Surreal needed more. Aggressive and demanding, she took control, riding him hard as he helped her reach a climax that should have satisfied her.

It may have satisfied her body, but sex that night did nothing to soothe her heart or her temper.

Daemon slipped out of her bed at first light and left the Hall before anyone but the earliest-rising servants was awake. Until last night, he had enjoyed being Surreal’s lover. Now he felt relief that he wouldn’t be required to perform that particular duty for a couple of days.

SEVEN

Weakness washed through Marian Yaslana as she put a pot of beef stew, a bowl of sweet cheese, and a stick of butter into the cabin’s cold box. Daemon was perfectly capable of cooking his own meals or picking up food at The Tavern, but when he stayed at the cabin, she liked providing him with one meal as a welcome.

After she closed the cold box, her hand trembled as she pulled out a chair at the kitchen table and sank into it. She stared at one of the loaves of spinach-and-herb bread she’d made that morning because she liked that bread with the stew, and the bakery in Riada didn’t make it.

Foolish to think she could do as much as she’d done before baby Andulvar’s birth. Foolish to keep trying. But she didn’t want to be a semi-invalid who couldn’t play with her children or spend time with her husband—or bake bread. She didn’t want to watch someone else tend her garden because she didn’t have the strength to care for it.

Nurian had told her rest was the only cure, and she did feel a little stronger on the days when she did nothing more than sleep, read, and tend the baby. That had been fine for the first week or two, but she didn’t want that to be her life. Unfortunately, Nurian’s tonics didn’t seem to do anything to restore her vitality. Nothing seemed to do that.

Was it time to use Jaenelle Angelline’s last gift? It was a healing spell unlike any other—and impossible to duplicate.

“Use it when you need it most.”

What if Jaenelle had seen something else in her future? Something that a little more rest couldn’t cure?

She knew what Lucivar would say if he was aware of the healing spell, which was why she had tucked it away since the day she’d been given that last, special gift and had said nothing about its existence.

The cabin’s front door opened. Marian felt the dark power of a Black Jewel fill the cabin. Daemon was sensitive to any intrusion inside the cabin that Saetan had built for Jaenelle Angelline decades ago. The cabin had been Jaenelle’s private place, and then it had been hers and Daemon’s, and now it was his sanctuary from all the responsibilities he shouldered.

“I’m in the kitchen,” she called.

He appeared in the kitchen doorway, his gold eyes glazed and sleepy—a sign and warning of a Warlord Prince who was a heartbeat away from the killing edge. Then his eyes cleared and warmed. And then he frowned.

“Marian? Darling . . . ?” He moved swiftly, bending over her, one hand on her forehead as if checking for fever.

“I’m fine,” she said. “Don’t you start fussing too.”

He eased back and his lips curved in a hint of a smile as his deep voice—that voice that always held a sexual purr—caressed her. “You know saying things like that is pointless, don’t you?”

“It doesn’t mean I can’t say them.”

“I won’t fuss.” Daemon looked pointedly at the loaf of bread. “And neither should you. I can take care of myself, especially when I don’t plan to do or be anything but lazy.”

Marian looked at his hand resting lightly on the table. Looked at the slender fingers and the long, black-tinted nails. And remembered why he, like his father, wore his nails that way.

Black Widow. Saetan had been the first male Black Widow, the first to be taught the Hourglass’s Craft. Daemon was not only the second male to be trained in that particular Craft; he was the only natural male Black Widow in the history of the Blood.

“Daemon?” She moved a hand to indicate her body. “Could this be caused by something Nurian wouldn’t be able to recognize?”

“Wouldn’t recognize because . . . ?”

She rested the fingertips of her left hand on the black-tinted nails of his right. “Because the cause began outside my body.” She didn’t want to accuse anyone. She didn’t have any enemies that she knew of, didn’t think any of the Black Widows living in Ebon Rih had a reason to harm her. But now that the thought was there . . .

“May I?” Daemon asked.

Marian nodded.

His left hand rested against her neck. His right hand pressed lightly against her chest as he used Craft to undo the buttons of her tunic all the way to her waist. His eyes no longer saw her or the room, because he was focused on something else. She felt the feathery touch of psychic probes exploring her in ways healing Craft didn’t do. This wasn’t the touch of a Healer looking for illness. This was the touch of a hunter searching for an enemy.

His right hand moved lower, fingers spreading so that thumb and little finger touched her breasts. The hand moved lower to her belly. Then to her womb.

Raising his hands from her body, Daemon took her left hand and used the edge of his fingernail to nick the pad of her first finger. When a bead of blood formed, he licked the skin clean—and waited.

Releasing her, he rested one hip on the table. “I’m not sensing any kind of spell wrapped around you. Definitely no death spell designed to mimic a wasting disease. And there’s no taste of poison in your blood.”

She blinked. She hadn’t considered a slow-acting poison. Or death spells. “Have you ever created a spell like that?”

She watched his eyes change. The man looking at her now wasn’t the man who loved her like a sister and flirted with her gently. The man looking at her now was the man who once had walked into an enemy camp where she and Daemonar had been held captive and who had tortured his own brother in order to provide a distraction so that he could get her and her son out of harm’s way.

“Yes,” he said too softly. “I have.”

“A Warlord Prince is true to his nature. You can’t expect him to use what he is to protect you and yours and then treat him like an outcast when you’re safe.”

Jaenelle Angelline had understood the nature of Warlord Princes better than anyone else in Kaeleer—and she had understood the nature of the men in the family. All the men.

“Then you would know,” Marian said in her no-nonsense mother voice.

There were shadows in his eyes, but the terrifying side of Daemon’s nature withdrew in response to that voice, leaving the man she knew well.