All kinds of messages in the finality of that word, and none of them good.

She lay down, far enough away that she wasn’t touching him, but still close enough that if he changed his mind and reached for her, she would be there to tell him without words that she did love him, that she hadn’t meant the things she’d said about him torturing her with sex.

Eventually she fell asleep. When she woke in the still-dark hours of early morning, Daemon was gone. Worse, a quick look through his dresser and dressing room confirmed that he’d taken several sets of clothes with him.

Worse than that, when she found Holt and Beale already awake and working—and pretending they weren’t aware of the potential collapse of her marriage—neither man knew where Daemon had gone. Neither had been given instructions about how to find him. All Daemon had said before he left was they should contact Lucivar if they needed to reach him.

* * *

* * *

A single ball of witchlight softly illuminated the stone steps that led down to the sunken garden Saetan had built long ago as a place for private meditation. A place meant to offer peace.

Carrying a large mug of coffee heavily flavored with cream and sugar, Surreal walked down the steps. She had never felt peaceful in this garden. Too much grief had been absorbed by the ground for her to feel any peace. That wasn’t why she came to this spot in the Hall.

Ignoring the statue of the crouched male that was a blend of human and animal, she walked over to the fountain where a woman with an achingly familiar face rose out of the water. Then she raised the mug as if to catch someone’s attention.

“I brought you coffee.” Setting the mug on the grass beside the fountain, Surreal raked her fingers through her hair. “Hell’s fire, Jaenelle. I made a mistake, a bad mistake, and I don’t know how to fix it. But how was I to know that—”

The ball of witchlight disappeared. The cool predawn air turned viciously cold. And for just a heartbeat, maybe two, Surreal felt as if she was falling in the abyss, felt as if she was being crushed in body and mind because she was falling deeper than she could possibly survive.

Then a pale light returned and the air was chilly but no longer viciously cold.

Stone and mist. A slab of dark stone that looked like an altar. More slabs that were low enough to be seats.

“What I’m wondering,” said a midnight voice, “is why you ignored the signs and let this go on for so long.”

Chilled to the marrow, Surreal watched the figure shaped out of dreams walk out of the mist.

“Mother Night,” she whispered. “Jaenelle?” She looked around. “Where . . . ?”

“This is the Misty Place.” Witch approached the altar and stood within reach. “Why, Surreal? You’ve never backed down from anything. Why back down because of something that should have been simple? It’s not like you haven’t seen it before.”

The tartness in the words scratched Surreal’s temper enough for her to ignore questions about where she was and if she could get back to the Hall. Focusing on those ancient sapphire eyes allowed her to ignore the rest of Witch’s shape and pretend she was dealing with the friend she remembered. “Let me tell you something, sugar. I’ve never felt like I was being swept away and drowned by a man’s lust. I’ve never felt desperate to ride a cock. So you’ll have to forgive me if I missed the warning signs. And when, in the name of Hell, have I seen this before?”

“You and Rainier were sharing a house when he came into his full prime and went through the same thing,” Witch replied with razor-sharp sweetness. “You shrugged it off despite living with it every day.”

“Rainier did not go through this,” Surreal snarled.

“Of course he did. All the Warlord Princes did. But Rainier wore Opal and you wear Gray, so the increase in his sexual heat rolled off you, barely noticed, let alone acknowledged. Also, you and Rainier weren’t lovers, so you weren’t primed to be aroused by his sexual heat as you are to your lover’s interest in you.” Witch huffed out a sigh. “But even the Gray can’t ignore the Black when the sexual heat’s potency matures, so it’s not surprising you felt swept away. What is surprising is that you and your crossbow didn’t meet Daemon in the bedroom one evening so that you could tell him that something felt wrong before things had gone so wrong.”

“But this fever of sex has opened the door for you to reclaim him, hasn’t it?” Surreal snapped.

She regretted the words the moment she said them.

The air turned so cold it was hard to breathe—and the feeling of pressure being held at bay by something, or someone, reminded her that she was so deep in the abyss that she had no chance of surviving on her own. “Jaenelle . . . My apologies, Lady. Those words were unkind—and untrue.”

“I didn’t intend to come back,” Witch said too quietly. “I didn’t expect Daemon to need me beyond my being a song in the Darkness that reminded him that he wasn’t alone and helped him stay connected to the living. Do you think this is easy, that I welcome this? Solitude is like ice, Surreal. When it’s thick and unbroken, the world beyond it is muted, a memory that can be offered gifts that reach the living in dreams. But when that solitude is smashed, like it is now? When I know the ice will have to be smashed again and again because the survival of so many now requires it, and I will be reminded again and again that I may still be heart and mind and a great deal of power, but this”—she swept a hand down to indicate her body—“is a shadow, an illusion, not flesh that can be held. Do you really think I wanted this continual contact with the living when I had every reason to believe that you and Daemon would be happy being together?”

“I . . .” Surreal looked away, aching for both of them. All of them.

“But this is where we are now, you and I—and Daemon. Married to you, he could have survived with me being nothing more than a comforting dream, and Kaeleer could have survived him without me. But a vital kind of trust has been broken and will never again be strong enough to do what it could have done. What it should have done.”

“He said his sanity is at risk.”

“It was. It is. It will be, even beyond his last day among the living.”

“All because I demanded that he leash his sexual heat.”

“Not because you demanded it, but because you didn’t believe him when he told you it was leashed.”

“Would you have believed him?”

“Yes. And then I would have looked for another reason for the change in my reaction to the heat. The knowledge was available, but neither of you asked the right questions—or asked the right people.” Witch sighed. “Some practical adjustments in your living arrangements will have to be made, and the lingering pain of the past few months will leave a coating of bitterness on your marriage that will take time to fade. You have to decide if you love him enough to give him—and yourself—that time.”