Daughter of the Blood

cobwebs. When she turned toward the door, still unaware of his presence, the firelight smoothed most of the lines from her face, lines he knew were there because they, were in the portrait that hung in his private study, the portrait he knew so well. She had aged since the death that wasn't a death.
    But so had he.
    He dropped the sight shield and psychic shield.
    The wineglass shattered on the floor.
    "Practicing hearth-Craft, Cassandra?" he asked mildly, struggling to tamp down an overwhelming sense of betrayal.
    She backed away from him. "I should have realized she'd tell you."
    "Yes, you should have. You also should have known I'd come." He tossed his cape over a wooden chair, grimly amused at the way her emerald eyes widened when she noticed how heavily he leaned on the cane. "I'm old, Lady. Quite harmless."
    "You were never harmless," she said tartly.
    "True, but you never minded that when you had a use for me." He looked away when she didn't answer. "Did you hate me so much?"
    Cassandra reached toward him. "I never hated you, Saetan. I—"
    — was afraid of you.
    The words hung between them, unspoken.
    Cassandra vanished the broken wineglass. "Would you like some wine? There's no yarbarah, but I've got some decent red."
    Saetan settled into a chair beside the pine table. "Why aren't you drinking yarbarah?"
    Cassandra brought a bottle and two wineglasses to the table. "It's hard to come by here."
    "I'll send some to you."
    They drank the first glass of wine in silence.
    "Why?" he finally asked.
    Cassandra toyed with her wineglass. "Black-Jeweled Queens are few and far between. There was no one to help me when I became Witch, no one to talk to, no one to help me prepare for the drastic changes in my life after I made the Offering." She laughed without humor. "I had no idea what being Witch would mean. I didn't want the next one to go through the same thing."
    "You could have told me you intended to become a Guardian instead of faking the final death."
    "And have you stay around as the loyal, faithful Consort to a Queen who no longer needed one?"
    Saetan refilled the glasses. "I could have been a friend. Or you could have dismissed me from your court if that's what you wanted."
    "Dismiss you? You? You were . . . are . . . Saetan, the Prince of the Darkness, High Lord of Hell. No one dismisses you. Not even Witch."
    Saetan stared at her. "Damn you," he said bitterly.
    Cassandra wearily brushed a stray hair from her face. "It's done, Saetan. It was lifetimes ago. There's the child to think about now."
    Saetan watched the fire burning in the hearth. She was entitled to her own life, and certainly wasn't responsible for his, but she didn't understand—or didn't want to understand—what that friendship might have meant to him. Even if he'd never seen her again, knowing she still existed would have eased some of the emptiness. Would he have married Hekatah if he hadn't been so desperately lonely?
    Cassandra laced her fingers around her glass. "You've seen her?"
    Saetan thought of his study and snorted. "Yes, I've seen her."
    "I'm sure of it."
    "She's going to be Witch. I'm sure of it."
    "Going to be?" Saetan's golden eyes narrowed. "What do you mean, 'going to be'? Are we talking about the same child? Jaenelle?"
    "Of course we're talking about Jaenelle," she snapped.
    "She isn't 'going to be' Witch, Cassandra. She already is Witch."
    Cassandra shook her head vigorously. "Not possible. Witch always wear the Black Jewels."
    "So does the daughter of my soul," Saetan replied too quietly.
    It took her a moment to understand him. When she did she lifted the wineglass with shaking hands and drained it "H-how do you . . ."
    "She showed me the Jewels she was gifted with. A full uncut set of the 'lighter' Jewels—and that was the first time I'd ever heard anyone refer to the Ebon-gray as a lighter Jewel—and thirteen uncut Blacks."
    Cassandra's face turned gray. Saetan gently chafed her ice-cold hands, concerned by the shock in her eyes. She was the one who'd first seen the child in her tangled web. She was the one who'd told him about it. Had she only seen Witch but not understood what was coming?
    Saetan put a warming spell on his cape and wrapped it around her, then warmed another glass of wine over a little tongue of witchfire. When her teeth stopped chattering, he returned to his own chair.
    Her emerald eyes asked the question she couldn't put into words.
    "Lorn," he said quietly. "She got the Jewels from Lorn."