Heir to the Shadows (20 page)

Jaenelle obediently turned her attention to the blocks and balls.

Luthvian left the workroom in a hurry, her hands and teeth clenched. There was only one person she wanted to look in on, and he'd damn well better have some answers.

She felt the chill in the front hallway before she heard the giggle.

"Roxie!" she snapped as she caught the doorway to stop her forward momentum. "You have spells to finish."

Roxie waved her hand airily. "Oh, I've just got one or two left."

"Then do them."

Roxie pouted and looked at Saetan for support.

There was no expression on his face. Worse, there was no expression in his eyes. Hell's fire! He was ready to rip out that lash-batting ninny's throat and she didn't even realize it!

Luthvian dragged Roxie out of the parlor and down the hall, finally shoving her toward the student workroom.

Roxie stamped her foot. "You can't treat me like this! My father's an important Warlord in Doun and my mother's—

Luthvian squeezed Roxie's arm, and hissed, "Listen, you little fool. You're playing with someone you can't even begin to understand."

"He likes me."

"He wants to kill you."

Roxie looked stunned for a moment. Then a calculating look came into her eyes. "You're jealous."

It took all of her self-control not to slap the ninny hard enough to make her spin. "Go to the workroom and
stay
there." She waited until Roxie slammed the workroom door before returning to the parlor.

Pacing restlessly, Saetan was swearing under his breath as he raked his fingers through his hair. His anger didn't surprise her, but the effort he was making to keep it from being felt beyond this room did.

"I'm surprised you didn't give Roxie a real taste of your temper," Luthvian said, staying close to the door.

"Why didn't you?"

"I have my reasons," he snarled.

"Reasons, High Lord? Or just one?"

Saetan snapped to a halt and looked past her. "Is the lesson over already?" he asked uneasily.

"She's practicing by herself." Luthvian hated talking to him when he was angry, so she decided to be blunt. "Why are you bothering to teach her the Hourglass's ways when she's still untrained?"

"I never said she was untrained," Saetan replied, starting to pace again. "I said she needed help with basic Craft."

"Until a witch has the basics, she can't do much else."

"Don't bet on it."

Saetan kept pacing, but it wasn't out of anger. Luthvian watched him and decided she didn't like seeing the High Lord nervous. She didn't like it at all. "What haven't you told me?"

"Everything. I wanted you to meet her first."

"She's got a lot of raw power for someone who doesn't wear Jewels."

"She wears Jewels. Believe me, Luthvian, Jaenelle wears Jewels."

"Then what—"

A loud whoop sent them hurrying to her workroom.

Saetan pushed the door open and froze. Luthvian started to push past him but ended up clinging to his arm for support.

The table was slowly revolving clockwise and also rotating as if it were on a spit. There were now a dozen wooden boxes, some flush to the table's top, others floating above it, and all of them were spinning slowly. Seven brightly colored wooden balls were performing an intricate dance around the boxes. And every single object was maintaining its position to that revolving, rotating table.

With a lot of effort, Luthvian thought she might be able to control something that intricate, but it should have taken years to acquire that kind of skill. You just didn't start with one ball you couldn't move and end up with this in a matter of minutes.

Saetan let out a groaning laugh.

"I think I'm getting the hang of this thread-to-object stuff," Jaenelle said as she glanced over her shoulder and

grinned at them. Then she yelped as everything began to wobble and fall.

Luthvian extended her hand at the same moment Saetan extended his. She froze the smaller objects in place. He caught the table.

"Damn and blast!" Jaenelle plopped on air like a puppet with cut strings and glowered at the table, boxes, and balls.

Laughing, Saetan righted the table. "Never mind, witch-child. If you could do it perfectly on the first try, you wouldn't have much fun practicing, would you?"

"That's true," Jaenelle said with bouncing enthusiasm.

Luthvian vanished the boxes and balls, trying not to laugh at Saetan's immediate dismay. What did he think the girl would do? Try to manipulate an entire roomful of furniture?

Apparently so, because they were involved in a friendly argument about which room Jaenelle could use for practice.

"Definitely not the reception rooms," Saetan said. He sounded like a man who was desperately trying to believe the bog beneath his feet was firm ground. "There are empty rooms in the Hall and there's plenty of old furniture in the attics. Start with that. Please?"

Saetan saying please?

Jaenelle gave him a look of exasperated amusement. "All right. But only so you won't get into trouble with Beale and Helene."

Saetan let out a heartfelt sigh.

Jaenelle laughed and turned to Luthvian. "Thank you, Luthvian."

"You're welcome," Luthvian said weakly. Were all the lessons going to be like this? She wasn't sure how she felt about that. "We'll have your next lesson in two days," she added as they left the workroom.

Jaenelle wandered down the hall and studied the paintings. Was she really interested in the art or did she simply understand the adult need for private conversation after dealing with her?

"Can you survive it?" Saetan asked quietly.

Luthvian leaned toward him. "Is it always like this?"

"Oh, no," Saetan said dryly. "She was on her best behavior today. It's usually much worse."

Luthvian stifled a laugh. It was fun seeing him thrown off stride. He seemed so accessible, so ...

The laughter died. He wasn't accessible. He was the High Lord, the Prince of the Darkness. And he had no heart.

Roxie came out of the student workroom. Luthvian wasn't sure what the girl had done to her dress, but there was a lot more cleavage showing than there'd been a short while ago.

Roxie looked at Saetan and licked her upper lip.

Although he was trying to hide it, Luthvian felt his revulsion and the beginning of hot anger. A moment later, those feelings were swept away by a bone-chilling cold that couldn't possibly come from a male.

Not even him.

"Leave him alone," Jaenelle said, her eyes fixed on Roxie.

There was something too feral, too predatory about the way Jaenelle approached Roxie. And that cold was rising from depths Luthvian didn't even want to imagine.

"We have to go," Saetan said quickly, grabbing Jaenelle's arm as she began to glide past him.

Jaenelle bared her teeth and snarled at him. It wasn't a sound that could possibly come from a human throat.

Saetan froze.

Luthvian watched them, too frightened to move or speak. She had no idea what was passing between them, but she kept hoping he was strong enough to contain Jaenelle's anger—and knew with dreadful certainty that he wasn't. He wore the Black Jewels, and he didn't outrank his daughter. May the Darkness be merciful!

The cold was gone as suddenly as it appeared.

Saetan released Jaenelle's arm and watched her until the front door closed behind her. Then he sagged against the wall.

As a Healer, Luthvian knew she should help him, but she couldn't make her legs move. That's when it finally struck her that the girls hadn't reacted to the cold or the danger, that the buzzing voices were speculating on the outward drama without any understanding at all.

"She's rather spoiled," Roxie said, giving Saetan her best pout.

He glared at her so malevolently she shrank back into the workroom, stepping on the other girls who were crowded around the doorway.

"Finish your spells," Luthvian said. "I'll check them in a minute." She closed the workroom door and rested her head against it.

"I'm sorry," Saetan said. He sounded exhausted.

"You shielded the girls, didn't you?"

Saetan gave her a tired smile. "I tried to shield you, too, but she rose past me too fast."

"Better that you didn't." Luthvian pushed away from the door and smoothed her gown. "But you were right. It was better having the first lesson and knowing what it will be like to teach her before coming to terms with what she is."

She saw his golden eyes change.

"And what do you think she is, Luthvian?" he asked too softly.

Look beneath the skin.

She looked him in the eye. "Your daughter."

Saetan strolled along the edge of the wide dirt road. Jaenelle was a little ways ahead of him and didn't seem to be in any hurry, so he didn't feel a pressing need to catch up with her. Besides, it was better to let her calm down before asking her what he needed to ask, and, since she was a Queen, the land would soothe her faster than he could.

In that, she was like every other Queen he'd ever known. No matter what other talents they had, the Queens were the ones most drawn to the land, the ones who most needed that contact with the earth.

Even the ones who spent most of their time residing in larger cities had a garden where their feet could touch the living earth, quietly listening to all the land had to tell them.

So he strolled, relishing the ability once again to walk down a road on a summer morning and see the sun-kissed land. To his right was Doun's fenced-in common pastures, where all the villagers' cattle and horses grazed. To his left, just past the stone wall that surrounded Luthvian's lawn and gardens, was meadowland dotted with wildflowers. In the distance were stands of pine and spruce. Beyond them rose the mountains that ringed Ebon Rih.

Jaenelle stepped off the road and stopped, her back to all that was civilized, her sapphire eyes fixed on the wild. He approached her slowly, reluctant to disturb her meditation.

Nothing had happened at Luthvian's that could explain the intensity of Jaenelle's anger. Nothing had prepared him for that confrontation when she had turned on him, because part of her anger had been at him, and he still didn't know what he'd done to cause it.

She turned toward him, outwardly calm but still ready to fight.

Fight with a Queen when there's no other choice.Good, sound advice from the Steward of the first court he'd ever served in.

"What did you think of Luthvian?" Saetan asked as he offered Jaenelle his right arm.

Jaenelle studied him for a moment before linking arms with him. "She knows Craft." She wrinkled her nose and smiled. "I rather like her, even if she was a bit prickly today."

"Witch-child, Luthvian's always a bit prickly," Saetan said dryly.

"Ah. Especially with you?"

"We have a past." He waited for the inevitable questions, and became slightly uncomfortable when Jaenelle didn't ask any. Maybe past affairs weren't of interest to her. Or maybe she already had all the answers she required. "Why were you so angry with Roxie?"

"You're not a whore," Jaenelle snapped, pulling away from him.

Suddenly it seemed much darker, but when he looked up, the sky was just as blue as it had been a moment before and the clouds were still puffy and white. No, the storm gathering around him was standing a few feet away with her hands clenched and her feet spread in a fighting stance—and tears in her haunted eyes.

"No one said I was a whore," Saetan said quietly.

The tears spilled down Jaenelle's cheeks. "How could you let that bitch do that to you?" she screamed at him.

"Do what?" he snapped, failing to keep his frustration in check.

"How could you let her look at you like . . . force you . . ."

"force me?How in the name of Hell do you think that child could force me to do anything?"

"There are ways!"

"What ways? No one was ever stupid enough to try to force me even before I made the Offering, let alone since I began wearing the Black."

Jaenelle faltered.

"Listen to me, witch-child. Roxie is a young woman who's recently had her first sexual experience. Right now she thinks she owns the world and every male who looks at her will want to be her lover. In my younger years, I was a consort in a number of courts. I understand the game older, experienced men are expected to play. We're
supposed
to let girls practice on us because we have no interest in warming their beds. By our approval or disapproval, we help them understand how a man thinks and feels." He raked his fingers through his hair. "Although, I'll grant you, Roxie's a bit of a cunt."

Jaenelle scrubbed the tears from her face. "Then you didn't mind?"

Saetan sighed. "The truth? While listening to her giggling crudities, I was giving myself immense pleasure imagining what it would be like to hear her bones snapping."

"Oh."

"Come here, witch-child." He wrapped his arms around her, holding her tight while he rested his cheek on her head. "Who were you really angry for, Jaenelle? Who were you trying to protect?"

"I don't know. I sort of remember someone who had to submit to women like Roxie. It hurt him, and he hated it. It's not even a memory. More like a feeling because I can't recall who or where or why I would have known someone like that."

Which explained why she hadn't asked about Daemon. He was too entwined with the trauma that had cost her two years of her life, a trauma she'd locked away somewhere inside her. And all her memories of Daemon were locked away with it.

Saetan asked himself, again, if he shouldn't tell her what had happened. But he could only tell her a small part of it. He couldn't tell her who had raped her because he still didn't know. And he couldn't tell her what had happened between her and Daemon while they were in the abyss.

And the truth was he was afraid to tell her anything at all.

"Let's go home, witch-child," he whispered into her hair. "Let's go home and explore the attics."

Jaenelle laughed shakily. "How will we explain this' to Helene?"

Saetan groaned. "I'm supposed to own the Hall, you know. Besides, it's very large and has a lot of rooms. If we're lucky, it'll take her a while to figure it out."