Queen of the Darkness

"Damn you, just answer the question! Is she alive?"

"Lady Angelline? Yes, of course she's alive. Why do you ask? Didn't she arrive?"

"She arrived," Kartane snarled.

"I don't understand," Jorval said, almost wailing. "She's the best Healer in the Realm. If she—"

"SHE'S THE ONE WHO DID THIS TO ME!"

Jorval's shocked look was quickly replaced by a sly one. "I see. Please, come and join us. I can see you've had a distressing afternoon. Perhaps some food and company will help."

"Nothing will help until that bitch is made to heel," Kartane snapped, accepting a chair at the table and a quickly filled glass of wine. He glared at the other man, who continued to stare at him.

"Lord Kartane," Jorval said smoothly, "may I present Lord Hobart? He, too, has reasons to want to see Jaenelle Angelline subdued."

"Not just Jaenelle Angelline," Hobart growled.

"Oh?" Kartane said, pushing his anger aside as his interest in Hobart sharpened.

"Lord Hobart had controlled the Territory of Glacia for several years," Jorval said. "When his niece became the Territory Queen—"

"The ungrateful bitch EXILED me!" Hobart shouted.

"And you want to regain control," Kartane said, starting to lose interest.

Then Jorval added, "Lady Karla is a close friend of Jaenelle's."

Kartane randomly selected food from the dishes offered as he nibbled on that bit of information. There was nothing he would have liked better right then than to hurt a close friend of the bitch. "I may be able to help. My mother is the High Priestess of Hayll."

Not only didn't Hobart look sufficiently impressed, he looked distinctly uneasy. He cleared his throat. "It's a generous offer, Lord Kartane. A very generous offer, but..."

"But you're already receiving some assistance from the Dark Priestess," Kartane guessed. When Hobart paled, he crossed two fingers and held them up. "Perhaps you're not aware that my mother and the Dark Priestess are like that."

Hobart swallowed hard. Jorval merely drank his wine and watched them out of dark eyes filled with sly glee.

"I see," Hobart finally said. "In that case, your help is most welcome."

Chapter Nine

1 / Kaeleer

Andulvar settled into a chair in front of Saetan's blackwood desk. "Karla says you've been in here sulking for the past two hours, ever since you got a message from Lady Zhara."

Saetan gave his longtime friend his iciest stare. "I. Am. Not. Sulking."

"All right." Andulvar waited. "Then whatare you doing?"

Saetan leaned back in his chair. "Answer me this: if I were to run away from home, is there anywhere in any of the Realms I could go and not be found?"

Andulvar scratched his chin. "Well, if you wanted to hide from the Dhemlan Queens or the coven, there are quite a few places you could go to ground. If you wanted to hide from your male offspring, there are a few places in the Dark Realm that would take even Mephis a while to think of. But ifJaenelle was looking for you..."

"Which is precisely why I'm still sitting here." Saetan rubbed his forehead and sighed. "Zhara has summoned me to Amdarh to take care of a problem for her."

Andulvar frowned. "Lucivar's in Amdarh, isn't he? If Zhara needs help from a male stronger than the ones who serve in her court, why didn't she ask him?"

Saetan narrowed his golden eyes and let the words fall like precisely dropped stones. "Lucivar is in Amdarh with Jaenelle."

The silence thickened into a solid curtain.

"Ah," Andulvar finally said. "Well, Daemon—"

"Is in Amdarh with Lucivar and Jaenelle."

"Mother Night," Andulvar muttered, then added warily,

"What did Zhara say?" Saetan picked up the message and read in a funereal voice, " 'Your children are having a wonderful time. Come

and get them.' "

2 / Kaeleer

Daemon braced his head in his hands and closed his eyes.

"Mother Night," Lucivar said, enunciating very carefully.

"I've never been this drunk," Daemon moaned quietly.

Lucivar stared at him with bloodshot eyes. "Sure you have."

"Maybe a couple of times in the stupid phase of my youth, but not since I've worn the Black. My body burns it up too fast to get drunk."

"Not this time," Lucivar said, then added after a long, possibly thoughtful, pause, "I've been this drunk."

"Really? When?"

"Last time I went on a crawl with Jaenelle. Big mistake. Should have remembered it. Would have, too, if I'd been sober when Idid remember it."

After a minute's painful effort, Daemon gave up trying to decipher that comment and found something else to think about. "I've never been thrown out of a city before."

"Sure you have," Lucivar said in a hearty voice that made them both whimper.

Daemon shook his head and realized his error a bit too late. Even when he managed to stop, the room continued moving back and forth, and what was left of his brain sloshed noisily inside his skull. He swallowed carefully. "I've been thrown out of courts and wasn't allowed back into the city because that was the Queen's territory, but that's different."

"It’s all right," Lucivar said. "In a few weeks, Zhara will welcome you with open arms."

"She didn't seem like a foolish woman. Why would she do that?"

"Because we provide a restraining influence on Jaenelle."

"We do?"

They just stared at each other until the dining room door opened.

Daemon braced himself, absolutely certain that hearing the door slam would kill him.

"Mother Night," Surreal said, choking back laughter. "They're pathetic."

"Aren't they?" There was no laughter in Saetan's reply.

The soft footsteps approaching the table made the room vibrate.

"Please don't yell," Daemon whimpered.

"I wouldn't dream of yelling," Saetan replied in a voice that, nonetheless, rattled Daemon's bones. "There would be no point in yelling. You'd both be on the floor, insensible, after the first word. So I'll save the lecture until you're sober enough to listen to it, because I intend to deliver it with considerable volume. The only question I want answered right now is what in the name of Hell did you two pour down your throats to get in this condition?"

"Gravediggers," Lucivar mumbled.

"How many?" Saetan asked ominously.

Lucivar took a couple of careful breaths. "Not sure. Things got a bit blurry after the seventh one."

"After the—" Long pause. "Are either of you capable of walking to your rooms?"

"Sure," Lucivar said. It took him a couple of tries, but he got to his feet.

Not to be outdone, Daemon stood up, too—and regretted it.

"You take Lucivar," Saetan said to Surreal. "He isn't listing quite as much."

"That's because I didn't finish the drinks." Lucivar pointed at Daemon, tipped, and almost flattened Surreal against the table. "That's whyyou're so drunk. Itold you not to finish them."

Daemon tried to make a rude noise and ended up spitting on Saetan.

Without further comment, he was hauled out of the room and up a terrifyingly steep set of stairs. Once he reached his bed, he tried to lie down, but was hauled upright and undressed while his father's ire made the room pulse.

"Do you need a basin?" Saetan asked with no sympathy whatsoever.

"No," Daemon replied meekly.

Finally, he was allowed to lie down. The last thing he was aware of was Saetan's hand brushing his hair back in a gentle caress.

Surreal closed the door of Lucivar's room at the same moment Saetan stepped out of Daemon's room.

"I appreciate your assistance," Saetan said when they met at the top of the stairs.

Surreal grinned. "I wouldn't have missed this for anything."

They started down the stairs together. "You got Lucivar settled?"

"He snarled a lot and kept telling me to keep my hands off him since he's a married man. He didn't want to get undressed, but I pointed out that, since he was married, he should know better than to try to get into a bed wearing boots in that condition. While we wrestled with the boots, we pondered how that little fish got wedged under the laces."

Saetan stopped at the foot of the stairs. "Howdid it get under the laces?"

"He has no idea. So I gave the fish a proper burial at sea, so to speak, managed to convince Lucivar that stripping to the waist was not improper since I'm family, and let what was left of him fall into bed." Surreal looked around. "Say, aren't you going to tuck Jaenelle in?"

"At this moment," Saetan said dryly, "Jaenelle is in the kitchen, tucking into a very large breakfast."

"Oh, dear," Surreal said, then started to laugh.

3 / Kaeleer

Karla removed the ring from the jeweler's box and slipped it on the second finger of her right hand. It was a simple ring of yellow and white gold, with a small oval sapphire. A tasteful design, but nothing that would really catch the eye, yet feminine enough that no one would wonder about a woman wearing it. An everyday ring rather than flash and glitter. "It's perfect."

"I had asked Banard to have that one done first," Jaenelle said, "but he'd gotten all the rings for the coven done since the designs are simple." She paused, then added, "I also ordered rings made for Surreal and Wilhelmina. They'll be ready next week."

Karla nodded as she studied the ring. "How do I activate the shield inside it?"

"You would deliberately activate it through your Gray Jewel. Otherwise, it's keyed in the same way the boyos' Rings of Honor are and will respond to fear, rage, and pain caused by a serious wound. It's set for fairly intense emotions because, when it activates, everyone else within range who wears a Ring that's connected to this one is going to act as if it was a call to battle. Which it is."