Queen of the Darkness (54 page)

He looked up. ”Would you have been as convincing?”

She bristled, insulted. ”You’re damn right I would have been.”

”Well, we’re going to have a chance to find out. You said you wanted to help, Surreal. That you were willing to be a diversion.”

She
had
said that, but she’d thought she would have known
when
she was being a diversion. ”So?”

”So now you will be.” He approached her, held up a small gold hoop. ”Listen carefully. This will produce the illusion that you’re broken.” He slipped the hoop through one of the links of the necklace that held her Gray Jewel. ”No one will be able to detect that you’re still wearing the Gray unless you use it. If you
do
need to use it, then don’t hesitate. I’ll figure out some way to deal with things here.”

”The High Lord will know I’m not broken.”

Daemon shook his head as he turned back to search for something else in the box. ”You’d have to wear Jewels darker than the Black to be able to detect that spell.”

Darker than the
Black?
Sadi couldn’t make a spell like that. Which meant...

Mother Night.

”This”—Daemon held up a tiny crystal vial before attaching it to the necklace—”will convince anyone who thinks to check that you’re not only fertile but you’re now pregnant. A Healer would be able to tell within twenty-four hours,” he added, answering her unspoken question.

Lifting the necklace, Surreal studied the vial. ”You asked Jaenelle to create an illusion that I was pregnant with your child?”

She saw his face tighten.

Yes, he had asked Jaenelle. And it had hurt him to ask.

Looking to change the subject, she pointed to the balls of clay. ”What are those?”

”The raw spells to create shadows.”

Shadows. Illusions that could be made to fool someone into believing the person in front of them was real.

”Marian and Daemonar,” she said weakly, staring at the two empty nests of paper.

”Yes,” he replied sharply.

She hissed at him. ”You didn’t trust me, a
whore,
to put on a good show, but you figured
Lucivar
would be convin—” Her voice trailed away. ”He doesn’t know, does he?”

”No,” Daemon said quietly, ”he doesn’t know.”

Her legs weakened so abruptly, she sat on the floor. ”Hell’s fire, Mother Night, and may the Darkness be merciful.”

”I know.” Daemon hesitated. ”I’m buying time, Surreal. I have got to buy enough time and still get everyone out of here. In order to make Dorothea and Hekatah believe Marian and Daemonar were dead, Lucivar had to believe it.”

”Mother Night.” Surreal rested her forehead on her knees. ”What’s worth paying a price like this?”

”My Queen needs the time in order to save Kaeleer.”

”Oh, shit, Sadi.” She looked up at him. ”Tell me something. Even though you knew it was an illusion, how did you keep your stomach down afterward?”

He swallowed hard. ”I didn’t.”

”You’re mad,” she muttered as she climbed to her feet.

”I serve,” he said sharply.

Sometimes, for a male, it amounted to the same thing.

”All right,” she said as she hooked her hair behind her pointed ears. ”What do you need me to do?”

He hesitated, then started to hedge. ”It’s dangerous.”

”Daemon,” she said patiently, ”what do you need?” When he still didn’t answer, she took a guess. ”You want me to wander around the camp whimpering and looking like a woman who’s been raped out of her mind and is now terrified of what will happen to her if she miscarries the child that was produced from that rape. Right?”

”Yes,” he said faintly.

”And then what?”

”Marian and Daemonar are at that shack. Slip out of camp tomorrow night, pick them up, and then go to the Keep. Don’t stop, don’t go anywhere else. Get to the Keep. You’ll have to ride the Red Wind.

The darker ones are unstable.”

”Un—Never mind, I don’t want to know about that.” She thought everything through carefully. Yes, she could play this out. A woman that broken would spend a lot of time hiding, so letting people get glimpses of her throughout the day would be enough—and would hide the fact that she had disappeared.

Daemon reached for one of the balls of clay.

”What’s that for?” Surreal asked.

”You would have fought for as long as you could,” Daemon said, not looking at her. ”You would look like you’d fought. After I create the illusion, you can carry this and—”

”No.” Surreal shrugged out of her jacket and started unbuttoning her shirt. ”You can’t play all of this out with illusions. Not if you want to convince Dorothea and Hekatah long enough to buy the time Jaenelle needs.”

His eyes turned hard yellow. ”I’ll give up a great deal for this, Surreal, but I’m
not
going to break my vow of fidelity.”

”I know,” she replied quietly. ”That’s not what I meant.”

”Then what
did
you mean?” Daemon snapped.

She took a deep breath to steady herself. ”You have to make the bruises real.”

4 / Kaeleer

Calling in the bowl, Ladvarian placed it carefully on the chamber floor and watched the Arachnian Queen delicately touch the little bubbles now filled with blood and memories.

Is good,the spider said with approval.
Good memories. Strong memories. As strong as kindred.

Ladvarian looked at the bowl that sat in front of the huge tangled web. There were still a lot of the kindred’s gifts left in the bowl. It wasn’t a fast thing the Weaver was doing.

You must rest,the spider said as she selected a bubble from the humans’ offerings and floated up to a thread in the web.
All kindred must rest. Must be strong when the time comes to anchor the
dream to flesh.

Will you have enough time to add all the memories?Ladvarian asked respectfully.

The Weaver of Dreams didn’t reply for a long time. Then,
Enough. Just enough.

5 / Terreille

The whimpering wasn’t all feigned.

But, Hell’s fire, Surreal thought as she wandered aimlessly around the camp, she hadn’t expected to have to goad Daemon quite
that
much before he finally got down to business. And she’d understood that the anger behind his teeth and hands was because he’d had to touch a woman besides Jaenelle in a few intimate places. But, shit, he didn’t have to bite her breast quite
that
hard.

On the other hand, he had chosen his marks very carefully. Judging by the look in people’s eyes when they saw her, the bruises were impressive, but none of them impeded movement or would freeze a muscle if she had to fight.

The hardest part had been seeing the hatred in Saetan’s eyes. She’d wanted to tell him. Oh, how she’d wanted to say something, anything, to get that look out of his eyes. And she might have if Daemon hadn’t chosen that moment to glide by and make a devastatingly cutting remark. After that, throughout the rest of the morning, she had avoided the High Lord—and she hadn’t dared get anywhere near Lucivar.

But she had made sure that Dorothea had seen her. She’d felt the bitch trying to probe her to find out if she was really broken and really pregnant. Apparently the illusion spells had held up because Dorothea gently suggested that she lie down for a while and rest. The bitch was almost drooling over the idea of being able to get her hands on
any
child sired by Sadi.

She’d go back and hide for a little while, wait until sunset, then put in an appearance so that Hekatah could sniff around her. Then all she had to do was slip past the sentries and the perimeter markers, pick up Marian and Daemonar, and get them home. That was all she...
Shit.

She hadn’t been paying attention to exactly where she was going—and now found herself staring right into Lucivar’s eyes.

He had spent the morning watching her whenever she appeared. It was a good act, but it was just a little off. Not that anyone else would have noticed. Oh, he was sure Dorothea and Hekatah and plenty of the guards had seen broken witches, but he doubted any of them had ever paid any attention to those women after the breaking. He, on the other hand, had taken care of a few of them in a number of courts.

He hadn’t been able to stop the breaking, but he’d taken care of them afterward. And they all had one thing in common: the first day or two after they were broken, they were cold. They huddled up in shawls and blankets, stayed close to any source of heat that was available to them.

But there was Surreal, wandering through the camp, wearing nothing over a shirt that seemed torn in all the right places to display some impressive bruises. And that made him think about a lot of things.

”You should put on a jacket, sweetheart,” he said gently.

”Jacket?” Surreal said feebly while her hands tried to cover some of the rips in the shirt.

”A jacket. You’re cold.”

”Oh. No I’m—”

”Cold.”

She shivered then, but it wasn’t from cold, it was from nerves.

”You don’t have to carry that bastard’s child,” Lucivar said quietly. ”You can abort it. A broken witch still has that much power. And once you’re barren, there’s no reason for anyone to look in your direction.”

”I can’t,” Surreal said fearfully. ”I can’t. He would be so mad at me and...” She looked at the spot where Marian and Daemonar had died.

He wondered if he was wrong, if her mind really
was
so torn apart she didn’t quite feel the cold yet. If
that
was true, then he understood the fear in her voice now. She was afraid the Sadist would do the same thing to her that he had done to Marian and Daemonar.

But what he saw in her eyes when she looked at him again wasn’t fear, it was hot frustration.

The blood in his veins, which had felt so sluggish since he had crawled back to the post two nights ago, raged through him once again.

”Surreal...” He saw Daemon appear on the other side of the circle of bare ground a moment before she did.

With an almost-convincing cry, Surreal ran off.

Lucivar stared at Daemon. From across the distance, Daemon returned the stare.

”You bastard,” Lucivar whispered. Daemon wouldn’t have heard the words, but it didn’t matter. Sadi would know what had been said.

Daemon walked away.

Lucivar leaned his head back against the post and closed his eyes.

If Surreal wasn’t broken, if this was all a game, then Marian and Daemonar...

He should have remembered that about the Sadist. He, better than anyone else there, knew how vicious Daemon could be, but the Sadist had
never
harmed an innocent, had never hurt a child.

He had been waiting for the signal, but the game had begun before Daemon had walked into the camp.

Still, he had played his part well—and would continue to do so.

Because understanding and forgiving were two very different things.

6 / Terreille

Drifting in a pain-hazed doze, Saetan felt the cup against his lips. The first swallow he took out of reflex, the second out of greed. As the taste of fresh blood filled his mouth, the Black power in it flowed through him, offering strength.

Hold on,a deep voice whispered in his mind.
You have to hold on. Please.

He heard the weariness in that voice. He heard a son’s plea to a father, and he responded. Being the man he was, he couldn’t do otherwise. So he pushed his way through the haze of pain.

When he opened his eyes, all he saw was waning daylight, and he wondered if he’d just dreamed the plea he’d heard in Daemon’s voice.

But he could still taste the dark, rich, fresh blood.

Closing his eyes again, he let his mind drift.

He was standing in an enormous cavern somewhere in the heart of Ebon Askavi. Etched in the floor was a huge web lined with silver. In the center where all the tether lines met was an iridescent Jewel the size of his hand, a Jewel that blended the colors of all the other Jewels. At the end of each tether line was an iridescent Jewel chip the size of his thumbnail.

He had been in this place once before, on the night when he had linked with Daemon in order to draw Jaenelle back to her body.

But there was something else in the cavern now.

Stretching across that silver web on the floor were three massive, connected tangled webs that rose from about a foot from the floor to almost twice his height. In the center of each web was an Ebony Jewel.

Witch stood in front of those webs, wearing that black spidersilk gown, holding the scepter that held two Ebony Jewels and the spiral horn Kaetien had gifted her with when he’d been killed five years ago.

Behind the webs were dozens of demon-dead. One of them approached the webs, smiled, then faded.

At the moment the person faded, a little star the same color as the person’s Jewel bloomed on the middle web.

Puzzled, he moved to get a better look at the tangled webs.

The first one repulsed him. The threads looked swollen, moldy, tainted. At the end of every single tether line of that web was an Ebony Jewel chip.

The middle one was beautiful, filled with thousands of those little colored stars and a sprinkling of Black and Ebony Jewel chips.

The last one was a simple web, perfect in its symmetry, made of gray, ebon-gray, and black threads. It, too, had Black and Ebony Jewel chips that had been carefully placed on the threads to form a spiral.

He glanced at Witch, but she was focused on the task, so he shifted again to watch.

He saw Char, the leader of the cildru dyathe, approach the webs. The boy grinned at him, waved a jaunty good-bye, and faded to become another bright star.

Titian approached him, kissed his cheek. ”I’m proud to have known you, High Lord.” She walked over to the webs and faded.

As he watched her, something nagged at him. Something about the structure of those webs. But before he could figure it out, Dujae, the artist who had given the coven drawing lessons, approached him.

”Thank you, High Lord,” the huge man said. ”Thank you for allowing me to know the Ladies. All the portraits I have done of them are at the Hall in Kaeleer now. My gift to you.”

”Thank you, Dujae,” he replied, puzzled.