She didn’t think she was supposed to feel these things. Which meant she had squandered Jaenelle Angelline’s last gift by waiting until it was too late.

 

* * *

 

* * *

Lucivar finished his monthly review with the Master of the Guard in Agio, the Blood village at the northern end of Ebon Rih. A fist of Eyriens who worked for him was assigned to help defend Agio and the landen villages and farms that were under the hand of Agio’s Queen, and he had no reason to doubt their loyalty or their willingness to stand and protect. But even the short-lived Rihlanders hadn’t forgotten the stories about the Eyriens who had given their allegiance to Prince Falonar, Lucivar’s former second-in-command, and who hadn’t given any assistance to Agio’s guards when the Jhinka had attacked. So he sat with the Master of the Guard once a month and listened to what was said—and what wasn’t said.

“Sure you won’t join me for the midday meal?” the Master asked.

“I appreciate the offer, but I have other stops to make,” Lucivar replied.

“Well, then, I’ll see you—” The Master’s eyes narrowed.

Turning, Lucivar watched Rothvar fly toward them. Flying fast.

Rothvar backwinged hard and landed a man-length away, gave Agio’s Master a curt nod as he approached them, then focused on Lucivar. “Anything else that needs doing here, I’ll do it. You need to go home.”

The tone, so close to a command, grated against Lucivar’s temper—and he wondered if Rothvar was starting to turn against him, like Falonar had done.

“I still need—,” Lucivar began.

Rothvar gripped Lucivar’s arm hard, a fast move that had Agio’s Master calling in a fighting knife.

“Lucivar,” Rothvar said with quiet intensity. “You need to go home. Now.”

Lucivar read the concern, the sympathy in Rothvar’s eyes—and felt chilled.

٭Marian,٭ he called. ٭Marian!٭ An Ebon-gray communication thread could reach far beyond the borders of Ebon Rih, but that didn’t help him reach a hearth witch who didn’t answer.

“Nurian?” he asked Rothvar.

“She’s already at your eyrie. She sent me to find you.”

He understood the message. Rothvar could have reached him on a Green psychic thread, could have told him to come home. But a Healer had sent a Warlord to find the Warlord Prince he served and deliver the message in person. That told Lucivar more than the words themselves.

“Go,” Rothvar said.

Lucivar launched himself skyward, caught the Red Wind, which was the darkest Web within easy reach, and flew toward home and the woman who held his heart.

 

* * *

 

* * *

Jillian walked with baby Andulvar from one end of the front room to the other. Back and forth. Back and forth. The playroom or the family room would have been more comfortable—certainly warmer—but she needed to keep an eye on the other children while Nurian tried to heal Marian, and Daemonar wouldn’t budge from the eyrie’s front room. He just stood there, tears running down his face as he stared at the door, waiting for his father. And Titian clung to her elder brother. So no one was going anywhere until Lucivar returned or Marian . . .

She didn’t know what had happened to Marian. Daemonar had shown up at Nurian’s eyrie in a panic, saying the baby was crying and his mother wouldn’t wake up. While Nurian rushed to Marian’s side the moment they arrived, Jillian had been left to deal with a baby, a frightened girl, and an anguished Warlord Prince who had taken a long step away from being a boy.

As the minutes crawled by, Jillian watched Daemonar Yaslana age and harden, understood that this moment was one of the forges that would shape the steel and hone the blade of the man he would become.

As he met her eyes, she also understood that he would never again back down from a fight. Any kind of fight.

 

* * *

 

* * *

Lucivar entered the eyrie with a blast of controlled temper and cold air.

“Papa!” Daemonar took a step toward him.

Lucivar glanced at the boy and kept going, heading deeper into the eyrie. “Give me a minute, boyo. Then we’ll talk.”

He stopped at the doorway of Marian’s workroom and took a moment to leash his temper, his fear, his everything. If Nurian was performing a healing, his power could overwhelm her efforts and destroy a healing web. And that might make the difference in whether Marian survived.

He entered the room carefully. So carefully.

Nurian knelt beside the daybed. She waited until he, too, knelt at his wife’s side.

“I don’t know,” Nurian said. “It’s like she’s fallen into a deep healing sleep, but it doesn’t feel like any kind of healing sleep I could create. It’s more—and it’s powerful.”

“An attack of some kind?” he asked.

“I don’t think so.”

“Can you break it?” Lucivar watched Marian breathe. He wrapped his fingers around her wrist and felt the slow beat of her heart. Too slow?

Nurian shook her head. “Right now there’s a chance she’ll come out of this on her own. I just don’t know what would happen if I interfered with this . . . living death.” She sucked in a breath. “My apologies, Prince. That wasn’t what I meant to say.”

Wasn’t what you meant to say out loud, but it was what you meant, what your Healer’s instincts are telling you.

“Is there anything you need from me?” he asked. “Fresh blood for a healing brew?”

Nurian shook her head again. “Maybe when she wakes, but not right now.”

“Then I’ll see what I can do for the children.”

He left the room as quietly and carefully as he had entered it, but he didn’t go to the front of the eyrie, where Daemonar waited. Instead he went to the bedroom he had shared with Marian since the first time they’d made love. He closed the door and locked it.

Then he gathered everything in him and sent it on an Ebon-gray spear thread to the one person he needed right now.

٭Daemon! Daemon!٭ A hesitation before he admitted who might really be needed. ٭High Lord. Please.٭

 

* * *

 

* * *

Looking at Morghann’s hopeful expression and wagging tail, Daemon regretted that he hadn’t used Craft to fetch the novel he’d intended to read for a few minutes before he returned to the stack of reports, post-Winsol social invitations, and a smattering of requests and complaints that were couched as backhanded compliments—not to mention deciding what he wanted to do about a few personal, and highly inappropriate, invitations. But he’d wanted to move instead of using Craft, wanted to stretch his legs by walking up to his suite in the family wing of the Hall.