The Shadow Queen

began.
    “In. Any. Way.”
    Cassidy hunched her shoulders. “Yes, sir.”
    “In return, Gray, you must accept that women like to paint their faces, adding color to eyes, lips, and cheeks.”
    “Why do they want to do that?” Gray asked, his eyes still fixed on Cassidy’s face as if something might disappear the moment he looked away.
    “Boyo,” Saetan said, “I’ve been observing females for over fifty thousand years, and I can’t tell you why they do what they do. Don’t expect to understand how they think;just understand that some things are important to them that are incomprehensible to us, and learn to work with their way of thinking when you have to.”
    “Like putting color on her face?” Gray asked.
    “Exactly,” Saetan replied. “Although . . . a woman using face paints to enhance her beauty can be intriguing.”
    Theran watched Gray’s face change, watched anxiety shift to curiosity.
    “Darkening the lashes, for instance, to draw more attention to her eyes,” Saetan said.
    “Cassie has pretty eyes,” Gray said.
    “Putting a little gold dust on the cheeks—and other places—so the skin glitters in candlelight,” Daemon purred. “But that’s usually reserved for romantic dinners.”
    “Daemon.”
    Watching Jaenelle blush gave Theran a good idea of how those romantic dinners ended—and the room suddenly got much too warm.
    “Now, the hair,” Saetan said.
    Gray whimpered.
    “Changing the color would be an insult to every man who admires beauty, so it will not be changed.”
    Now Cassidy whimpered.
    “However, you, Gray, have to accept that, like their faces, women like to play with their hair, putting it up in different styles or even cutting it.”
    “Cut?” Gray sounded alarmed.
    “Compromise, Prince,” Saetan said in that voice that allowed no challenge.
    After a moment, Gray nodded. “Okay. I won’t get upset if she cuts her hair.”
    “Then we’re agreed.”
    Theran hadn’t heard anyone but Gray agree to anything, but judging by the look on everyone’s face, that wasn’t going to be mentioned.
    Daemon looked at Gray. “There’s still a few minutes before dinner. Why don’t we get some fresh air and discuss that other matter?” And he winked.
    Gray’s eyes widened. He started to move, then stopped and looked at the High Lord. “Sir?”
    “We’re done here, so you two go on.”
    When Daemon and Gray left, Saetan fixed his attention on Cassidy, and Theran felt sorry for her. After all, she’d just wanted to get rid of those awful spots and look a little better. It wasn’t her fault Gray had gotten fixated on the damn things.
    “I didn’t know,” Cassidy said in a small voice.
    “Now you do,” Saetan said in that implacable voice.
    Cassidy brushed her fingers against one cheek. “Maybe . . .”
    “Witchling, if you really think that boy isn’t going to notice if a single freckle is missing, then you have not been paying attention.”
    The whiplash without the velvet coating.
    Theran winced.
    Jaenelle squared her shoulders. “If you gentlemen will excuse us, my Sisters and I need a few minutes to settle before dinner.”
    Saetan tipped his head in a bow and walked out of the room.
    Lucivar kissed his wife’s head and left the room, giving Theran no choice but to follow him to another sitting room.
    “I need some air,” Lucivar said. “How about you?”
    Theran shook his head.
    As Lucivar opened a glass door that led to some kind of courtyard, Theran said, “I guess the High Lord wouldn’t have lashed at them like that if Lady Angelline had still been the Queen of Ebon Askavi.”
    Lucivar gave him an odd look. “Then you would have guessed wrong.”

----

    CHAPTER 23
    KAELEER
    N o sex tonight, Daemon thought as he took off his robe and slipped into bed. Propped up on one elbow, he studied Jaenelle’s face. She’d been broody and unhappy all the way home, and it didn’t look like her mood had changed.
    “Well, things didn’t go too badly,” he said.
    Jaenelle made a sound that was one part laugh and two parts disbelief. “What dinner party were you at tonight?”
    “The point of the evening was to give Gray a foundation for interacting with a Kaeleer Queen, and in that, I think we did quite well.”
    Her eyes widened. “I created an illusion spell to give Cassie more confidence about her looks and ended up scaring Gray out of half his wits, and also managed to stomp on Papa’s toes hard enough to have him angry with me twice , and you think we did well?”
    Daemon raised a shoulder in a half shrug. “Gray got to ask about things that