THREE

Alert for anything or anyone who didn’t belong around his home, Daemon watched Jaenelle and Surreal hustle Beron and Haeze into the Hall, followed by Ladvarian. Just as he was about to go inside, he heard hooves and carriage wheels coming up the drive. He stopped and nodded to Beale, who closed the Hall’s front doors. Then he turned and waited for his visitor. Considering the hour, it didn’t surprise him when Rainier stepped out of the horse-drawn cab. What did surprise him was Lucivar’s sudden appearance on the landing web. He’d expected to see his brother, just not this soon.

*Give me a minute, Prick,* he said.

Lucivar stepped off the landing web but didn’t come closer.

“Report,” Daemon said quietly to Rainier.

“Sylvia’s court is furious,” Rainier replied. “Her Master and Steward had no reason to think any harm would come to their Queen. They had the impression that the guest rooms were already stuffed with people, which was why Lord Haeze’s family fumbled over having even one escort staying with Sylvia.”

“There were no other guests,” Daemon said.

“This was a trap set for Sylvia?” Rainier shook his head, as if answering his own question. “No. I was told the first invitation didn’t include her.”

“Unless she’s visiting close friends, a Queen usually travels with at least one escort,” Daemon said, “so Sylvia’s presence could have been inconvenient if she’d arrived with one or two of her First Circle in attendance.”

“According to the Steward, the second invitation was extended to Sylvia’s family as a family, not to a Queen and her sons. They gambled she would sympathize with another woman’s desire to reciprocate invitations without beggaring her own family.”

“Unfortunately, they gambled correctly.”

“Prince?”

He heard the alarm in Rainier’s voice, but chose to ignore the question under the word. “I brought Haeze back with us. The boy needs protection from whatever is wrong in that place. I’d like you to talk to him and find out everything you can about what’s been going on around his house and the village. You may have to circle around this, but I want to know why his younger brother wasn’t at home.”

“Done.” Rainier looked at the Hall, then at Lucivar, who was still waiting near the landing web. “Did Sylvia come back with you?”

“No,” Daemon said softly.

Rainier took a couple of slow, steady breaths. Then he approached the Hall’s doors, which opened before he could reach for the knocker. When the doors closed again, Lucivar walked up to Daemon.

“How bad?” Lucivar asked.

“Beron’s hurt, and at least half of his injuries were caused deliberately by the bitch Healer that family hired to take care of him. Jaenelle’s working on him, has been since we found him. She says he’ll be all right—and may the Darkness have mercy on that family if she can’t bring him all the way back to full health.”

“Mikal?”

“Sylvia told Tildee to run. We haven’t found her or Mikal yet.” Daemon blew out a breath and watched the white plume it made. “You’ve seen Sylvia?”

“Yes.”

“Has Father?”

Lucivar looked sad and grim. “Yes. She made the transition to demon-dead and reached the Keep before draining her Jewels completely. He poured a vial of Jaenelle’s blood down her throat.”

Daemon huffed out a pained laugh. “Well, that should give her temper plenty of scratch and kick.” The moment he said the word kick, he felt grief clog his throat. “I brought her legs. I wasn’t going to leave any part of her there. Now I’m not sure what to do with them.”

“Saetan wants to see you. He’s troubled by some cildru dyathe who have appeared in the Dark Realm recently. You can ask him what should be done.” Lucivar shifted his weight, rubbed his hands together.

“Do you want to go in?” Daemon asked.

“I figure you have a reason for standing out here in the cold.”

That simple. It usually was between him and Lucivar.

He blew out another breath just to watch it plume in the cold night air. “If you were Tildee, where would you run?”

“You already know the answer, old son.”

“I’d like confirmation that I’m thinking like a Sceltie.”

“All right. If she or Mikal are wounded, she would go to the closest Sceltie for help protecting the boy. If they got out before things turned ugly, there are four places I would look: here, their home, Manny’s cottage, and Tersa’s cottage. I would go to Tersa’s first. Mikal considers it his second home, and he’s her ‘Mikal boy.’ He’s family.”

“And Tersa is dangerous when it comes to family.”

“Yeah. Which is why I would go there to hide if I were a Sceltie running from danger with one of Tersa’s boys.” Lucivar remained silent for a minute. Then he huffed out a breath. “So are we going to go down and knock on her door, or wait until morning, or just stand here and freeze our balls?”

The Hall’s doors opened. Beale said, “Prince? The carriage will be around front in a minute.” He closed the doors.

Lucivar looked at Daemon. “Did you ask for a carriage to be brought around?”

“Apparently.”

“Did you think to ask for hot coffee and something to eat?”

Daemon said blandly, “We’ll have to find out.”

Surreal paced the corridor, guarding the guest rooms that held Beron and Haeze. At the midway point, she passed Ladvarian, who trotted in the opposite direction. At the end of the corridor, they both turned and resumed their patrol.

The restless pacing wasn’t necessary. She could have sat in one place and used a psychic probe to remain aware of everything and everyone in and around those rooms, but she needed to move.

All right, the truth was she wanted to go after the son of a whoring bitch who had hurt at least one boy she liked and a woman she considered a friend. She wanted to rip and tear and stab until the enemy was nothing more than a bloody pile of shit. Or find her prey and make the kill quietly, using one of those elegant death spells Sadi had taught her so many years ago.

So damn hard to pace and wait. Since he hadn’t been with them, Rainier would have better luck coaxing information out of Haeze, and her presence in the room would interfere with that. She was more than useless in Beron’s room while Jaenelle was working on the delicate healing needed to restore the boy’s vision, hearing, and voice.

Then Ladvarian froze. Surreal called in her favorite stiletto and stood still, listening.

*It’s Tildee,* Ladvarian said. *She is tired. Mikal is upset. They are with Tersa.*

*Sadi!* Surreal called. *Tildee and Mikal are with Tersa.*

*We’re almost at the cottage,* he replied.

*Any news about Sylvia?*

A hesitation. *She’s with the High Lord.*

He didn’t need to say more.

“The Mikal boy is upset,” Tersa said, blocking the stairs that led to the bedrooms. “The Sceltie is upset and says they must hide.”

Daemon wasn’t sure if she was asking for clarification or warning him not to push. He took her hands because sometimes physical contact helped her mind stay focused on the mundane world instead of wandering down a path in the Twisted Kingdom.

“Beron is injured, and Sylvia is dead,” he said gently. “I need to see Mikal to make sure he wasn’t harmed before Tildee got him away from that place.”

“Oh,” Tersa said softly. “He’s so young to lose his mother.”

I was younger when I was taken from you, Daemon thought as he drew her away from the stairs.

“Perhaps some warm milk?” Tersa looked at him, then at Lucivar.

“Do you need help making it?” Lucivar asked.

“No, I can warm milk.”

She walked down the hallway to the kitchen, leaving them to climb the stairs.

Mikal was in the “Mikal boy’s” bedroom, since he was Tersa’s most frequent guest. The covers were pulled out and rumpled, which Daemon found alarming, since it looked like a struggle had taken place. Then he saw part of Tildee’s head poking out from the covers at the bottom of the bed. She had done the rumpling to have a hiding place from which she could easily attack. And since Mikal was pressed against the headboard on the side of the bed farthest from the door and would draw a person’s eye first, an intruder moving toward the boy would put himself in a position to receive intimate damage from a pissed-off Sceltie with sharp teeth. Even if the intruder’s shield held against her Summer-sky, the clash of power would alert everyone nearby that there was trouble.

“Lady Tildee, please attend,” Lucivar said. “Prince Sadi needs to speak to Lord Mikal.”

Using the formal titles turned the request into a command.

Tildee wiggled out from under the covers and followed Lucivar downstairs.

Daemon sat on the edge of the bed near Mikal. “Are you hurt?” he asked quietly.

Mikal shook his head. Then he frowned and pushed up one sleeve. “Well, my arm hurts a little, but Tildee didn’t mean it. She grabbed me and said we had to run and hide. Mother said so. I wanted to find out why, but Tildee wouldn’t let go of my arm, so we left, and she wouldn’t stop, and it took a long time to ride the Winds, and then we were here, and Tildee told Tersa that something bad had happened, but she didn’t know what the bad thing was, only that we were supposed to hide.”

Daemon lightly brushed his fingertips over Mikal’s arm. The Sceltie hadn’t broken the skin, but she’d clamped down hard enough to leave bruises.

“Prince? Before Tildee caught the Winds and took us away from that house, I heard Beron yell. It sounded bad. Is he hurt?”

Daemon swallowed the lump in his throat. “Yes, he’s hurt. But Lady Angelline is doing the healing, and she’s taking good care of him.”

“Then who’s taking care of Mother? She wouldn’t have told Tildee to run unless something bad happened.”

He brushed back Mikal’s hair. The boy needed to have it cut soon. Who would remember the small things like that now? “I’m sorry, boyo. I am so sorry, but your mother is dead.”

Mikal was silent for so long, Daemon wondered if the words had been understood.

“Can’t the High Lord fix her so she can come back and live with us?” Mikal asked in a small voice. “She would have to sleep in the daytime, but that would be all right. I’d get my chores and schoolwork done before she woke up. I would.”

“It’s not that easy for someone who is demon-dead to be among the living.” Who was he to say such a thing to this child? Most of his family had been demon-dead and had lived at the Hall for years in order to be with Jaenelle. Saetan had not only been Sylvia’s lover; he’d been Mikal’s surrogate father.

“The High Lord could fix it,” Mikal insisted. There was hope and conviction in those words—and fear that it wouldn’t be true. “Can’t you ask him to fix it?”

Daemon’s eyes filled with tears. He pulled the boy close and hugged him, rocking them both for comfort. “I don’t know if he can fix this, Mikal. I don’t know if he can. But I’ll ask him. I promise that I’ll ask him.”

An hour later, Mikal and Tildee were snoring in a freshly made bed, and Daemon and Lucivar were in the carriage heading back to the Hall.

“You couldn’t have said anything else,” Lucivar told him. “Not to a boy who has rubbed elbows with our family as much as he has.”

“Sylvia is a Queen,” Daemon said wearily. “Letting a demon-dead Queen continue to rule would set a dangerous precedent, and it would be hard for her to remain anywhere near Halaway and watch another Queen rule her people—especially if she didn’t like some of the choices the new Queen made. Families and villages and Territories need to let go of the dead and move on—and the demon-dead need to let go of the living.”

“The boy doesn’t give a damn about Sylvia the Queen. Right now, he just wants the assurance that his mother will still be there to read him a story and tuck him in at night,” Lucivar said.

“I know that, Prick. I know.” Daemon pressed his fingertips against his temples and tried to ease some of the tension.

“Do you think Sylvia’s father will want the boys to live with him?” Lucivar asked.

“Maybe. What the boys want will have more weight than any adult.” A trickle of anger pushed aside the weariness. “But I’ll tell you who isn’t going to have the boys. Their sires.”

“I didn’t think either of them had been granted paternal rights—or wanted them.”

“They didn’t. But Mikal’s sire has come sniffing around a couple of times in recent months, expressing interest in his son and wanting to become acquainted.”

“Why?”