Dreams Made Flesh

web.
    And nothing happened.
    Shaking, shivering, he stared at the Black web, not quite daring to believe.
    It took him a minute to get his hands to unlock from their grip around her ankles. When he was finally able to let go, he floated cautiously above the web. Near her shoulder, he noticed two small broken strands. Very carefully, he smoothed the Black strands over the other colors that cocooned her.
    He could barely see her, only just enough to make out the tiny spiral horn. But that was enough.
    *We did it, * he whispered. He looked up. He couldn't see his brother and father, but he knew they were still floating in the abyss, exhausted from their own part of this fight to save her. *Lucivar! Priest! We did it!*
    Then he looked at Witch … and horror filled him. In that moment of inattention, the Black web's strands had sagged, stretched, started to break. He lunged, trying to grab her. His fingertips brushed against her ankle, but no matter how hard he strained, he couldn't get any closer.
    Her eyes opened. Even through the cocoon of webs, they glittered like fine sapphires.
    "Daemon." Little more than an exhalation of breath, a sigh. "Daemon."
    Then the strands of Black web broke, and she spiraled down into the Darkness and disappeared.
    "No." Grief ensnared him, cocooned him in agony. "Noooo!"
    Still trembling from the nightmare that had become a familiar companion over the past few months, Daemon Sadi braced his hands against the shower walls and let the hot water sluice over his bowed head.
    He loved Jaenelle Angelline with everything in him, had waited all of his seventeen hundred years for the day when he would surrender to Witch and serve her, be her lover. He had dreamed of her, yearned for her, had endured the centuries of being used as a pleasure slave because he had to survive in order to find her. And now…
    He was losing her. He didn't know what he'd done, or hadn't done, to cause her feelings for him to change, but he was losing her. There was sadness lurking in the depths of her sapphire eyes whenever he was with her, and with each passing day, she seemed a little more distant, a little more out of reach.
    Daemon shook his head. He'd let doubt become a living cry of pain while the kindred were fighting to hold on to Jaenelle and heal her body, and those doubts had cost her dearly. He couldn't afford to let doubt surface again.
    Soaping up a washcloth, he scrubbed himself fiercely, as if washing the sweat off his skin could also scour the nightmare from his mind and heart. When he finally shut off the water and toweled himself dry, his body was clean…and his heart still ached.
    Going back into the bedroom of the master suite in his family's town house in Amdarh, Dhemlan's capital city, he looked at the bed and hesitated. No. He wouldn't take a chance of the nightmare coming back. Once in a night was more than enough. Besides, he could spend the hours before dawn going over the papers Marcus, his man of business, had delivered to the town house for his review.
    During the years when he'd been lost in the Twisted Kingdom and the years he'd remained hidden while he regained his strength and patched together his sanity, Marcus had worked diligently on his behalf. Because of that, much of the wealth he'd accumulated over the centuries had been quietly transferred to investments in various Territories in Kaeleer. That diligence had served Marcus as well, establishing him as a businessman and making it possible for him to bring his wife and young daughter to Kaeleer without having to serve in a Queen's court. Now Marcus and his family also lived in Amdarh, where it was safe for a child to play in the park with her friends, where a woman could walk down the street and not fear the men she passed, where a man wouldn't have to wonder if he would be snatched and maimed for the amusement of a bitch's court.
    Using Craft, Daemon turned on the candle-light near the chair and table where he'd left the large stack of papers waiting for his perusal. Between his personal assets and controlling the vast wealth of the SaDiablo family, he had enough work to keep him busy, enough work to fill the hours when Jaenelle…
    He reached for the robe at the foot of the bed, then turned away empty-handed to stand in front of the freestanding mirror.
    He had the light-brown skin, black hair, and gold eyes that were common to the long-lived races. But his face was beautiful rather than handsome and left women breathless; his