Tangled Webs

killing.
    Only one side walks away from a killing field. Even though they were no longer among the living, the fact that Andulvar and Prothvar Yaslana walked off that field changed the history of two Realms.
    “Nothing would have come of it,” Saetan said softly, “if you hadn’t come running into my study right after that. You looked so excited, I thought you were coming in to tell me about a new move you had learned or to watch some flying trick you had mastered. Instead, you asked me when you could get your own death wounds. And in that moment, looking at my brilliant little boy, I saw Andulvar and Prothvar as they had looked when they walked off that killing field. I saw Mephis when he first arrived in the Dark Realm, having died that same day. And I remembered the pain of searching for Peyton and Ravenar—and never knowing what had happened to either of them. But it was Andulvar and Prothvar I saw most of all, and I could see you with them—as a boy, as a grown man—walking off a killing field but no longer among the living. And there were no words for that kind of pain. Just a sound.”
    Lucivar closed his eyes. The words squeezed his chest until he ached.
    He had stood on killing fields—and sometimes he had been the only one to walk away. So he could see it clearly. No visible lines defined the space, but a warrior could feel it, knew exactly where the line began, knew the shape of the field. Once a man stepped onto one of those fields, he was committed to the battle. There was no turning back, no walking away. Because of that, a killing field embraced a savagery that transcended anything that could be found on a battlefield. For Warlord Princes, there was a clear distinction between those two things.
    After he’d come to live at the Hall and serve Jaenelle, he’d walked in on Prothvar one evening before his cousin was dressed. Before the illusion spells were in place. He had looked at those wounds with the eyes of a warrior—and the fact that Prothvar had walked away from that killing field had told him more about the man as a warrior than all the stories he’d heard in the hunting camps. As a youth, he’d thought those stories about Prothvar’s abilities had been exaggerated, as stories tend to be.
    As a man, seeing his cousin’s body, he’d understood those stories hadn’t told the half of it.
    He could picture Prothvar and Andulvar as if he were standing next to Saetan waiting for them to cross the line and step off the killing field.
    Waiting for them.
    In that moment, as a suspicion floated through his mind, he imagined he could feel the brush of Daemon’s lips against his ear and hear his brother’s voice.
    Words can be a weapon, and our father is very skilled with that particular blade. Look—and see clearly. Within what he didn’t say is the reason he didn’t want to tell you the story.
    So he considered the story he’d just heard. And he considered the few things Andulvar had said about that battle.
    Then he looked at his father and thought, Liar.
    While Saetan called in a handkerchief and delicately blew his nose, Lucivar went to the table and poured yarbarah into one of the ravenglass goblets. He warmed the blood wine over a tongue of witchfire, then held out the glass.
    Saetan vanished the handkerchief and took hold of the goblet.
    Lucivar didn’t let go.
    The resistance was enough to assure he’d have Saetan’s attention when he released that goblet, picked up the other—and poured and warmed another glass of yarbarah.
    Eyrien warriors drank small glasses of yarbarah as part of some of their ceremonies, but drinking a full goblet wasn’t something a living man would normally do.
    He returned to his chair and took a sip of the blood wine, his eyes never leaving his father’s face.
    “Uncle Andulvar told me you had refused to fight in that war. You had said that, as a Guardian, you had no right to interfere with the living Realms.”
    “Yes,” Saetan replied, his voice barely a whisper. “That’s what I said.”
    “Must have galled him when he walked off that field and saw you standing that one careful step away from the line—the step that kept you out of the fight.”
    A ghost of a grim smile, there and gone. “I don’t think he ever forgave me. Not completely.”
    “Funny that he never considered why you were there.”
    “It was a killing field, Lucivar. A slaughter of thousands.”
    “So the High Lord of Hell was there to meet his closest friend and