Shalador's Lady

Lord needs to rest. You get some rest too. We’ll be here to look after them.”
    “All right. I’ll be back in the morning.”
    Spreading her wings, Nurian flew to the eyrie she shared with her younger sister.
    “I’d better keep an eye on that brew.” Jaenelle gave Daemon a quick kiss and walked into the eyrie.
    He was still standing outside an hour later when Surreal showed up.
    “I heard, more or less,” she said as she climbed the last stair and joined him in the courtyard. “So who needs to be babied and who needs to be bullied?”
    “What did you hear?”
    “Something is wrong with Marian. Lucivar is distraught. Daemonar is staying with Uncle Saetan.” Surreal hooked her hair behind one ear. “And you’re in trouble, by the way. Mostly forgiven because it was clear you had left your brains somewhere between the bedroom and the landing web and couldn’t be relied on right now.”
    He stiffened. “I beg your pardon?”
    “Apparently there are rules when there is a family crisis. You broke the rules.”
    “I wasn’t aware of any,” he said coldly.
    “Uh-huh. Uncle Saetan is, and after you arrived here, he contacted Beale, and Beale then informed Mrs. Beale of where you were and why. Rainier is on his way, but he has to wait for the first round of food Mrs. Beale has prepared. Chaosti is also on his way, but he’ll stop at the Hall for whatever wasn’t ready when Rainier headed out.”
    Hell’s fire. Was any of that supposed to make sense? “Surreal.” “Don’t snarl at me. You’re the one who pissed off your cook by not telling her there was a family emergency and asking her to prepare food so none of us needed to think about that.”
    “Marian lost the baby. No one gives a damn about food right now.”
    “Shit.” She looked out over the mountain. “Shit.”
    He didn’t like being jabbed about it, but there were going to be a lot of people coming and going over the next few days to give whatever help they could, and they would need to be fed.
    Surreal drew in a breath and huffed it out. “All right, then. You and Uncle Saetan can baby Marian until she starts snarling at you, and Jaenelle and I will bully Lucivar.”
    He bristled. “Don’t you think Lucivar deserves a little pampering too?”
    She gave him an odd look. “Sugar, to an Eyrien male, being bullied is a kind of pampering. Don’t ask me why, but sometimes nothing says ‘I love you’ to a male better than getting a whack upside the head.”
    She walked into the eyrie, leaving him out there to ponder the perversity of his own gender and the mystery of hers.

CHAPTER 20
    TERREILLE
    A fter renting a horse at Grayhaven’s Coaching station, Ranon headed for the parts of the town where he’d spent some time. He didn’t want to be here, didn’t want to be wasting a day pursuing something Shira couldn’t explain. But she’d gone all hissy cat on him last night and insisted that he come to Grayhaven today.
    That wasn’t fair, Ranon scolded himself as he rode through the streets and felt a grim uneasiness settling over him. Saying she had been a “hissy cat” diminished the power of the feelings Shira had last night. And remembering the tightness in her face, the worry in her eyes . . . Something was pushing her to push at him, but this time her tangled web only gave her a sense of when something was coming and not what was coming.
    Now that he was here, he wished he’d asked Archerr or Shaddo to come with him.
    This town didn’t feel right anymore. Or more to the point, it was starting to feel the way the towns and villages had felt for the past several generations: discouraged, resigned, wary. Angry. He rode through the shopping district and had the odd sense that shopkeepers were letting their windows stay dirty and weren’t bothering to sweep the walks as a deliberate way to discourage the interest of some customers.
    Like aristos. Or Queens.
    You don’t have to go up to the mansion , Shira had said. Just go to the places in town where we’d shopped or visited. Then listen to your heart.
    He could have used something less cryptic. Then again, maybe the messages were here. The women who sold them plants when Gray was working on the gardens at the mansion asked him if the Rose Queen was coming back to Grayhaven. Some of the shopkeepers came out of their stores to ask if the court was returning. He heard the hope in their voices when they asked, and he saw the dull acceptance in their eyes when he told them