Tangled Webs

this place completely. Take it down, Daemon. Don’t leave one stone standing on another. Is that clear?»
    «If I have to make that choice, I will find whatever is left of you and haul your sorry ass up to the Keep because you’re going to have to explain this to our father.»
    A quick grin was Lucivar’s only answer.
    Daemon pushed the gate open. Lucivar grabbed the pack in his left hand. With his right hand, he raised the war blade in a salute.
    “Take care, Prick,” Daemon said softly.
    “My kind of fight, Bastard. I’ll get Surreal and Rainier out of that house. You find Jenkell and take care of the debt on behalf of the family. You make sure the little son of a whoring bitch pays every drop of blood that is owed.”
    As he watched Lucivar walk up the path and open the front door, he felt Jaenelle come up beside him and slip her arm through his.
    “Do you know the most annoying thing about him at times like this?” Daemon asked.
    “That he doesn’t gloat when he’s right?”
    He sighed. “Yeah. That’s it exactly.”

NINETEEN
     
     
    T hunder rolled through the house, a messenger of fury. It shook pictures and mirrors off the walls, rattled windows, even knocked over curio tables filled with insipid porcelain figurines.
    Surreal looked at Rainier and knew that he, too, recognized the dark-Jeweled power that had come to play.
    “Oh, shit,” she said. “It’s Lucivar.”

    Lucivar? Had the uneducated Eyrien finally found someone to read the invitation to him? Or—and this was an even better thought—had he come to try to rescue the Surreal bitch and her companion?
    Oh, this was excellent. Excellent! They were so unnerved by Lucivar being in the house! Maybe he would finally get some decent material to use for his book. Surreal and the limp Warlord Prince had made hardly any effort to find the exits. But the Eyrien was a warrior—and a real member of the SaDiablo family.
    He had to hurry. Yes, he did. He didn’t want to miss a moment of Lucivar trying to pit himself against the surprises in the house.

    Lucivar set the pack down next to the wall. He’d issued the challenge. Now he’d wait a few minutes to see if anyone accepted the invitation.
    Odd that he hadn’t risen to the killing edge when he entered the house. He danced a heartbeat away from it, but he didn’t have the cold purity he usually had when he stepped onto a killing field.
    Which meant this place didn’t offer a true killing field. It was a battleground, certainly, but it wasn’t the kind of field Warlord Princes were born to stand on.
    He wasn’t sensing enough danger here. There wasn’t enough threat to sustain that state of mind. At least, not for someone like him.
    Which meant just being pissed off about someone setting a trap for his family would keep his temper sharp enough. At least for now.
    He took another step into the front hallway.
    Doorway on his left, with the door halfway open. Closed door on his right. A coat-tree next to the stairs leading to the second floor. A mirror on the wall opposite the stairs.
    He took another step.
    Why have a mirror there? To fix a collar or smooth a lock of hair after removing a coat? Or was there another reason for a mirror to reflect the side of the staircase?
    The stealthy sound came from behind him, on his left. Then there was the rush of a body coming toward him, along with the putrid psychic scent of a malevolent mind.
    He spun around, his right arm straightening as he became a pivot for the death he held in his hand. He looked the Black Widow in the eyes as his Eyrien war blade sang through muscle and humbled bone.
    The top half of her body fell in one direction, the lower half in another. Guts spilled out on the hallway floor, but not much blood. That meant the demon-dead witch hadn’t been drinking blood or yarbarah and had become too starved to be cautious.
    She screamed at him as she pushed herself across the floor, too furious to remember she could use Craft to float her body on air. Intent on reaching her prey, she followed him as he circled toward the room where she had hidden.
    His inner barriers were locked tight, and he should be safe enough from any games a lighter-Jeweled Black Widow might try to play. But a man who got careless and underestimated an enemy was a man who usually died.
    Switching his war blade to his left hand, he grabbed the Black Widow by the hair, flung her into the room, and closed the door. Then he walked across the hallway and kicked