“It was just a nutcake,” Jaenelle Saetien whispered.

“Was it? Then why aren’t the Scelties here with you?”

The girl didn’t answer.

Surreal nodded, guessing a bit more of what must have happened. “I used to say your papa had a firm no and a soft no when it came to something you wanted to do or have. After today, I think you’re going to find him drawing a harder line, and no matter how pleasantly he says it, from now on, no will mean no, and disobeying him will have consequences.”

She gave her daughter a kiss on the forehead and headed for the door to let the girl sulk for a while. Then she went to her own suite and locked the doors so that no one would walk in on her while she paced and wondered if the life she’d built around being Daemon’s wife and the mother of his child was breaking apart around her.

 

* * *

 

* * *

٭Prick.٭

The pained whisper on a Red spear thread had Lucivar calling in his Eyrien war blade as he strode out of his home and tried to pinpoint his brother’s location. ٭Bastard?٭

٭Here.٭

He spotted Daemon coming up the stone stairs from the landing area below the eyrie—saw his brother sway.

Vanishing the war blade, Lucivar rushed down the remaining stairs and grabbed Daemon before the man could lose his balance and take a hard fall down the stairs—or even fall off the damn mountain. Securing one of Daemon’s arms around his shoulders, he wrapped his arm around his brother’s waist, closed his fingers around the thin leather belt, and half carried Sadi up to the eyrie.

٭Nurian!٭ The command, sent out on a general psychic thread, thundered over the valley. ٭To my eyrie, now!٭

“What in the name of Hell is wrong with you?” he muttered as they reached the flagstone courtyard in front of his home. Marian stood in the doorway. She met his eyes, nodded, and disappeared into the eyrie.

“Headache,” Daemon whispered.

“Try again, old son.”

“Fine,” Daemon snapped, sounding a bit more like himself. “It’s a wicked bitch of a headache.”

Sadi hadn’t been anywhere in Ebon Rih until he arrived a minute ago, so that begged the question of why he’d made the journey here instead of staying put until the headache had eased.

And the answer was he’d been someplace where he couldn’t afford to be vulnerable.

One thing at a time.

٭Stay out, boyo,٭ Lucivar said when he hauled Daemon into the eyrie and saw his elder son standing in the doorway leading to the shielded yard. If Daemon was suffering from something more than a headache, he wanted the boy out of the way of any . . . unpleasantness.

Marian had the covers of the bed in the primary guest room pulled down. She also had a basin full of water and a cloth on the wide window ledge, and an empty basin floating on air near the bed.

٭Papa? Nurian is here,٭ Daemonar said.

٭Tell her to come back to the guest room. And you stay in the front of the eyrie and keep your sister with you.٭

٭What’s wrong with Uncle Daemon?٭

٭Don’t know yet.٭

Ignoring his brother’s grumbling, Lucivar stripped off Daemon’s black jacket and white silk shirt, then pushed him down on the bed so that Marian could remove the shoes and socks.

“What . . . ?” Nurian stopped on the threshold, her dark, membranous wings folding tight to her body.

“Prince Sadi says he has a headache,” Lucivar said.

“I do have a headache,” Daemon growled.

“Well, let’s take a look.” After a moment’s hesitation, Nurian entered the room, all brisk efficiency—as if being in the same room with the two most powerful men in Kaeleer when one of them was in pain wasn’t the least bit dangerous. “Let’s sit him on that padded bench. It’ll be easier for me to get a good look at everything.”

Nurian and Marian moved the bench from under the window to a spot in the room that allowed Nurian full access to her patient.

“Come on.” Lucivar wrapped a hand around Daemon’s arm and hauled him to his feet.

“You son of a—,” Daemon began.

“I love you too, Bastard. Now sit on the bench before I knock you down.”

What he saw in Daemon’s pain-glazed gold eyes scared him to the bone—which was why he gave his brother the lazy, arrogant smile that always promised trouble.

After settling Daemon on the bench, he and Marian left the room and walked to the end of the corridor.

“Was he in a fight?” Marian whispered.

“Don’t think so,” Lucivar replied, keeping his voice low. “But something is wrong.” Had been wrong for a while now.

“I have some soup I made the other day for tender tummies. I’ll heat some up. Nurian might want him to have some nourishment to help fuel her healing brew.”

After Marian headed for the kitchen, Lucivar walked back to the guest room and stood in the corridor, out of sight.

His brother was damaged. Lucivar had known that on some instinctive level from the first time they had met again as youths, neither remembering the childhood years before they’d been taken from their father. Whatever pain and torment he’d endured being a half-breed bastard in the Eyrien hunting camps where he had been trained to fight, it was nothing compared with what Dorothea SaDiablo must have done to Daemon, taking him into her bed while he was still a boy and training him to be a pleasure slave whose service she had sold to the Queens who curried her favor.

Whatever had been done to Daemon during those early decades of his life had shaped and twisted the side of him that became known as the Sadist. Using the sexual heat as an inescapable lure that could seduce anyone, regardless of preference, the Sadist wove pain and pleasure together in a way that broke down his enemies piece by piece. Broke down the mind. Broke down the body. Merciless. Relentless. A raging, brilliant cruelty that lived inside a beautiful face and well-toned body.

He had danced with the Sadist, had been used by the Sadist. Had hated his brother because of those games. But he’d known—on some level he had always known—that the Sadist had shown restraint, had retained a sliver of mercy when they had danced, had tortured him in order to protect him. Had, in fact, loved him.

Surreal thought she had dealt with the Sadist during the times when Daemon’s temper turned cold, but she’d seen only a glimpse, had only brushed against that side of Daemon’s nature. No one who truly danced with the Sadist in all his raging glory survived.

With one exception.

The Sadist had been in love with Witch, and she had looked at the truth of all that Daemon Sadi was without fear. On the rare occasions when the Sadist had played the lover with Witch, Daemon and Jaenelle Angelline had looked exhausted and dazed for a day or so afterward—and content to just be together, quietly cuddling.