Heir to the Shadows

torn between her desire to go to her lover and her duties as assistant Healer.  ; Lucivar gave her shoulder a quick, encouraging squeeze j before he joined Jaenelle. He didn't know what help he j could give her, but he'd do whatever he could.
    As Jaenelle started to lift the sheet, Khevin's eyes  opened. With effort, he grabbed her hand.
    She stared at the young man, her eyes blank. It was as  if she had gone so deep within herself that the windows of ! the soul could no longer reveal the person who lived within
    "Do you fear me?" she asked in a midnight whisper.
    "No, Lady." Khevin licked his dry lips. "But it's a War- j lord's privilege to protect his people. Take care of them first."
    Lucivar tried to reach her with a psychic thread, but Jaenelle had shut him out. Please, Cat. Let him have his pride.
    She reached under the sheet. Khevin moaned a wordless protest.
    "I'll do as you ask because you asked," she said, "but I'm going to tie in some of the threads from the healing j web I've built now so that you'll stay with me." She smoothed the sheet and rested one long-nailed finger at the base of his throat. "And I warn you, Khevin, you had better stay with me."
    Khevin smiled at her and closed his eyes.
    Cupping her elbow, Lucivar led Jaenelle into the hallway. "Since they won't be needed for the shield, I'll send the younger Warlords in to help with the fetching and carrying."
    "Adler, yes. Not the other two."
    The ice in her voice chilled him. He'd never heard any Queen condemn a man so thoroughly.
    "Very well," he said respectfully. "I can—"
    "Keep this place safe, Yaslana."
    He felt the quiver, swiftly leashed, and locked his emotions up tight. Hell's fire, even if the drugs were out of her
    system enough for her to do the healings, her emotions weren't stable. And she knew it.
    "Cat . . ."
    "I'll hold. You don't have to watch your back because of that."
    He grinned. "Actually, it's when you're hissing and spitting that you're the most useful when it comes to guarding my back."
    Her sapphire eyes warmed a little. "I'll remind you of that."
    Lucivar headed for the outside door. He'd have to keep an eye on her to make sure she drank some water and had a bite to eat every couple of hours. He'd slip a word to Mari. It was always easier to get Jaenelle to eat if someone else was eating, too.
    As he turned back, he felt the impact of bodies against the shield and heard the warning shouts from the Warlords outside.
    He'd talk to Mari later. The Jhinka had returned.
    9 / Kaeleer
    Lucivar leaned against the covered well and gratefully took the mug of coffee Randahl handed to him. It tasted rough and muddy. He didn't care. At that moment, he would have drunk piss as long as it was hot.
    The Jhinka had attacked throughout the night—sometimes small parties striking the shield and then fleeing, sometimes a couple hundred battering at the shield while he sliced them apart. There had been no sleep, no rest. Just the steadily increasing fatigue and physical drain of channeling the power stored in the Jewels as well as the steady drain of that power—a more rapid drain than he had anticipated. Randahl and the other Warlords had exhausted their reserves by the time he and Jaenelle had arrived yesterday, so he was now their only protection and most of their fighting ability.
    Because the shield hadn't extended more than a couple of inches below the ground, he'd discovered, almost too
    late, that the Jhinka had been using the piles of bodies for cover while they dug under the shield. So now the shield went down five feet before turning inward and running underground until it reached the building's foundation.
    While they were fighting the Jhinka who'd gotten under the south side of the shield, Lucivar had responded to instinct and raced to the north side of the building, reaching j the corner just as one of the Jhinka ran toward the well, j The earthenware jar the Jhinka carried had contained ' enough concentrated poison to destroy their only water | supply. So the well now had a separate shield around it.
    As soon as the attack on the well had been thwarted and f the shield extended, the witch storm had re-formed over j the building. No longer spread out to cover the whole village and hide the destruction, it had become a tight mass of tangled psychic threads, an invisible cloud full of psychic lightning that sizzled every time it brushed the shield.
    The   extra  shielding  and   the   constant   reinforcement