Queen of the Darkness (58 page)

It was worse than he’d expected.

The coven and the boyos fell all over Lucivar, who had his arms wrapped around Marian and Daemonar. Daemon they greeted with cool reserve. Except Karla, who had said, ”Kiss kiss,” and then
had
kissed him. And Surreal, who had given Daemon a cool stare, and said, ”You look like shit, Sadi.”

He would have lashed out at her for that if Daemon hadn’t commented dryly that her compliments were as effusive as ever—and if she hadn’t grinned at the remark.

And Tersa, who had held her son’s face between her hands and looked into his eyes. ”It will be all right, Daemon,” she had said gently. ”Trust one who sees. It
will
be all right.”

Saetan wasn’t sure Daemon noticed the coolness, wasn’t sure he even noticed who had greeted him and who hadn’t. His eyes kept scanning the room for someone who wasn’t there—someone who wasn’t going to be there.

He was trying to think of a reasonable excuse to get Daemon away from the others when Geoffrey appeared at the door. ”Your presence is requested at the Dark Throne. Draca would like to see you.”

As they filed out of the room, Saetan stepped in beside Lucivar. ”Stay close to your brother,” he said quietly.

”I think it would be better—”

”Don’t think, Prince, just follow orders.”

Lucivar gave him a measuring look, then moved ahead to catch up with Daemon.

Surreal tucked her arm through his. ”Lucivar’s pissed?”

”That’s one way of putting it,” Saetan replied dryly.

”If you think it will help, I could give him a good kick in the balls. Although I have a feeling that when Marian realizes what he’s pissed about, she’ll do a better job than either of us can.”

Saetan let out a groaning chuckle. ”Now
that
will be interesting.” Then he sobered. ”Daemon played the same game with you.”

”Yes, he did. But sometimes the best way to fool an enemy is to convince a friend.”

”Your mother said almost the same thing to me once— after she punched me.”

”Really?” Surreal smiled. ”It must run in the family.”

He decided it was better not to ask her to clarify that.

Baffled, Daemon waited for whatever announcement Draca was going to make. Not that it mattered. He would have to slip away to Amdarh in the next few days, talk to that jeweler, Banard, about designing a wedding ring for Jaenelle. He’d gotten her some earrings there for Winsol and had liked what he’d seen of the man’s work.

Her birthday would be coming up soon. Would she mind having a wedding on her birthday? Well, maybe
he
would. He didn’t really want to share the celebration of their wedding day with anything else.

But they could have it soon after that. She would still be tired, still be recovering from this spell, but they could find a quiet place for the honeymoon. It didn’t matter where.

Where was she? Maybe she was already in her room, recovering. Maybe that’s what Draca was going to tell them—that Jaenelle had prevented the war, that Kaeleer was safe. As soon as this announcement was over, he’d slip up to her room and snuggle in next to her. Well, he’d take a bath first. He wasn’t exactly smelling his best at the moment.

Where
was
she?

Then he looked at Lorn and felt a flicker of uneasiness.

No. They had saved her. The triangle
had
saved her. She’d expended so much of herself, had risen so far out of herself she’d been plummeting back down, but they had stopped the fall. They
had
stopped the fall.

Lucivar came up beside him, close enough to brush shoulders with him. Saetan stepped up on his other side with Surreal close by.

Draca picked something up from the Throne’s seat, hesitated, then turned to face them.

Daemon froze.

She was holding Jaenelle’s scepter. But the metal was all twisted, and the two Ebony Jewels were shattered. Not just drained.
Shattered.
So was the spiral horn.

”The Queen of Ebon Asskavi iss gone,” Draca said quietly. ”The Dark Court no longer existss.”

Someone began screaming. A scream full of panic, rage, denial, pain.

It wasn’t until Lucivar and Saetan grabbed him and held him back that he realized the person who was screaming was himself.

16 / Kaeleer

”What was the point of it?” Gabrielle demanded angrily while the tears fell unheeded. ”What was the point of offering the memories if they weren’t going to do any good?”

Surreal raked her fingers through her hair and decided smacking someone probably wasn’t going to help much. Well, it would make
her
feel better. Thank the Darkness she and Uncle Saetan had been able to heavily sedate Daemon. He couldn’t have tolerated any of this right now.

She would have liked to have found out more about this memory thing, but she was more intrigued by the fact that Tersa seemed too calm and undisturbed—and also a little angry. It would take someone mucking up something very important to make Tersa angry.

”Yes, Tersa,” Karla said testily, ”what
was
the point?”

”Blood is the memory’s river. And the Blood shall sing to the Blood,” Tersa replied.

Gabrielle said something succinct and obscene.

”Shut up, Gabrielle,” Surreal snapped.

Tersa was sitting on the long table in front of the couch, next to a pile of wooden building blocks. Surreal crouched down beside her. ”What were the memories for?” she asked quietly.

Tersa brushed her tangled hair away from her face. ”To feed the web of dreams. It was no longer complete. It had lived, it had grown.”

”But she’s gone!” Morghann wailed.

”The Queen is gone,” Tersa said with some heat. ”Is that all she was to you?”

”No,” Karla said. ”She was Jaenelle. That was enough.”

”Exactly,” Tersa said. ”It is still enough.”

Surreal jolted, hardly daring to hope. She touched Tersa’s hand, waited until she was sure she had the woman’s attention. ”The Queen is gone, but Jaenelle isn’t?”

Tersa hesitated. ”It’s too soon to know. But the triangle kept the dream from returning to the Darkness, and now the kindred are fighting to hold the dream to the flesh.”

That brought protests from Gabrielle and Karla.

”Wait a minute,” Gabrielle said, glancing at Karla, who nodded. ”If Jaenelle is hurt and needs a Healer, she should have
us.”

”No,” Tersa said, her anger breaking free. ”She should
not
have you.
You
could not look at what was done to that flesh and believe it could still live. But the kindred do not doubt.
The kindred will not
believe anything else.
That is why, if it can be done, they are the ones who can do it.” She jumped up and ran out of the room.

Surreal waited a moment, then followed. She didn’t find Tersa, but she found Graysfang hovering nearby, whining anxiously.

She studied the wolf. Kindred do not doubt. They would sink in and fight for that dream with fangs and claws and never give it up. Well, she would never have a snout that could smell tracks, but she could damn well learn how to be as stubborn as a wolf. She would sink her teeth into the belief that Jaenelle was simply recovering somewhere private after performing an extremely difficult spell. She would sink in and hold on to that.

For Jaenelle’s sake.

For Daemon’s sake.

And for her own sake, because she wanted her friend to come back.

1 / Kaeleer

Daemon walked down the steps that led to the garden in the Hall, the garden that had two statues.

When he woke up from the sedative Surreal and Saetan had given him, he had asked to leave the Keep.

They had gone with him. So had Tersa.

Lucivar hadn’t.

That had been a week ago.

He wasn’t sure what he’d done during the days since. They had simply passed. And at night...

At night, he crept from his own bed into Jaenelle’s because it was the only place he could sleep. Her scent was there, and in the dark, he could almost believe that she was simply away for a little while, that he would wake one morning and find her cuddled up next to him.

He stared at the statue of the male, with its paw/hand curved protectively above the sleeping woman.

Part human, part beast. Savagery protecting beauty. But now he saw something else in its eyes: the anguish, the price that sometimes had to be paid.

He turned away from it, walked over to the other statue, stared at the woman’s face—that familiar, beloved face— for a long, long time.

The tears came—again. The pain was always there.

”Tersa keeps telling me that it will be all right, to trust one who sees,” he told the statue. ”Surreal keeps telling me not to give up, that the kindred will be able to bring you back. And I want to believe that. I
need
to believe that. But when I ask Tersa about you directly, she hesitates, says it’s too soon to know, says the kindred are fighting to hold the dream to the flesh.
Fighting
to hold the dream to the flesh.” He laughed bitterly. ”They’re not fighting to hold the dream to flesh, Jaenelle. They’re fighting to put enough of you together again for there to be something
for the dream to come back to.
And you knew what would happen, didn’t you? When you decided to do this,
you knew.”

He paced, circled, came back to the statue.

”I did it for you,” he said quietly. ”I bought the time, I played the game. For you.” His breathing hitched, came out in a sob. ”I knew I would have to do some things that wouldn’t be forgiven. I
knew
it when you asked me to go to Hayll, but I did it anyway. F-for you. Because I was going to come back to you, and the rest of it wouldn’t matter. B-because I was coming back to
you.
But you sent me there knowing you wouldn’t be here when I got back, knowing...” He sank to his knees. ”You said no sacrifices. You made me promise I wouldn’t make any sacrifices. But what do you call this, Jaenelle?
What do you call this?

When I got back, we were going to get
m-married....
And you left me. Damn you, Jaenelle, I did this for you,
and you left me.
You left me.”

He collapsed on the grass near the statue, sobbing.

Lucivar rested a fist against the stone wall and bowed his head.

Mother Night. Daemon had gone into that game expecting to come back for his own wedding.
Mother
Night.

He was here because Marian had ripped into him that morning, giving him the full thrust of the temper that lived beneath her quiet nature. She’d told him that, yes, he’d been hurt, but he’d been hurt
to save
them.
She’d asked him if he would have preferred losing a wife or son in truth in order for his feelings to be spared. And she’d told him that the man she had married would have the courage to forgive.

That had brought him here.

But now...

When they’d both been slaves in Terreille, he and Daemon had played games before, had used each other, had hurt each other. Sometimes they’d done it to relieve their own pain, sometimes it had been for a better reason. But they’d always been able to look past those games and forgive the hurt
because there
had been no one else.
They’d fought with each other, but they’d also fought
for
each other.

He had other people now, a wider circle to love. A wife, a son. Maybe that had made the difference. He didn’t
need
Daemon. But, Hell’s fire, Daemon needed
him
right now.

But it was more than that. Thirteen years ago, he had wrongfully accused Daemon of killing Jaenelle.

That had been the first hard shove that had ended with Daemon spending eight years in the Twisted Kingdom, lost in madness. And Daemon had forgiven him because, he’d said, he’d already grieved for a brother once and didn’t want to do it again.

Daemon had believed a painful lie for thirteen years.
He’d
believed one for a couple of days. Marian had been right to rip into him.

So he would do what he could to mend things, for his own sake as well as for Daemon’s. Because, during those long centuries of slavery when they’d had no one but each other, their anger had sometimes flared to moments of hate, but underneath there had always been love.

Pushing away from the wall, Lucivar walked down the steps, knelt in the grass beside Daemon. He touched his brother’s shoulder.

Daemon looked at him out of a face devastated by grief before lunging into the open arms.

”I want her back,” Daemon cried. ”Oh, Lucivar,
I want her back.”

Lucivar held on tight as his own tears fell. ”I know, old son. I know.”

2 / Kaeleer

”You’re leaving!” Lucivar leaped to his feet and stared at Saetan. ”What do you mean, ’leaving’? To go where?” Pacing behind the two chairs in front of the blackwood desk, he pointed an accusing finger at his father. ”You are not going to the Dark Realm. There’s no one left there. And you are not going to be alone.”

”Lucivar,” Saetan said quietly. ”Lucivar, please listen.”

”When the sun shines in Hell.”

Prick,Daemon said on an Ebon-gray spear thread.

And why in the name of Hell are you just sitting there?Lucivar demanded.
He’s your father, too.

Daemon bit back exasperation.
Let him talk, Prick. If we don’t like what we hear, then we’ll do
something about it.
”You’re leaving because of Sylvia?” he asked Saetan.

Lucivar froze, swore softly, then settled back into the chair.

”That’s part of it,” Saetan said. ”A Guardian isn’t meant to be among the living. Not that way.” He hesitated, then added, ”If I stay... I can’t stay and be a friend and encourage her to... She deserves to be with someone who can give her more than I can now.”

”You could come to Ebon Rih and live with us,” Lucivar said.

”Thank you, Lucivar, but no. I’ve...” Saetan took a deep breath. ”I’ve been offered a position at the Keep as assistant historian/librarian. Geoffrey says he’s starting to feel his years, and it’s my fault that he’s had more work now than he’s ever had because I’m the one who introduced the coven to the Keep’s library, and it’s time I started making myself useful.”