Heir to the Shadows

Page 24

No other sound.
Swearing under her breath, Surreal pushed the bathroom door open. Daemon just stood in the tub, his head down.
"Dry yourself," Surreal said.
Flinching, he reached for a towel.
Struggling to keep her voice firm but quiet, she added, "I put out some clean clothes for you. When you've dried off, go put them on."
She retreated to the kitchen and busied herself with cooking the steaks while listening to the movements in the bedroom. She was putting the meat on their plates when Daemon appeared, properly dressed.
Surreal smiled her approval. "Now you look more like yourself."
"Jaenelle is dead," he said, his voice hard and flat.
She braced her hands on the table and absorbed the words that were worse than a physical blow. "How do you know?"
"Lucivar told me."
How could Lucivar, who was in Pruul, be sure of something she and Daemon couldn't be sure of? And who was there to ask? Cassandra had never returned to the Altar after that night, and Surreal didn't know who the Priest was, let alone where to start looking for him.
She cut the potatoes and fluffed them open. "I don't believe him." She looked up in time to see a lucid, arrested look in his eyes. Then it faded. He shook his head.
"She's dead."
"Maybe he was wrong." She took two servings of salad from the bowl and dressed them before sitting down and cutting into her steak. "Eat."
He took his place at the table. "He wouldn't lie to me."
Surreal plopped soured cream onto Daemon's baked potato and gritted her teeth. "I didn't say he lied. I said maybe he was wrong."
Daemon closed his eyes. After a couple of minutes, he opened them and stared at the meal before him. "You fixed dinner."
Gone. Turned down another path in that shattered inner landscape.
"Yes, Daemon," Surreal said quietly, willing herself not to cry. "I fixed dinner. So let's eat it while it's hot."
He helped her with the dishes.
As they worked, Surreal realized Daemon's madness was confined to emotions, to people, to that single tragedy he couldn't face. It was as if Titian had never died, as if Surreal hadn't spent three years whoring in back alleys before Daemon found her again and arranged for a proper education in a Red Moon house. He thought she was still a child, and he continued to fret about Titian's absence. But when she mentioned a book she was reading, he made a dry observation about her eclectic taste and proceeded to tell her about other books that might be of interest. It was the same with music, with art. They posed no threat to him, had no time frame, weren't part of the nightmare of Jaenelle bleeding on that Dark Altar.
Still, it was a strain to pretend to be a young girl, to pretend she didn't see the uncertainty and torment in his golden eyes. It was still early in the evening when she suggested they get some sleep.
She settled into bed with a sigh. Maybe Daemon was as relieved to be away from her as she was from him. On some level he knew she wasn't a child. Just as he knew she'd been with him at Cassandra's Altar.
Mist. Blood. So much blood. Shattered crystal chalices.
You are my instrument.
Words He. Blood doesn't.
She walks among thecildru dyathe.
Maybe he was wrong.
He turned round and round.
Maybe he was wrong.
The mist opened, revealing a narrow path heading upward. He stared at it and shuddered. The path was lined with jagged rock that pointed sideways and down like great stone teeth. Anyone going down the path would brush against the smooth downward sides. Anyone going up ...
He started to climb, leaving a little more of himself on each hungry point. A quarter of the way up, he finally noticed the sound, the roar of fast water. He looked up to see it burst over the high cliff above the path, come rushing toward him.
Not water. Blood. So much blood.
No room to turn. He scrambled backward, but the red flood caught him, smashed him against the stone words that had battered his mind for so long. Tumbling and lost, he caught a glimpse of calm land rising above the flood. He fought his way to that one small island of safety, grabbed at the long, sharp grass, and hauled himself up onto the crumbling ground. Shuddering, he held on to the island ofmaybe.
When the rush and roar finally stopped, he found himself lying on a tiny, phallic-shaped island in the middle of a vast sea of blood.
Even before she was fully awake, Surreal called in her stiletto.
A soft, stealthy sound.
She slipped out of bed and opened her door a crack, listening.
Nothing.
Maybe it was only Daemon groping in the bathroom.
Gray, predawn light filled the short hallway. Keeping close to the wall, Surreal inspected the other rooms.
The bathroom was empty. So was Daemon's bedroom.
Swearing softly, Surreal examined his room. The bed looked like it had been through a storm, but the rest of the room was untouched. The only clothes missing were the ones she'd given him last night.
Nothing missing from the living area. Nothing missing— damn it!—from the kitchen.
Surreal vanished the stiletto before putting the kettle on for tea.
Tersa used to vanish for days, months, sometimes years before showing up at one of these hideaways. Surreal had intended to move on soon, but what if Daemon returned in a few days and found her gone? Would he remember her as a child and worry? Would he try to find her?
She made the tea and some toast. Taking them into the front room, she curled up on the couch with one of the thick novels she'd bought.
She would wait a few weeks before deciding. There was no hurry. There were plenty of men like the ones who had used Briarwood that she could hunt in this part of Terreille.
10 / Kaeleer
Stubbornly ignoring the steady stream of servants flowing past his study door toward the front rooms, Saetan reached for the next report. They were only halfway up the drive. It would be another
quarter hour before the carriage pulled up to the steps. What had Mephis been thinking of when he'd decided to use the landing web at Halaway instead of the one a few yards from the Hall's front door?
Grinding his teeth, he flipped through the report, seeing nothing.
He was the Warlord Prince of Dhemlan, the High Lord of Hell. He should set an example, should act with dignity.
He dropped the report on his desk and left his study.
Screw dignity.
He crossed his arms and leaned against the wall at a point that was midway between his study and the front door. From there he could comfortably watch everything without being stepped on. Maybe.
Fighting to keep a straight face, Saetan listened to Beale accept one implausible excuse after another for why this footman or that maid just had to be in the great hall at that moment.
Intent on their busy chaos and excuses, no one noticed the front door open until a very rumpled Mephis said, "Beale, could you—Never mind, the footmen are already here. There are some packages—"
Mephis glared at the footmen scrambling out the door before he spotted Saetan. Weaving his way through the maids, Mephis walked over to Saetan, braced himself against the wall, and sighed wearily. "She'll be here in a minute. She pounced on Tarl as soon as the carriage stopped to consult him on the state of her garden."
"Lucky Tarl," Saetan murmured. When Mephis snorted, he studied his rumpled son. "A difficult trip?"
Mephis snorted again. "I never realized one young girl could turn an entire city upside down in just five days." He puffed his cheeks. "Fortunately, I'll only have to help with the paperwork. The negotiations will fall squarely into your lap . . . where they belong."
Saetan's eyebrow snapped up. "What negotiations? Mephis, what—"
A few footmen returned, carrying Jaenelle's luggage. The others . . .
Saetan watched with growing interest as smiling footmen
brought in armloads of brown-paper packages and headed for the labyrinth of corridors that would eventually take them to Jaenelle's suite.
"They aren't what you think," Mephis grumbled.
Since Mephis knew he'd been hoping Jaenelle would buy more clothes, Saetan growled in disappointment. Sylvia's idea of appropriate girl clothes hadn't included a single dress, and the only concession she and Jaenelle had made to his insistence that everyone at the Hall dress for dinner wasone long black skirt and two blouses. When he had pointed out—and very reasonably, too—that trousers, shirts, and long sweaters weren't exactly feminine, Sylvia had given him a scalding lecture, the gist of it being that whatever a woman enjoyed wearing was feminine and anything she didn't enjoy wearing wasn't, and if he was too stubborn and old-fashioned to understand that, he could go soak his head in a bucket of cold water. He hadn't quite forgiven her yet for saying they would have to look hard to find a bucket big enough to fit his head into, but he admired the sass behind the remark.
Then Jaenelle bounded through the open door, dazzling Beale and the rest of the staff with a smile before politely asking Helene if she could have a sandwich and a glass of fruit juice sent to her suite.
She looks happy,Saetan thought, forgetting about everything else.
After Helene hurried off to the kitchen and Beale herded the remaining staff back to their duties, Saetan pushed away from the wall, opened his arms . . . and fought the sudden nausea as Menzar's fantasies and memories flooded his mind. He cringed at the thought of touching Jaenelle, of somehow dirtying the warmth and high spirits that flowed from her. He started to lower his arms, but she walked into them, gave him a rib-squeezing hug, and said, "Hello, Papa."
He held her tightly, breathing in her physical scent as well as the dark psychic scent he'd missed so keenly during the last few days.
For a moment, that dark scent became swift and penetrating.
But when she leaned back to look at him, her sapphire eyes told him nothing. He shivered with apprehension.
Jaenelle kissed his cheek. "I'm going to unpack. Mephis needs to talk." She turned to Mephis, who was still leaning wearily against the wall. "Thank you, Mephis. I had a grand time, and I'm sorry I caused you so much trouble."