Five bodies appeared in the hallway. Saetan used Craft to probe the bodies. He felt equally chilled by and approving of what Jaenelle had done. From neck to toes, the bones of the Eyrien males had been crushed into small pebbles, making the bodies look like oddly shaped sacks. The muscles and internal organs had been ripped apart, as if claws had slipped beneath the skin, leaving it untouched while they tore through everything else in long, leisurely strokes. Which, he imagined, is exactly what she’d done. And for the few seconds it took her to do it, the pain would have been exquisite . . .

He looked at the Eyrien woman.

... but not enough to pay the debt.

“This is what you saw in the tangled web last night?” he asked too softly.

“I saw emptiness where something bright and joyful should have been. I saw happiness wither like a plant that couldn’t find the right soil to take root in. And I saw the terrace where I was standing at dawn, but it was empty—a warning that my presence, or absence, would make the difference in what would come.”

“I see.” He looked at the bodies again. “Now I understand what kind of expertise you need from me.”

Jaenelle nodded. “Find out why this happened, High Lord . . . and settle the debt.”

“It will be a pleasure, Lady.”

He stepped back, watched her hurry into the room that held the Dark Altar and the Gate that would take her and the woman to Kaeleer.

He waited a few minutes, studying the bodies that flopped in unnatural positions. Then he raised his right hand. His Black-Jeweled ring flashed with the reservoir of power it held. The bodies rose from the floor and floated toward him. Turning, he walked back to the Dark Altar, lit the four black candles in the candelabra in the proper sequence, and walked through the misty Gate, the bodies floating behind him.

When he walked out of the Gate, he felt the difference between this Realm and the two Realms that belonged to the living. Hell was the land of the demon-dead Blood who still had too much power even after the body’s death to return to the Darkness. A cold, ever-twilight Realm. He’d begun ruling here while he still walked among the living. He’d been ruling the Dark Realm ever since.

Turning to look at the bodies floating behind him, he smiled a cold, cruel smile. He accepted that executions were sometimes necessary, and he performed them with exacting skill when duty required it of him. He’d never developed a taste for them, but he suspected finishing what Jaenelle had begun was truly going to be a pleasure.

Walking through the corridors of the Keep, he went to the closest landing web, caught the Black Wind, and took the five bodies with him to the Hall he’d built in this Realm. There, he would have everything he needed to make sure the debt owed to the Eyrien woman was paid in full.

The sun had set by the time Saetan returned to the Keep in Kaeleer and entered Jaenelle’s suite of rooms. She was on the couch in her sitting room, reading one of those romances that was as close as she was willing to get when it came to experiencing intimacy with a man. With Lucivar as her First Escort, she didn’t need a man just to fill the position of Consort, and when Daemon finally . . .

He wouldn’t allow himself to travel down that road. He would defend Jaenelle’s choice not to have a Consort—and he would hope that, with the right man, someday her interest in sex would go beyond the pages of a book.

Jaenelle closed the book and looked at him with sapphire eyes that still held a touch of feral rage. His daughter hadn’t come back yet. Not completely. He was still dealing with Witch—and his Queen—and he needed to tread carefully.

“How is the woman?” he asked quietly.

“Marian will be all right,” Jaenelle replied just as quietly.

Marian. Saetan tightened the chain on his temper. The bastards hadn’t known her name, hadn’t cared who she was. Finishing the kill shouldn’t have taken more than a few minutes for each of them. It was why they’d done it that had spurred him to prolong their suffering with a viciousness that wasn’t a side of himself that usually surfaced. But they had deserved everything he’d done after he helped them make the transition to demon-dead—and then proceeded to rip their minds apart before he drained what was left of their psychic power, finishing the kill so they could become a whisper in the Darkness.

“She lost a lot of blood,” Jaenelle continued, “but all the wounds were shallow. Her wings were sliced in several places, but they were easily repaired. A couple of days of bed rest and good food will rebuild her strength. There won’t be any permanent damage to her body.”

Yes, Jaenelle would make the distinction between body and heart. Her body had healed from the brutal rape that had almost destroyed her when she was twelve years old, but she carried the emotional scars . . . and always would.

“Have you eaten?” Saetan asked, noticing the decanter of yarbarah on the table in front of the couch.

When she gave him a wary smile, he knew his daughter was back.

“I was waiting for you.” Shifting her legs, Jaenelle poured a glass of yarbarah, warmed it over a tongue of witchfire, and offered it to him.

Accepting the glass, he sat on the couch, and tipped his head to read the title of the book between them. “Are you going to loan that to me when you’re done?”

“Why?”

Oh, yes. His daughter was back. “A father should be aware of his children’s interests.”

“Then why don’t you ask Lucivar what he’s reading?”

“Because Lucivar rarely picks up a book, let alone reads any of it. If he showed an interest in one, any comment from me would more than likely embarrass him into putting it down and not picking up another for at least a decade.”

“You could point out some of the stories have sex in them,” Jaenelle said.

A topic his son found even less interesting than his daughter did.

A quiet chime sounded. Moments later the small table on one side of the sitting room held a basket of fresh bread, a small bowl of whipped butter, and two steaming bowls of soup.

Grateful for the interruption, Saetan offered his hand and led Jaenelle to the table. As a Guardian, he really didn’t need more than yarbarah and a token amount of fresh blood once in a while, but he could eat and enjoy food again, thanks to the tonics Jaenelle made for him, and she’d eat more if someone joined her than she would alone.

She settled into her meal with a healthy appetite that relieved him—and enforced the decision not to tell her why Marian had been attacked by those five Eyrien males unless she specifically asked him.

They’d finished the soup and were halfway through the prime rib that followed before Jaenelle spoke again.

“I was thinking,” she said with enough hesitation to make him watch her sharply. “If Marian doesn’t want to return to Askavi in Terreille, she’ll need a place to stay. So I was thinking she could stay with Luthvian for a while. Help out a little with small hearth-Craft things while she regains her strength.”

“Why Luthvian?” Saetan asked, keeping his voice painfully neutral.

“She’s the only Eyrien female in Ebon Rih. She could help Marian adjust to living here. And she’s a Healer, so she could keep an eye on how well Marian is recovering.”

He focused his attention on his meal, biting back all the comments that were ready to spill out if he wasn’t careful. His relationship with Luthvian, who was Lucivar’s mother, was too tangled and adversarial, and any response he made would reflect that. But he understood why Jaenelle would think staying with another woman would be easier for Marian right now, and she could be right. So he offered no opinion.

“If it doesn’t work, I’ll find another place for her,” Jaenelle said.

“Then it’s settled.” He didn’t feel easy about it, but he let it go. For now. “In that case, witch-child, tell me about this book you’re reading.”

She evaded, he pursued, and they ended the evening with a delightful hour of haggling over the value of various kinds of stories that helped them both step back from the blood and the fury that had started the day.

FOUR

As twilight softly deepened into night, Marian stood behind Luthvian’s house, relishing a quiet moment with nothing to do. Her back was sore, and it worried her because Lady Angelline had been very insistent that she take things easy for a fortnight and not overwork muscles that still needed time to fully heal. But every time she mentioned feeling strain in her back or legs, Luthvian dismissed the concern and implied—when she didn’t say it outright—that Marian was just trying to get out of earning her keep. The criticism stung. Since arriving at Luthvian’s, she’d done nothing but wash, scrub, polish, and mend. And everything she did was adequate but not good enough that she should even dream of looking for a position in another household. Luthvian was letting her stay as a favor to Jaenelle.

It didn’t matter, she told herself, feeling despair rise up before she choked it down again. She was alive, and she was living in Kaeleer, the Shadow Realm most people had thought nothing more than a myth until a few years ago. She didn’t have to go back to Terreille, didn’t have to trust her life to the whims of male temper.

Not as much, anyway.

Luthvian had also made it very clear that anything that displeased her would also displease her son, the Warlord Prince who ruled Ebon Rih.

Marian understood the threat. What had been done to her in Terreille would be a slap on the wrist compared to what an enraged Warlord Prince who wore Ebon-gray Jewels could do to her.