The Shadow Queen

asked, keeping her voice Queen firm. “What’s your full name? Your real name?”
    He hesitated, then said, “Jared Blaed Grayhaven.”
    She looked at the room—at the straight-backed chair that had a flat stone under one leg to keep it from wobbling, at the broken-down chest of drawers that had a single lamp, at the bookcase that had only one unbroken shelf.
    “This is the best he could do?” she asked too softly as she looked at the room, piece by piece. “You’re his family, and this is the best he would do?”
    She backed out of the room, letting the blanket fall across the opening.
    “Cassie?” Gray called.
    She walked out of the shed, her stride lengthening with every step she took toward the house.
    “Cassie!”
    She couldn’t stop, couldn’t answer. Because every step stoked her fury just a little more.

    “This was your idea to begin with,” Ranon said, dogging Theran’s footsteps with as much persistence as that damn Sceltie. “Why are you so determined now to stand in the way?”
    “I’m not standing in the way,” Theran tossed over his shoulder.
    “You won’t even give Cassidy the courtesy of listening to what she has to say.”
    He turned on Ranon. “If Warlord Princes are going to rule Dena Nehele, what was the point of trying to get a Queen?”
    “And what’s the point of having a Queen if you won’t let her do anything?” Ranon snapped. “I can understand not wanting her to travel around the Territory right now, but why are you so determined not to have the few Queens who are left come to Grayhaven to meet her? After all, she rules them now.”
    “And how many of those Queens that we passed over are going to be impressed with a witch who wears a Rose Jewel?” Theran asked, feeling bitter again. He had to hide that bitterness from Talon, but he’d be damned if he’d hide it from the rest of the First Circle. Especially Ranon.
    “The Shalador Queens might be willing to come and talk to her— and listen to what she has to say,” Ranon said.
    “Shalador. Shalador. That’s all you harp about, isn’t it? Every meeting of the First Circle, you bring up something about the reserves.”
    “Someone has to remember our people,” Ranon said with his own touch of bitterness.
    “Just because our Queen has given her consent for you to mount a Black Widow—”
    “Watch your tongue, Grayhaven,” Ranon snarled.
    Theran caught a movement out of the corner of his eye and turned to see Cassidy coming toward him, her hands clenched and a look on her face....
    “You coldhearted son of a whoring bitch !”
    She rammed him with a force that knocked him into the wall.
    Instinct and temper took over, and he shoved her hard enough that she would have fallen if Ranon hadn’t caught her. She shook off the Opal-Jeweled Warlord Prince, and the expression on Ranon’s face would have been amusing if the woman didn’t look ready to kill someone.
    “You made such a point of family , you bastard,” Cassidy snarled. “The family wing was to be off-limits to the court because this had been the Grayhaven family home.”
    “Why are you so pissed about that now?” Theran shouted.
    “Because he’s family !” she shouted back. “But you stick him in a damn gardening shed, don’t even let him come in for meals, all because someone hurt him, scarred him so he isn’t perfect anymore, and you won’t accept anyone or anything that isn’t perfect, will you? Well, you’re not perfect either, Grayhaven . Far from it.”
    Theran looked at her in disbelief. “This is about Gray?”
    “YES,THIS IS ABOUT GRAY!”
    She used Craft to enhance her voice, and that shout rattled the windows. And brought everyone running.
    “Shit,” Ranon said softly, turning and raising a hand to stop the men who rushed into the room from the other door.
    “Jared Blaed Grayhaven,” Cassidy said with a kind of cold anger that put a chill down Theran’s spine. “Family, isn’t he?”
    “We’re cousins,” Theran replied cautiously. He wore Green. She wore Rose. He wasn’t in any danger. Not from her. But he couldn’t forget right now that she had the backing of the kind of power that could wipe Dena Nehele and its people out of existence.
    “Cousins,” Cassidy said. “But he’s not good enough to be family , is he? Not good enough to stay in your precious house.”
    “He can’t stay here.”
    “Why?”
    Something snapped inside him. Something that had festered for a lot of years. Something that cut him every time he’d heard that desperate keening.
    “Because he was tortured here,” Theran shouted.