Queen of the Darkness (32 page)

”Don’t cross that line again, Alexandra,” Saetan warned.

Hearing the edge in his voice, she hunched to make herself smaller. She could grit her teeth and hold her tongue because she had no choice, but she couldn’t stop thinking about that creature. It had lived in her house. She shuddered.
Every year at Winsol, we dance for the glory of Witch. Every year, we
celebrate
that.

She didn’t realize she had spoken out loud until the room turned to ice. ”I want to go home,” she said in a small voice. ”Can you arrange that?”

”It would be my pleasure,” Saetan crooned.

4 / Kaeleer

Daemon stared with intense dislike at the blackwood hourglass floating outside Jaenelle’s door. When he’d noticed it the first time he’d tried to check on Jaenelle, Ladvarian, the Sceltie Warlord, had explained what it meant. So he had accepted Ladvarian’s offer to act as guide and had done a little exploring of the Keep. Returning an hour later, he’d discovered that the hourglass had been turned, the sand trickling into the base to mark another hour of solitude. This was the third time the sand had almost run out, and
this
time he was going to be waiting at the door when the last grain of sand dropped.

”You are impatient?” asked a sibilant voice.

Daemon turned toward Draca, the Keep’s Seneschal. When they had first arrived at the Keep, Lucivar had given him a cryptic warning:
Draca is a dragon in human form.
The moment he’d seen the Seneschal, he’d understood what Lucivar meant. Her looks, combined with the feel of great age and old, deep power, had fascinated him.

”I’m worried,” he replied, meeting the dark eyes that stared right through him. ”She shouldn’t be alone right now.”

”Yet you sstand outsside the door.”

Daemon gave the floating hourglass a killing look.

Draca made a sound that might have been muted laughter. ”Are you alwayss sso obedient?”

”Almost never,” Daemon muttered—and then remembered who he was talking to.

But Draca nodded, as if pleased to have something confirmed. ”It iss wisse for maless to know when to yield and obey. But the Conssort iss permitted to bend many ruless.”

Daemon considered the words carefully. It was hard to catch inflections in that sibilant voice, but he thought he understood her. ”You know more of the finer points of Protocol than I do,” he said, watching her closely. ”I appreciate the instruction.”

Her face didn’t alter, but he would have sworn she smiled at him. As she turned away, she added, ”The glasss iss almosst empty.”

His hand was on the doorknob, quietly turning it as the last grains of sand trickled into the hourglass’s base. As he opened the door, he saw the hourglass turning to declare another hour of solitude. He slipped quickly into the room and closed the door behind him.

Jaenelle stood by a window, looking out at the night, still dressed in the black gown. As a man, that gown appealed to him in every way a woman’s garment could, and he hoped she didn’t just wear it for formal occasions.

He stepped away from those thoughts. Not only were they useless tonight, they teased his body into wanting to respond to her in a way that wouldn’t be acceptable.

”Are they gone?” Jaenelle asked quietly, still staring out the window.

Daemon studied her, trying to decide if it was meant as small talk or if she had withdrawn so deep within herself she really didn’t know. ”They’re gone.” He moved toward her slowly, cautiously, until he was only a few feet away and at an angle where he could see her profile.

”It was the appropriate punishment,” Jaenelle said as another tear rolled down her face. ”It’s the appropriate punishment when one Queen violates another’s court to do harm.”

”You could have asked one of us to do it,” Daemon said quietly.

Jaenelle shook her head. ”I’m the Queen. It was mine to do.”

Not if you’re going to eat your heart out because of it.

”There’s a traditional way to break one of the Blood, to strip away the power without doing any other harm. It’s quick and clean.” She hesitated. ”I took her deep into the abyss.”

”You took her to the misty place?”

”No,” Jaenelle said too sharply, too quickly. ”That’s a special place. I didn’t want it tainted—” She bit her lip.

He didn’t want to examine the relief he felt at knowing Alexandra hadn’t fouled the misty place with her presence.

As he continued to study her, it struck him with the force of a blow: she hadn’t withdrawn so far into herself because she grieved over having to break another witch; she had withdrawn in order to deal with some kind of personal pain.

”Sweetheart,” he said quietly, ”what’s wrong? Please tell me. Let me help.”

When she turned to look at him, he didn’t see a grown woman or a Queen or Witch. He saw a child in agony.

”Leland... Leland cared, I think, but I never expected much from her. Philip cared, but there was nothing he could really do. Alexandra was the m-mother in the family. She was the one who had the strength.

She was the one we all wanted to please. And I could never please her, could never be... I loved all of them—Leland and Alexandra and Philip and Wilhelmina.” Jaenelle’s breathing hitched on a suppressed sob. ”I loved
her
—and she s-said I was m-monstrous.”

Daemon just stared at her, the sudden rage that engulfed him making it impossible to speak for a moment. ”The bitch said
what
?”

Startled by the venom in his voice, she gave him a clear-eyed look before she crumbled again. ”She said I was monstrous.”

He could almost see all the deep childhood scars reopening, bleeding. This was the final rejection, the final pain. The child had defied that rejection, had tried to justify the sparse love given only with conditions placed on it. The child had tried to justify being sent to that horror, Briarwood. But the child was no longer a child, and the agony of having to face a bitter truth was ripping her apart.

He also realized that, faced with this emotional battering, she was now clinging to the one solid wall of her childhood: Saetan’s love and acceptance.

Well, he could give her another wall to cling to. He opened his arms enough to invite but not enough to demand. ”Come here,” he said softly. ”Come to me.”

It broke his heart the way she crept toward him without looking at him, the way her body was braced for rejection.

His arms closed around her, comforting and protecting.

”She was a good Queen, wasn’t she?” Jaenelle asked in a pleading voice a few minutes later.

Daemon felt a stab of pain. At another time, the lie would have been easy enough to say, but not tonight.

Knowing he was going to rip away her last justification for Alexandra’s behavior, he gave her the truth as gently as he could. ”Compared to the other Queens in Terreille, she was a good Queen. Compared to any of the Queens I’ve met since I’ve been in Kaeleer... No, sweetheart, she was not a good Queen.”

Pain flowed with the tears as Jaenelle finally gave up the people she had once tried to love.

He held her, saying nothing. Just held her while he let all of his love surround her.

The door opened quietly. Ladvarian walked in, followed by Kaelas.

Daemon watched them, and wondered if they had decided on their own to defy the command for solitude or if they had equated his presence with permission to enter.

After a minute, the tip of Ladvarian’s tail waved once.
We will come back later.

They left as quietly as they had come.

1 / Kaeleer

Lord Magstrom nervously wandered around the room where the records from the service fair were stored. He’d only been home a couple of days and was still catching up on the official business of his own village. But Lord Jorval had urgently requested him to return to Little Terreille’s capital to discuss something of the ”utmost importance.”

He’d spent several days with his eldest granddaughter and her husband—days that had been filled with excitement and apprehension instead of the rest he so badly needed. His granddaughter was pregnant with her first child, and, though delighted, she was also quite ill. So he’d spent most of his time reassuring her husband that his granddaughter wouldn’t divorce a man she loved just because she couldn’t keep her breakfast down for a few weeks.

He shouldn’t have said ”a few weeks.” The younger man had looked ready to faint when he’d said that.

He
had
written a hurried letter to the High Lord about the discrepancies he had found in the service fair records but then had hesitated over sending it, wondering if his own exhaustion had made something sinister out of what was really just sloppy clerical work.

No matter. As soon as he was home again, he would write a more thoughtful, carefully worded letter, one that expressed concern rather than alarm.

He had just reached this decision when the door swung open and Lord Jorval entered the room.

”I’m glad you came, Magstrom,” Jorval said a little breathlessly. ”I wasn’t sure who else I could trust.

But anyone who’s worked with you knows you couldn’t be involved in
this.”

”And just what is ’this’?” Magstrom asked cautiously.

Jorval went to the shelves holding the records and pulled out a thick folder.

Magstrom’s stomach tightened. It was the Hayllian folder—the same one he had examined before his hasty departure from Goth.

Jorval’s hands trembled as he leafed through the papers, then put several on the large table. ”Look.

There are discrepancies in these lists.” Hurrying to the shelves, he pulled out several folders and dumped them on the table. ”And not only in the Hayllian lists. At first I thought it was a clerical error, but...”

Taking a sheet of paper from one of the folders, he pointed. ”Do you remember this man? He was most unsuitable to immigrate to Kaeleer.
Most
unsuitable.”

”I remember him,” Magstrom said faintly. A brute of a man whose psychic scent had made his skin crawl. ”He was accepted into a court?”

”Yes,” Jorval said grimly. ”This one.”

Magstrom squinted at the scrawled writing. The Queen’s name and the territory she ruled were almost illegible. The only thing he could definitely make out was that the territory was in Little Terreille. ”Who is this... Hektek?”

”I don’t know. There is no Queen named Hektek who rules so much as a village in Little Terreille. But thirty Terreilleans were accepted into this alleged court.
Thirty.”

”Then where are these people going?”

Jorval hesitated. ”I think someone is secretly creating an army right under our noses, using the service fair to cover the tracks.”

Magstrom swallowed hard. ”Do you know who?” he asked, half expecting Jorval to accuse the High Lord— which was ridiculous.

”I think so,” Jorval replied, an odd glitter appearing in his eyes. ”If what I suspect is true, the Territory Queens in Kaeleer must be warned immediately. That’s why I asked you to come. I’m to meet someone tonight who claims to have information about the people missing from the lists. I wanted another member of the Council to come with me as a witness to confirm what was said. I wanted you because, if we
are
in danger, the High Lord will listen to you.”

That decided Magstrom. ”Since there may be some risk in revealing this information, we shouldn’t keep this person waiting.”

”No,” Jorval replied, sounding queer, ”we shouldn’t.”

They found an available horse-drawn cab almost as soon as they left the building. A heavy silence filled the cab until, a few minutes later, it pulled up.

Magstrom stepped out, looked around, and felt a jagged-edged fear. They were at the edge of Goth’s slums, not a place for the unwary—or for an older man at any time.

”I know,” Jorval said hurriedly as he took Magstrom’s arm and began leading him through narrow, dirty streets. ”It seems an unlikely meeting place, but I think that’s why it was chosen. Even if someone recognized us, they would think they were mistaken.”

Breathing heavily, Magstrom struggled to keep up with Jorval. He could feel eyes watching them from shadowed doorways—and he could sense the flickers of power coming from the ones who watched.

There were many reasons why a dark-Jeweled male could end up in a place like this.

Finally, they slipped into the back door of a large building and silently climbed the stairs. At a second floor door, Jorval fumbled with a key, then stepped aside to allow Magstrom to enter the suite.

The furnishings in the sitting room were secondhand and shabby. The room itself looked as if even minimal cleaning hadn’t been done in a long time. And it stank of decay.

”Something wrong?” Jorval asked in an oddly gleeful voice.

Magstrom moved toward the narrow windows. A little air might help relieve the smell. ”I think a mouse or a rat must have died behind the walls, so—”

Jorval made a queer sound—a sharp, high-pitched giggle—at the same time the bedroom door opened and a hooded figure stepped into the sitting room.

Magstrom turned—and couldn’t say a word.

Knucklebones peeked out of the split skin as brown hands pushed the hood back.

Magstrom stared at the hate-filled gold eyes in the ravaged, decaying face. She took a step toward him.

He took a step back. Then he took another... and another... until there was nowhere to go.

Jorval smiled at him. ”I thought it was time you met the Dark Priestess.”

2 / Kaeleer

”Is something wrong?” Daemon asked Saetan. He glanced at Lucivar, who was intently studying their father.

Saetan finally looked up from the sheet of paper lying in the middle of his desk. ”I received a letter from Lord Jorval, informing me that Lord Magstrom was brutally killed last night.”

Daemon let his breath out slowly while Lucivar swore. ”I met Magstrom briefly at the service fair. He seemed to be a decent man.”

”He was,” Saetan replied. ”And he was the only member of the Dark Council Jaenelle was willing to deal with.”

”How did he die?” Lucivar asked bluntly.

Saetan hesitated. ”He was found in an alleyway in the Goth slums. The body was so torn up that speculation is running wild that Magstrom was killed by kindred.”