight.

Except it didn’t. Instead, he dreamed he was stretched out on the altar in the Misty Place, comfortable and passive, lulled by the steady beat of his heart.

He opened his eyes and rolled onto his back, bumping against someone else on the altar—except she was propped up on one elbow, watching him out of ancient sapphire eyes.

“Jaenelle,” he whispered.

She tapped a cat claw lightly against his chest. “Stubborn, snarly male. But I guess that’s not surprising, since you always were.”