Twilight's Dawn

A few months of marriage to Jaenelle had taught him the value of having a few tricks when it came to dealing with a witch who woke up grumpy—and he had become an expert at all of them.
    “Tersa asked me to come early,” he said, slipping past Allista. “Since my timing is a bit off, why don’t I make breakfast for the two of you?”
    He shrugged out of his overcoat and vanished it as he continued down the hall to the kitchen, not giving Allista time to answer.
    All right. Tersa hadn’t told him to come this early, but she would be awake—and he wanted to slip out with his requested gift before too many people were up and about.
    “Good morning, darling,” he said as he walked into the kitchen.
    Tersa turned away from the counter and studied him for a moment. Then she smiled. “It’s the boy. It’s my boy.”
    Her boy. His mother was a broken Black Widow lost in the madness the Blood called the Twisted Kingdom. Lost in the dreams and visions—and the shattered pieces of her mind. She remembered him as the child he had been before he’d been taken from her. She remembered him as the youth who had met her again but didn’t know who she was. And sometimes she remembered him as the man he was now. But however she saw him on any given day, he was always the boy. Her boy.
    “I’ve come to cook you breakfast,” Daemon said. He gave her his best-boy grin. “And to talk about gifts.”
    She narrowed her gold eyes as if she was about to argue. Then she shrugged and turned back to the counter. “There are bacon and eggs and bread for toast.”
    “That sounds like breakfast,” Daemon said. “How would you like me to make the eggs?”
    She hesitated—and he wondered if she would be able to answer or if her mind had turned down another path too far removed from such mundane things as bacon and eggs.
    “I like them scrambled,” she finally said.
    He put an arm around her, brushed his lips against her temple, and felt all his love for her well up and squeeze his heart. “Me too.”

    Lucivar Yaslana backwinged and landed lightly on the walkway in front of Tersa’s cottage. He looked at the cottage directly in front of him, then at its neighbor.
    Manny had spent most of her life as a servant, was used to working with her hands, and didn’t shun physical labor. Even now she’d taken on the duties of housekeeper for Tersa and Allista, an arrangement that satisfied all three women. But Manny wasn’t a young woman by any stretch of truth, and it seemed a bit early for her to have been out sweeping the walkways.
    Not swept, he realized as he studied the sharp, perfect edge that divided the snowy lawn from the cleared walkway. Not even a hearth witch could get that kind of edge. Not with a shovel or broom, anyway. So someone had used Craft to remove the snow.
    He crouched, held out a hand, and felt warm air.
    And then someone had put a warming spell on the flagstones to keep them clear of snow.
    The cottage door opened and the someone walked out.
    Lucivar rose and looked pointedly at the walkways, then at Daemon. “You know, Bastard, using Craft is all well and good, but it wouldn’t hurt you to sweat once in a while.”
    “If I’m going to work up a sweat for a woman, I’m going to be doing something besides sweeping the walk,” Daemon replied.
    Lucivar grinned.
    They were brothers. Half brothers, but they had never made that distinction. They both had the coloring of the three long-lived races—the black hair, light brown skin, and gold eyes. They had inherited much of their looks from their Hayllian father, who was the High Lord of Hell. Daemon’s face was a more refined, beautiful version of Saetan’s, while his own face was more rugged than their father’s. But the real distinction between him and Daemon came from the other side of his dual heritage. He had the dark, membranous wings that set the Eyrien race apart from the Hayllian and Dhemlan Blood.
    They studied each other for a moment before Lucivar’s mouth curved in a lazy, arrogant smile.
    “You’re up early,” Lucivar said, taking the few steps that separated them.
    “You’re up even earlier, since you had to come in from Ebon Rih,” Daemon replied. “You must have left at dawn.”
    Lucivar shook his head. “I’m farther east; sun rises earlier. But I was up at dawn.”
    “Was that by choice?”
    “Hell’s fire, no, but the little beast is up with the sun, and I feel less guilty about Marian holding the leash most of the day