She who had once been the last Queen of the dragons, the ancient race that had created the Blood so long ago, took a step toward him. “A Conssort cannot entertain a wife in thiss room.”

At least, not a wife who wasn’t also his Queen. “I’m aware of that.” He looked around the room. “I need this, Draca. It’s the only place I can be who I am. Everything I am. It’s the only place where I can stand at the full measure of my strength and not frighten people who don’t deserve to be frightened by what I am.”

She didn’t ask who now feared him that he wanted to protect. Maybe she already knew. Maybe she’d always known this day would come, and that was the reason she had kept the Consort’s suite ready for him.

“Very well. Would you like ssomething to eat?”

“Not right now. I’d like to be alone for a while.”

Draca walked out of the room. The door closed behind her.

He removed his black jacket and hung it over the clothes stand before exploring the room. Nothing in the closet or the chest of drawers except . . . He smiled when he opened the bottom drawer and saw all the pieces that made up the game called cradle. He should purchase the original game, not this labyrinthine version Jaenelle and the coven had devised—and, all right, he’d added a few layers and rules of his own to the damn thing over the years—and teach Jaenelle Saetien how to play.

Would he have the chance to teach her how to play?

Crack.

Flinching at the pain scraping the inside of his skull, Daemon closed the drawer. Checking the bathroom, he found new bars of soap and fresh towels. Then he approached the door that connected the Consort’s suite with the Queen’s suite. He turned the handle, half expecting it to be locked. But the door opened for him, as it had for seventy years.

He could smell her in this room. Jaenelle Angelline. His wife. His life. His Queen. Oh, the physical scent was gone after so many years, but her psychic scent still filled the room—a room that, like his, looked ready to receive the living myth, as if she were traveling through Kaeleer and would be back any day now.

Tears stung his eyes. He had set aside the misery of living without Jaenelle, had focused on ruling Dhemlan and Hell, had made the commitment to be a good husband to Surreal and a good father to Jaenelle Saetien. He had leashed everything he was as tightly as he could, had done everything he could to protect and please Surreal during these past few months while he battled the debilitating headaches and tried to understand why she had turned away from him in every way except for sex. Now he knew why. She truly believed she’d been bedding the Sadist. Her inability to tell the difference meant she couldn’t accept what he was, despite how many years they had known each other and the years they had already spent together. Her words had sliced him deeper than any knife, and that pain had reopened the wound of missing the love of his life, and he didn’t know how to heal that wound a second time.

He didn’t want to heal it a second time. He wanted to bleed from that wound. Bleed and bleed until he was hollow, until he was nothing more than intellect and power. Until Daemon Sadi disappeared and there was only the High Lord of Hell—and the Sadist.

Maybe someone at the Keep could help, Lucivar had said.

Who could help a man who wore Black Jewels?

Removing his shoes, Daemon stretched out on the bed he had shared with Jaenelle most of the nights they had stayed at the Keep. Bunching a pillow under his head, he squeezed his eyes shut, denying the tears, while his heart pounded, pounded, pounded, and his breathing became more pained and shallow.

Maybe he could sink into a dream of being with his Queen and never wake, leaving the body behind.

Except there was still the child. His daughter. She would need him to teach her and protect her for many years to come. He couldn’t walk away from his daughter even if his wife saw him as a monster.

“Jaenelle,” he whispered. “If any part of you is still here, please help me. Please . . .”

The headache pounded, pounded, pounded like a hammer breaking bone—or breaking a crystal chalice. His heart clenched—another kind of pain.

The tears fell, and he couldn’t say if he wept for himself or wept for his father, who had also worn the cold, glorious Black, had also been thought a monster by some, and had also felt the same terrible loneliness.

CRACK!

 

* * *

 

* * *

The bed felt cold and hard enough to pull him out of sleep.

Rolling to his side, Daemon struggled to sit up. Then he looked around.

It had been a long time since he’d seen the Misty Place, even in dreams.

And there, drumming her claws against the stone altar, stood Witch. The living myth, although no longer among the living. This form was the Self that had lived within the flesh, the Self that had been shaped by the dreams of so many of Kaeleer’s races.

The joy of seeing her was almost as sharp as pain.

“Jaenelle,” he whispered. “Jaenelle.”

He couldn’t interpret the look in her sapphire eyes before she returned her attention to something on the altar.

“Hell’s fire, Daemon,” she said, shaking her head and sounding perplexed. “I can guess how you did this, but what I don’t understand is why.”

“Did what?” Grabbing one end of the altar, he pulled himself to his feet—and wondered if he’d be able to stay upright.

Witch pointed to the crystal chalice. He recognized it as the representation of his own mind. It had shattered twice and been repaired—by Witch. He could see the mends, the veins of power that held the pieces together. But the chalice had many new cracks; it even had a small hole in the bottom that was oozing . . . something.

Four leashes were looped around four posts. Three were simple leather. One was leather and chain. The last time he’d seen these images in another dream, the leash that kept his sexual heat under control . . .

He couldn’t see the loop beneath the hardened pus and rot.

“I didn’t do this,” he said, looking away from the damage.

“No one else could have done this to you. The pain must have been hideous. If someone else had tried to do this, you would have fought back long before you reached this point.”

He stared at the posts, at the damaged chalice. “The headaches.”

“Clearly a warning you didn’t heed.”

The snarl under her words gave him a weird kind of comfort. “I went to Healers. More than one. None of them could find a reason for the headaches.”

“That was the reason!” She pointed to the post encased in hardened pus and rot. “You tried to leash the sexual heat tighter than your current maturity could tolerate. You’re a man in your prime, Daemon. You were never going to succeed in choking the heat back to a less mature stage of your life, but you gave it a damn good try and this is the result.”