The Shadow Queen

think I provoked it—or was the final shove. I’d like to know why.”
    “You didn’t provoke anything,” he snarled as he met those sapphire eyes. “It wasn’t . . .” He wouldn’t let her take the blame for this, not even a crumb of blame. But how to explain? Where to begin?
    She sipped her coffee and waited.
    “The Consort’s room is a kind of sanctuary,” he began, choosing each word with care. “A place for a man to let down his guard. A place where he doesn’t have to perform.”
    She bit into a piece of toast and chewed slowly. “Do you feel like you have to perform, Daemon?”
    He shook his head. “No. Never. Not with you. But . . . for most of my life I’d had to perform, had to be on my guard except for the few precious hours each day that I had to myself. So even though things are different now—so very different now—I like having this private space. I’ll come up here sometimes in the afternoons, stretch out on the bed for an hour, and let my mind wander.” And know he was safe when he did it.
    She cut off a piece of the seafood omelet and held up the fork.
    His stomach cramped, but he kept his eyes on hers as he leaned forward and accepted the offering.
    “Nothing wrong with wanting a place for yourself,” Jaenelle said. “The cabin in Ebon Rih is my private place and seldom shared even with the people I love. So I do understand.”
    “All those years in Terreille, I had to fight hard to have a private place,” he said softly.
    When he didn’t say anything more, Jaenelle poked around the tray. “Ah. There is another fork.” She handed it to him. “Eat in between the pauses.”
    He wasn’t sure if being required to eat was a subtle punishment or confirmation that she was more shaken by last night than she wanted to admit. Otherwise, since she was a Healer, she would have known he couldn’t eat.
    He took a piece of toast, then a bite of the vegetable omelet. And swallowed hard to keep it down.
    “I needed a private place,” he said. “In order to stay sane, I needed a place. My room. My bed. Out of bounds to everyone.”
    She drank some coffee. Dabbed at her mouth with a napkin. “You could have asked me to leave.”
    “I didn’t want you to leave.” He kept his eyes fixed on the tray of food, no longer able to look at her. “In every court, there would always be one who wouldn’t respect the boundaries, one who had to be the lesson to the others. Always one little bitch who thought I would bend in private in ways I wouldn’t bend in public. And there she would be one night, dressed to arouse, rubbing her stink on my bed.”
    Jaenelle flinched.
    “I hurt them, Jaenelle. Even when I let them live, I hurt them. They were violating what little peace I could make for myself, trying to create a need, a desire, a physical response that would have condemned me to a more savage kind of slavery once Dorothea found out I was capable of being aroused. And in a way those little bitches succeeded. They created a need to hurt them, a desire to inflict pain. As for physical response, they didn’t get the one they wanted, but they got one—and they lived with the nightmares for the rest of their lives.”
    “Daemon,” Jaenelle said gently.
    He couldn’t stop now. “Then last night, talking to Theran, remembering Jared and the last time I saw him—and the years that followed. Those weren’t easy years for me.”
    “Those memories were riding you last night.”
    “Yes. And then I was here, in my room, my private space, trying to settle my feelings, talking to you but not paying attention to you. Listening to you, but not paying attention while I was getting undressed, still steeped in that other time in my life. And then I turned around. . . .”
    “And saw a memory.”
    “A thousand memories.” Daemon swallowed hard. “I saw the body, but not the face. I saw the clothes, but not the person who wore them. And my own worst nightmare from those years happened. I was so completely aroused I couldn’t turn away from what I wanted. What I needed. It was like being thrown into the rut without any warning. And then you moved as if you were going to leave, and—” He clamped his teeth together.
    Jaenelle refilled the coffee cup, taking her time as she added cream and sugar. “You scared me last night.”
    He bowed his head. “I know.”
    “This was more than the rut, Daemon.” She hesitated. “You know who I am when you’re caught in the rut. Last night . . . I wasn’t sure you knew who was under you—or cared.”
    “I didn’t know,” he