The Shadow Queen

did you know?”
    “I was a pleasure slave for a lot of centuries, controlled by Dorothea and the Ladies she sold me to. I watched some Territories fall, village by village, court by court, until there was nothing left that was decent, no one left who was honorable.” Daemon smiled bitterly. “Oh, I slaughtered the bitch’s pets. Buried more of them than anyone will ever know. Hell’s fire, there were times when Lucivar and I destroyed entire courts. But Dorothea was like a vile weed with a deep taproot. No matter how much you cut away, her poisonous influence would grow back. It always grew back—until the taint of her and the bitch who backed her was cleansed from the Blood for good.”
    Theran licked his lips. “The storm of power two years ago. You know about that?”
    Something queer flickered in Daemon’s eyes. “Yes,” he said. “I know about that. I know what it did—and I know what it cost.”
    You know what it cost you, Theran thought, feeling hopeful that Daemon might be more sympathetic than he seemed. “We lost half the Blood in Dena Nehele to that storm. We lost half of the survivors while quelling the landen uprisings that followed that storm. There are one hundred Warlord Princes left in the whole of Dena Nehele. One hundred. My Green Jewel is the darkest we have.” Not quite, but he didn’t want to mention Talon.
    “Theran . . .”
    “We don’t have any Queens.” Theran rammed his fingers through his hair, then ended up fisting them and pulling until his scalp stung.
    “Theran.”
    He let go of his hair and gripped the chair’s arms again. “All right, we do have some Queens. But they’re old women. Or they’re little girls who are too young to deal with grown men, especially men as volatile as Warlord Princes. And there are a handful of adolescent Queens, but they’re already starting to act like the Queens we’re finally free of, and there’s been some muttering that the Warlord Princes would rather kill them than let a bitch become old enough to rule. If those girls act like the previous Queens and we accept them, we’ve won nothing. All the blood that was shed and the people who were lost would have been for nothing.”
    When Daemon didn’t respond, Theran plunged on with the shining coin of hope that Talon had given him. “When Jared was an old man, dying from the wounds of his last fight, he told a trusted friend this one thing. He said, ‘If the need is great and nothing the family can do on its own will help Dena Nehele survive, find Daemon Sadi. Ask him for help. But only once.’ ” Theran closed his eyes for a moment. “Those were the last words Jared spoke. Well, we did all we could. We fought and we bled and we watched our people drown in the filth of Hayll. And now I’m the last one left. The last one. So I’m here, asking for help.”
    A long silence, interrupted by a knock on the door. All the items on the desk vanished, replaced by a woven mat as Beale brought in a large tray and set it in the center of the desk.
    “Thank you, Beale,” Daemon said.
    After Beale left the room, Daemon poured coffee for both of them, then leaned back in his chair, ignoring the thin sandwiches and nutcakes that were also on the tray.
    “You say you need a Queen,” Daemon said. “What, exactly, are you looking for?”
    Theran took a sip of coffee to wet his suddenly dry throat, then took a deep breath—and told him.

    Dinner was over; the strained effort to be a courteous and entertaining host was finished—at least for tonight.
    Daemon stood in front of the dresser in the Consort’s suite and stared into the mirror.
    “You’ve had worse days, old son,” he told his reflection. “You know you’ve had worse days.”
    But being pummeled by Theran’s words had made him feel soiled and weary, and listening to that particular blend of hope and despair had stirred up memories until they swelled and burst in his mind like pus coming out of a wound gone septic.
    He’d heard it before. Heard it for centuries. He’d watched young men grow old and break under that blend of hope and despair.
    It didn’t help that Theran looked so much like Jared, as if all the generations in between had been erased. But Theran wasn’t Jared, and there was some internal difference that Daemon recognized but couldn’t name—and that difference was the reason he had considered Jared a friend and would never consider Theran as more than an acquaintance. Nothing indicated he wasn’t a good man committed to helping his people, but . . .
    A knock on