Heir to the Shadows

wanted to kill him!"
    Saetan's eyes glittered. "You wanted to cut off his wings."
    "So he'd have a chance at a decent life! Without them he would have passed for Dhemlan. He could have managed one of your estates. He could have been respected."
    "Do you really think that would have been a fair trade? Living a lie of respectability against his never knowing about his Eyrien bloodline, never understanding the hunger in his soul when he felt the wind in his face, always wondering about longings that made no sense—until the day he looked at his firstborn and saw the wings. Or were you intending to clip each generation?"
    "The wings would have been a throwback, an aberration."
    Saetan was very, very still. "I will tell you again what I told you at his birth. He is Eyrien in his soul and that had to be honored above all else. If you had cut off his wings, then yes, I would have slit his throat in the cradle. Not because I wasn't prepared for it, which I wasn't since you took such pains not to tell me, but because he would have suffered too much."
    Luthvian honed her temper to a cutting edge. "And you think he hasn't suffered? You don't know much about Lucivar, Saetan."
    "And why didn't he grow up under my care, Luthvian?" he said too softly. "Who was responsible for that?"
    The tears were back. The memories, the anguish, the guilt. "You didn't love me, and you didn't love him."
    "Half right, my dear."
    Luthvian gulped back a sob. She stared at the ceiling.
    Saetan shook his head and sighed. "Even after all these years, trying to talk to each other is pointless. I'd better leave."
    Luthvian wiped away the single tear that had escaped her self-control. "You haven't said why you came here." For the first time, she looked at him without the past blurring the present. He looked older, weighed down by something.
    "It would probably be too difficult for all of us."
    She waited. His uneasiness, his unwillingness to broach the subject filled her with apprehension—and curiosity.
    "I wanted to hire you as a Craft tutor for a young Queen who is also a natural Black Widow and Healer. She's very gifted, but her education has been quite . . . erratic. The lessons would have to be private and held at SaDiablo Hall."
    "No," Luthvian said sharply. "Here. If I'm going to teach her, it will have to be here."
    "If she came here, she would have to be escorted. Since you've always found Andulvar and Prothvar too Eyrien to tolerate, it would have to be me."
    Luthvian tapped a finger against her lips. A Queen who was also a Healer and a Black Widow? What a potentially deadly combination of strengths. Truly a challenge worthy of her skills. "She would apprentice with me for the healing and Hourglass training?"
    "No. She still has difficulty with much of the Craft we consider basic, and that's what I wanted her to work on with you. I'd be willing to extend her training with you to the healing Craft as well, if that's of interest to you, but I'll take care of the Hourglass's Craft."
    Pride demanded a challenge. "Just who is this witch who requires a Black-Jewelled mentor?"
    The Prince of the Darkness, the High Lord of Hell studied her, weighing, judging, and finally replied, "My daughter."

4 / Hell
     
    Mephis dropped the file on the desk in Saetan's private study and began rubbing his hands as if to clean away some filth. Saetan turned his hand in an opening gesture. The file
    opened, revealing several sheets of Mephis's tightly packed writing.
    "We're going to do something about him, aren't we?" Mephis snarled.
    Saetan called in his half-moon glasses, settled them carefully on the bridge of his nose, and picked up the first sheet. "Let me read."
    Mephis slammed his hands on the desk. "He's an obscenity!"
    Saetan looked over his glasses at his eldest son, betraying none of the anger beginning to bloom. "Let me read, Mephis."
    Mephis sprang away from the desk with a snarl and started pacing.
    Saetan read the report and then read it again. Finally, he closed the file, vanished the glasses, and waited for Mephis to settle down.
    Obscene was an inadequate word for Lord Menzar, the administrator of Halaway's school. Unfortunate accidents or illnesses had allowed Menzar to step into a position of authority at schools in several Districts in Dhemlan—accidents he couldn't be linked to, that had no scent of him. He always showed just enough deference to please, just enough self-assurance to convince others of his ability. And there he would be,