“I’ll have a word with the Queen of Halaway. This Healer wouldn’t be the first idiot to try to ensnare Sadi, but it’s a reason for the Queen to look closer at any disturbance in her court or around the village. One thing is sure—this will be the last time that bitch tends to anyone in the SaDiablo household. I imagine the Hall will have its own Healer very soon.”

“I’ll make up more of the healing brew that the Prince can take with him,” Nurian said.

“How much sedative did you put in that?” Lucivar asked.

She hesitated. “I wasn’t sure how much to use for the Black, so I used the amount I would have used for you if you were in his place. Should be sufficient to help him relax enough to sleep for a while.”

Lucivar nodded. “It was enough.” And wasn’t too much.

He saw Nurian out and watched her fly to her eyrie. Then he checked on Daemonar and Titian, who were playing hawks and hares, a children’s card game. Crouching, he balanced on the balls of his feet, his wings tucked tight. “Your uncle Daemon isn’t feeling well and needs to sleep awhile.”

“We’ll be quiet,” Titian said.

“I know you will.” He kissed their foreheads before going to the kitchen to talk to Marian.

“Are you going to tell Surreal about this?” Marian asked, taking the soup off the stove.

“Don’t you think she already knows?” he countered.

“Did you know he was feeling this bad?”

“Shit.” He liked Surreal. Loved her as a sister. Would throw everything he was into protecting her and Jaenelle Saetien. Had been willing to stand against Daemon when Surreal learned she was pregnant and wasn’t sure she wanted to marry the man who had become the High Lord of Hell when Saetan became a whisper in the Darkness. But he wasn’t blind to the fact that Surreal could be a prickly bitch at times and had her own emotional scars. And he wasn’t blind to the fact that, while Daemon and Surreal loved each other, they weren’t, and never had been, in love with each other.

The Birthright Ceremony and acknowledging paternity didn’t always make things easier between a man and a woman, but he hadn’t sensed any serious trouble between them. Just the opposite, in fact. He’d just have to visit the Hall more often over the next few weeks and consider if he’d been wrong about that.

“If it looks like I need to talk to her, I will,” he finally said.

He kept an eye on the children and set the table for dinner while Marian fed and changed baby Andulvar. And he wondered what it might mean to all of them if Surreal didn’t know about Daemon’s headaches.

* * *

* * *

Tersa followed a path only she could see as she wandered the courtyards and corridors inside the massive structure known as the Keep. Built inside the mountain called Ebon Askavi, the Keep was the repository of the Blood’s history—and the lair of Witch, the living myth, dreams made flesh.

She was aware of the watchers—the Seneschal, some of the demon-dead, and the shadowy beings that guarded the Keep—but no one tried to stop her as she looked for the place she needed to reach before she said what she’d come to say.

Finally, she found the garden sleeping under a thin layer of snow, in a part of the Keep that was usually inaccessible without an invitation.

Shivering, she closed her eyes and reached out with everything in her—power, mind, and heart—and sent her plea as deep into the abyss as she could.

“I’m here about the boy. My boy. Daemon.” Her shattered mind wanted to wander the paths of memory, but she fought hard to stay in the present, fought to find the words that would convey the message she needed to deliver. “He’s not well, but he doesn’t recognize the signs, doesn’t understand the warning. He’ll try to chain the reason he isn’t well, and the shattered chalice you mended will crack more and more and more, and the High Lord will not be here when he’s most needed. And he will be needed. I saw it in a web. He will be needed. Please help him. The cracks have already started, but the girl doesn’t see the signs, doesn’t understand the warnings, won’t be able to help. Please.”

Exhausted, empty, Tersa opened her eyes and noticed the witch who stood in the doorway, watching her. An old woman. A Gray-Jeweled Queen. Demon-dead.

“It’s time for you to go, Tersa,” the witch said.

An old woman. And then not old as the shards of Tersa’s mind formed a new pattern, veiling the old woman with the memory of a younger one with spiky white-blond hair and ice-blue eyes—and legs that had been damaged by poison and the desperate healing that had followed.

“Time to go,” the witch said again—gently, because she, too, was a Sister of the Hourglass and understood about dreams and visions.

As Tersa shuffled her feet to take the first step away from her chosen spot, she heard a whisper rising from deep, deep, deep in the abyss.

If he asks for help, I will answer. But only if he asks.

“Thank you,” Tersa whispered as she walked toward the Gray-Jeweled witch. “Thank you.”

The Keep’s Seneschal and the witch gave her food and hot drinks before arranging for a Coach and driver who could ride the Winds and quietly return her to her cottage in Halaway.

“Thank you,” she whispered again once she was home and tucked in her own bed. “He’ll ask. Perhaps not soon enough to mend all that gets broken, but he will ask.”

NINE

Dillon riffled the stack of silver marks and eyed the red-faced, Purple Dusk–Jeweled Warlord who stood on the other side of the desk. If pushed, he could win a fight, since his Opal outranked Purple Dusk. But he’d spent just enough time around the man’s daughter to realize winning wouldn’t be in his favor. That was no reason to let the man off easy. He had expenses, after all.

Dillon riffled the stack of silver marks again. “Looks like your daughter has played this game so often her value is going down.”

“How dare you . . . ?” the Warlord blustered.

“There was a promise of a handfast, which is a binding one-year contract of marriage.” Dillon pitched his voice to carry anger and disappointment he didn’t feel. “There were two witnesses who heard your daughter invite me to her bed and her subsequent agreement to a handfast when I refused, and we had a Priestess ready to perform the ceremony before you intervened.”

“Someone pretending to be a Priestess,” the man countered, making a slashing motion with one hand. “The whole thing was a poor jest, nothing more.”

“Then I’m the injured party, played by a jade who enjoys compromising men’s honor.”