Tangled Webs

teeth were bared with intent to harm.
    And he, seeing a disaster in the making, made a sound that thundered through the eyrie—the primal, undiluted roar of a furious adult male.
    The three of them froze.
    As Lucivar stared at the boy and pup, who were staring back at him, he thought, Mother Night. I sound like my father.
    The thought, like the stone that starts an avalanche, broke open something inside him. He felt the cascade, felt the pressure of the storm on his skin, in his bones. No telling what was coming or how long he could hold it back. But the children had to come first.
    So he moved, scooping up Daemonar in one arm and the pup in the other. He vanished the papers on the kitchen table and plunked boy and pup down—and faced the next problem as he kept pushing back that storm, that sound.
    There was one of him and two of them—and a truth that would sink into the marrow of their bones and remain long after the actual memory was gone. No matter which one he tended first, the other “child” would always know he wasn’t as important, didn’t matter as much. And things would never be the same between boy and wolves.
    So one hand examined the pup and found a sore spot that could have been caused by a kick, while the other hand pushed down the boy’s sock. The pup had caught Daemonar enough to scrape the skin on the inside of the boy’s ankle. Lucivar rubbed his thumb over the scrape, wiping away the blood before Daemonar noticed it.
    “You’re all right,” he said, trying for soothing but not able to keep the grim temper out of his voice. “Nothing punctured, nothing broken.” And neither more damaged than the other, thank the Darkness.
    Keeping a firm grip on both of them, he stopped trying for soothing. “I don’t care what you did. I don’t care who started it. If this happens again, you won’t be allowed to play together.”
    Whimpers from the pup. A poked-out, quivering lower lip from Daemonar.
    Hearing the click of nails on the stone floor, Lucivar turned his head and looked at Tassle, who was standing in the archway. Using a light psychic touch, he showed the wolf the memory of what had just happened.
    Tassle bared his teeth and snarled at both children.
    “Here,” Lucivar said, setting the pup on the floor. “Why don’t you take care of yours this afternoon, and I’ll deal with mine.”
    At least, he hoped he’d be able to take care of his son. He hoped the emotional storm produced by that sound wouldn’t cripple him.
    Tassle grabbed his pup by the scruff of its neck and stalked off.
    Lucivar looked at the dribble trail of puppy urine he would have to clean up, then looked at his son, whose eyes were now swimming in tears. Sighing, he picked up Daemonar and rubbed the boy’s back to comfort him.
    “Want Mama,” Daemonar sniffled. “Want Mama now. ”
    “Me too, boyo. Me too.”
    He took Daemonar into the parlor and settled into the rocking chair. Between the rocking and the soothing spell he wrapped around the boy, it didn’t take long before Daemonar was sound asleep.
    Once he was sure the boy wouldn’t wake, Lucivar called in a bottle of ointment Jaenelle had made up for “everyday ouchies” and rubbed some on the scrape to clean the wound while he used basic healing Craft to make “everything all better.”
    Then he vanished the bottle, rocked his son…and faced the storm raging inside him.
    Not a memory. Not exactly. More like reliving a feeling. He didn’t know where or when, but he was young. Older than Daemonar, but not by much. He was in that small-boy body, sitting on a bench, hunched around himself as the echo of that sound pressed down on his skin, on his bones. Pressed into his heart.
    His father’s voice. But there had been something terrible in that sound.
    There had been agony in that sound.
    His fault. He couldn’t remember why, but he was certain of that.
    Prothvar would know.
    The thought brought tears to his eyes. He blinked them back.
    Prothvar was gone now. Truly gone. He had died on a killing field over fifty thousand years before, in the war between Terreille and Kaeleer, but he had remained, along with Andulvar and Mephis, as one of the demon-dead who continued to guard the Shadow Realm. In a way, the war that Jaenelle had stopped last year had been an extension of that first war, since Hekatah had been behind both conflicts.
    In a way, when Prothvar gave himself to Jaenelle’s webs to help protect the Blood when she unleashed her full