Queen of the Darkness

doing a healing in Little Terreille?"
    "You're not going to talk me around this, Bastard."
    "I'm not interested in talking you around this. I just want to know why I'm about to draw the line that puts me on the opposing side of my Queen's wishes."
    The ax came down just hard enough to set the blade into the chopping block.
    Lucivar called in a towel and wiped the sweat off his face. "Seven years ago she had been in Little Terreille, making one of those visits that had been a concession to the Dark Council. A child had been badly injured, and she was asked to do the healing. Whoever set it up did it well. The injury was extensive enough that the healing would have left her physically and mentally exhausted but not enough that she might have called in other Healers than the ones in Little Terreille. Because if she'd called Gabrielle or Karla for help, a male escort would have come with them.
    "When the healing was done, someone gave her food or drink that was drugged, and she was too tired to detect it. It made her complacent enough to do what she was told— and she was told to sign a marriage contract."
    The cold slipped through Daemon's veins, sweet and deadly. You weren't here. You can't think of it as a betrayal since you weren't here. It didn't matter. A Consort could be nothing more than a physical accommodation. But a husband... "Then where is he?" he asked too softly.
    Lucivar twisted the towel. "He didn't survive the consummation.''
    "You took care of that? Thank you."
    "He was dead when I got there." Lucivar closed his eyes and swallowed hard. "Hell's fire, Daemon, she splattered him all over the room." He opened his eyes. The bleakness in them made Daemon shiver. "They gave her a large dose of safframate on top of the other drug."
    Daemon's body went completely numb for a moment.
    He knew all too well what safframate could do to a person. "You took care of her?" Meaning, you gave her the sex she needed? There was no room in him now to feel jealousy or betrayal, just the desperate hope that Lucivar had done what was needed.
    Lucivar looked away. "I took her hunting in Askavi."
    Daemon just stared at his brother, letting the magnitude of those words ripen. "You went out with her as bait?"
    "What was I supposed to do?" Lucivar snapped. "Let her stay locked up in Ebon Askavi suffering? Bloodletting relieves the pain of safframate as well as sex does." He paused to take a deep breath and regain control. "It wasn't easy, but we survived it."
    And that, Daemon realized, was all Lucivar intended to say about a period of time that must have been a nightmare for him.
    "She's only been back to Little Terreille a couple of times since then, and then only with a full, armed escort that included me," Lucivar said. "She hasn't been back at all since she formally set up her court."
    "I see," Daemon said quietly. "It's almost time to hear her decision. Do you want to get cleaned up?"
    "What for?" Lucivar asked with a grim smile. "Once I hear it, I'll probably be back out here anyway."
----
    5 / Kaeleer
    "May I help you?"
    Osvald, the escort, clenched his teeth, then made an effort to smile as he turned to face the footman. Hell's fire, wasn't there one male in this whole damn place who wasn't spoiling for a fight? "I seem to have gotten turned around, so I thought I'd admire the pictures in this part of the Hall."
    "I would be happy to show you the way back to your room," Holt said with frigid courtesy.
    In Terreille, he could have had the footman whipped for no better reason than sufficient lack of subservience. In Terreille, servants wouldn't wear their Jewels so blatantly that it forced their social superiors to acknowledge that strength. It galled him that he, who was favored by the High Priestess of Hayll, had to acknowledge that a footman was also an Opal-Jeweled Warlord.
    "This way," Holt said just as Wilhelmina stepped out of her room.
    Osvald swore silently. If Holt had shown up a few minutes later, he could have had the bitch and gotten out of this place.
    Then the large striped cat stepped out of the room and immediately fixed those unblinking eyes on him, making him glad of Holt's presence. When the cat's lips began to lift into a snarl, he didn't need any more urging. He offered Wilhelmina a polite greeting—and felt intensely relieved when she returned it so automatically it sounded like casual familiarity, the kind of automatic response the other bitches in this place only gave to males they knew fairly