Heir to the Shadows

emotional scars you're not aware of."
    "I know about the rape—and about Briarwood. When she's pushed too hard, she talks in her sleep." Lucivar refilled his glass and met Saetan's cool stare. "I slept with her. I didn't mount her."
    Slept with her. Saetan kept a tight rein on his temper while he sifted through the implications of that statement and weighed it against the amount of physical contact Jaenelle allowed Lucivar without retreating into that chilling emotional blankness that always scared the rest of them. "She didn't object?" he asked carefully.
    Lucivar snorted. "Of course she objected. What woman wouldn't after being hurt that badly? But she objected more to having her patient sleeping in front of the hearth, and I objected just as strongly to having the Healer who saved my life sleeping in front of the hearth. So we reached an agreement. I didn't complain about the way she hogged the pillows, tangled the covers, sprawled over more than
    her share of the bed, made those cute little noises that we don't call snoring no matter what it sounds like, and growled at everything and everyone until she had her first cup of coffee. And she didn't complain about the way I hogged the pillows, tangled the covers, sprawled over more than my share of the bed, made funny noises that woke her up and stopped the minute she was awake, and tended to be overly cheerful in the morning. And we both agreed that neither of us wanted the other for sex."
    Which, for Jaenelle, would have made the difference.
    "Do you pay much attention to who immigrates to Kaeleer?" Lucivar asked suddenly.
    "Not much," Saetan replied cautiously.
    Lucivar studied his brandy. "You wouldn't know if a Hayllian named Greer came in, would you?"
    The question chilled him. "Greer is dead."
    Lucivar fixed his eyes on the dining room wall. "Being the High Lord of Hell, you could arrange a meeting, couldn't you?"
    Why was Lucivar straining to breathe evenly?
    "Greer is dead, not just a citizen of the Dark Realm."
    Lucivar's jaw tightened. "Damn."
    Saetan clenched his teeth. Sweet Darkness, how was Lucivar involved with Greer? "Why are you so interested in him?"
    Lucivar's hands curled into tight fists. "He was the bastard who raped Jaenelle."
    Saetan's temper exploded. The dining room windows shattered. Zigzag cracks raced across the ceiling. Swearing viciously, he rechanneled the power to strike the drive out front, turning the gravel into powder.
    Greer. Another link between Hekatah and Dorothea.
    Saetan sank his nails into the table, tearing through the wood again and again, an unsatisfying exercise since he wanted flesh beneath his nails.
    The training was too deeply ingrained in him. Damn the Darkness, it was too deeply ingrained. He couldn't kill a witch in cold blood. And if he was going to break the code of honor he'd lived by all his life, he should have done it more than five years ago when it might have made a differ-
    ence, might have saved Jaenelle. Not now, when she already bore the scars. Not now, when it wouldn't change anything.
    Hands clamped on his wrists. Tightened. Tightened some more.
    "High Lord."
    He should have torn that bastard apart the first time Greer asked about Jaenelle. Should have shredded his mind. What was wrong with him? Had he become too tame, too docile? What was he doing, trying to appease those puny fools in the Dark Council when they were doing something that hurt his daughter, his Queen?
    "High Lord."
    And who was this fool who dared lay hands on the Prince of the Darkness, the High Lord of Hell? No more. No more.
    "Father."
    Saetan gulped air, fought to clear his head. Lucivar. Lucivar was pinning his arms to the table.
    Someone pounded on the door. "Saetan! Lucivar!"
    Jaenelle. Sweet Darkness, not Jaenelle. He couldn't see her now.
    "SAETAN!"
    "Please," he whispered. "Don't let her—"
    The door shattered.
    "Get out, Cat," Lucivar snapped.
    "What—"
    "OUT!"
    Andulvar's voice. "Go upstairs, waif. We'll take care of this."
    Voices arguing, fading.
    "Yarbarah?" Lucivar asked after a long, tense silence.
    Saetan shuddered, shook his head. Until he was settled, if he tasted blood, he would want it hot from the vein. "Brandy."
    Lucivar pressed a glass into his hand.
    Saetan gulped the brandy. "You should have gotten out of here."
    Lucivar raised his glass with an unsteady hand and offered a wobbly grin. "I've had some experience tangling
    with the Black. All in all, you're not too bad. Daemon always scared the shit out