Heir to the Shadows

Page 26

Saetan closed his eyes, fought to stop the images.
"He hurt you."
His body reacted to the midnight, sepulchral voice, to the instant chill in the room. "I was the one performing the execution, Lady. He's the one who is very, very dead."
The room got colder. The silence was more than silence.
"Did he suffer?" she asked too softly.
Mist. Darkness streaked with lightning. The edge of the abyss was very close and the ground was swiftly crumbling beneath his feet.
"Yes, he suffered."
She considered his answer. "Not enough," she finally said, getting to her feet.
Numbed, Saetan stared at the hand stretched toward him. Not enough? What had her Chaillot relatives done to her that she had no regrets about killing? Even he regretted taking a life.
"Come with me, Saetan." She watched him with her ancient, haunted eyes, waiting for him to turn away from her.
Never. He grasped her hand, letting her pull him to his feet. He would never turn away from her.
But he couldn't deny the shiver down his spine as he followed her to the music room that was on the same floor as their suites. He couldn't deny the instinctive wariness when he saw that the only light in the room came from two freestanding candelabras on either side of the piano. Candles, not candlelights. Light that danced with every current of air, making the room look alien, sensual, and forbidding. The candles lit the piano keys and the music stand. The rest of the room belonged to the night.
Jaenelle called in a brown-paper package, opened it, and leafed through the music. "I found a lot of this tucked into back bins without any kind of preservation spell on them to protect them." She shook her head, annoyed, then handed him a sheet of music. "Can you play this?"
Saetan sat on the piano bench and opened the music. The paper was yellowed and fragile, the notation faded. Straining to see it in the flickering candlelight, he silently went through the piece, his fingers barely touching the keys. "I think I can get through it well enough."
Jaenelle stood behind one candelabra, becoming part of the shadows.
He played the introduction and stopped. Strange music. Unfamiliar and yet. ... He began again.
Her voice rose, a molten sound. It soared, dove, spiraled around the notes he was playing and his soul soared, dove, spiraled with her voice. A Song of Sorrow, Death, and Healing. In the Old Tongue. A song of grieving . . . for both victims of an execution. Strange music. Soul-searing, heart-tearing, ancient, ancient music.
Witch song. No, more than that. The songs of Witch.
He didn't know when he stopped playing, when his shaking hands could no longer find the keys, when the tears blinded him. He was caught in that voice as it lanced the memory of the execution and left a clean-bleeding wound— and then healed that.
Mephis, you were right.
"Saetan?"
Saetan blinked away the tears and took a shuddering breath. "I'm sorry, witch-child. I ... I wasn't prepared."
Jaenelle opened her arms.
He stumbled around the piano, aching for her clean, loving embrace. Menzar was a fresh scar on his soul, one that would be with him forever, like so many others, but he no longer feared to hold her, no longer doubted the kind of love he felt for her.
He stroked her hair for a long time before gathering his courage to ask, "How did you know about this music?"
She pressed her face deeper into his shoulder. Finally she whispered, "It's part of what I am."
He felt the beginning of an inward retreat, a protective distancing between himself and her.
No, my Queen. You say "It's part of what I am" with conviction, but your retreat screams your doubt of acceptance. That I will not permit.
He gently rapped her nose. "Do you know what else you are?"
"What?"
"A very tired little witch."
She started to laugh and had to stifle a yawn. "Since daylight is so draining for Mephis, we did most of our wandering after sunset, but I didn't want to waste the daytime sleeping, so . . ." She yawned again.
"Youdid get some sleep, didn't you?"
"Mephis made me take naps," she grumbled. "He said it was the only way he'd get any rest. I didn't think demons needed to rest."
It was better not to answer that.
She was half-asleep by the time he guided her to her room. As he removed her shoes and socks, she assured him she was still awake enough to get ready for bed by herself and he didn't need to fuss. She was sound asleep before he reached her bedroom door.
He, on the other hand, was wide-awake and restless.
Letting himself out one of the Hall's back doors, Saetan wandered across the carefully trimmed lawn, down a short flight of wide stone steps, and followed the paths into the wilder gardens. Leaves whispered in the light breeze. A rabbit hopped across the path a body length in front of him, watchful but not terribly concerned.
"You should be more wary, fluffball," Saetan said softly. "You or some other member of your family has been eating Mrs. Beale's young beans. If you cross her path, you're going to end up the main dish one of these nights."
The rabbit swiveled its ears before disappearing under a fire bush.
Saetan brushed his fingers against the orange-red leaves. The fire bush was full of swollen buds almost ready to bloom. Soon it would be covered with yellow flowers, like flames rising above hot embers.
He took a deep breath and let it out in a sigh. There was still a desk full of paperwork waiting for him.
Comfortably protected from the cool summer night, his hands warm in the sweater's deep pockets, Saetan strolled back to the Hall. Just as he was climbing the stone steps below the lawn, he stopped, listened.
Beyond the wild gardens was the north woods.
He shook his head and resumed walking. "Damn dog."
Chapter five
1 / Kaeleer
Luthvian studied her reflection. The new dress hugged her trim figure but still didn't look deliberately provocative. Maybe letting her hair flow down her back looked too youthful. Maybe she should have done something about that white streak that made her look older.
Well, shewas youthful, a little over 2,200 years old. And that white streak had been there since she was a small child, a reminder of her father's fists. Besides, Saetan would know if she tried to conceal it, and she certainly wasn't dressing up forhim. She just wanted that daughter of his to recognize the caliber of witch who had agreed to train her.
With a last nervous glance at her dress, Luthvian went downstairs.
He was punctual, as usual.
Roxie pulled the door open at the first knock.
Luthvian wasn't sure if Roxie's alacrity was curiosity about the daughter or her desire to prove to the other girls that she had the skill to flirt with a dark-Jeweled Warlord Prince. Either way, it saved Luthvian from opening the door herself.
The daughter was a very satisfying surprise. She hadn't realized Saetan had adopted his little darling, but there wasn't a drop of Hayllian blood in the girl—and there was certainly none of his. Immature and lacking in social skills, Luthvian decided as she watched the brief greetings at the door. So what had possessed Saetan to give the girl his protection and care?
Then the girl turned toward Luthvian and smiled shyly, but the smile didn't reach those sapphire eyes. And there was no shyness in those eyes. They were filled with wariness and suppressed anger.
"Lady Luthvian," Saetan said as he approached her, "this is my daughter, Jaenelle Angelline."
"Sister," Jaenelle said, extending both hands in formal greeting.
Luthvian didn't like this assumption of equality, but she'd straighten that out privately, away from Saetan's protective presence. For now she returned the greeting and turned to Saetan. "Make yourself comfortable, High Lord." She tipped her chin toward the parlor.
"Perhaps you'd like a cup of tea, High Lord?" Roxie said, brushing against Saetan as she passed.
This wasn't the time or place to correct the ninny's ideas about Guardians, especiallythis Guardian, but it did surprise her when Saetan thanked Roxie for the offer and retreated into the parlor.
"You know," Roxie said, eyeing Jaenelle and smiling too brightly, "no one would ever believe you're the High Lord's daughter."
"Get the tea, Roxie," Luthvian snapped.
The girl flounced down the hall to the kitchen.
Jaenelle stared at the empty hallway. "Look beneath the skin," she whispered in a midnight voice.
Luthvian shivered. Even then she might have dismissed that sudden change in Jaenelle's voice as girlish theatrics if Saetan hadn't appeared at the parlor door, silently questioning and very tense.
Jaenelle smiled at him and shrugged.
Luthvian led her new pupil to her own workroom since Saetan had insisted the lessons be private. Maybe later, if the girl could catch up, she could do some of the lessons with the rest of the students.
"I understand we're to start with the very basics," Luthvian said, firmly closing the door.
"Yes," Jaenelle replied ruefully, fluffing her shoulder-
length hair. She wrinkled her nose and smiled. "Papa has managed to teach me a few things, but I still have trouble with basic Craft."
Was the girl simpleminded or just totally lacking hi ability?
Luthvian glanced at Jaenelle's neck, trying to detect a recent healing or a faint shadow of a bruise. If the girl was just fresh fodder, why bother training her at all? No, that made no sense, not ifhe was going to instruct Jaenelle in the Hourglass's Craft. Something was missing, something she didn't understand yet.
"Let's start with moving an object." Luthvian placed a red wooden ball on her empty worktable. "Point your finger at the ball."
Jaenelle groaned but obeyed.
Luthvian ignored the groan. Apparently Jaenelle was as much of a ninny as the rest of her students. "Imagine a stiff, thin thread coming out of your fingertip and attaching itself to the ball." Luthvian waited a moment. "Now imagine your strength running through the thread until it just touches the ball. Now imagine reeling in the thread so that the ball moves toward you."