Twilight's Dawn

Jaenelle was also there, but she’d joined the adults the moment she was the only one with the boy? He just hadn’t considered why she’d responded that way.
    Her breathing wasn’t good. It sounded like she’d torn something in her chest.
    “I couldn’t save them,” she whimpered.
    He cuddled her because it was the only thing he could do at that moment. “Surreal.”
    Words poured out of her. Names that made him sick just to hear them. Marjane. Rebecca and Myrol. Dannie. Rose. He knew those names. How could he not? He’d heard them whenever Jaenelle had nightmares about a place called Briarwood.
    Trist. Kester. Ginger. The children who had died in the spooky house.
    He held on to her, not sure she knew she wasn’t alone.
    When Marian suddenly appeared in the parlor doorway, he said, “Get Nurian. And Father.” Late enough in the day for Saetan to be awake, and he wanted the strongest Black Widow available to examine Surreal.
    Words poured out with a pain he couldn’t imagine. How had she kept this inside her for so long?
    She stopped speaking in midword, and he hoped that she was finally aware that he was there, that he would help.
    She sagged in his arms, and there was a sudden, and terrible, silence.

SEVEN

    L ucivar paced the length of the eyrie’s large front room, back and forth, back and forth. The parlor would have been warmer but not more comfortable—not while he could taste Surreal’s pain in the air and imagined he still heard the echoes of her crying.
    Needing the movement, he continued pacing and kept an eye on Daemon, who had taken a position at the glass doors and done nothing but stare at the snow that had been trampled by Daemonar and the wolf pups over the past few days. Too silent and too still. Lucivar found this side of Daemon’s temper the most frightening because there was no way to gauge the ferocity hiding under passivity—or how that temper would show itself when the passive surface broke.
    “It wasn’t Daemonar’s fault,” Lucivar said. “Or the wolf pups’. They were playing a game. They didn’t know—”
    Hell’s fire. Who could have known Surreal would react by tearing the eyrie apart and scaring the youngsters so badly the wolf pups forgot how to drop the sight shield?
    Daemon turned away from the glass doors, his gold eyes changing from blank to annoyed. “Of course it wasn’t their fault. They’re just children.”
    “If you’re going to blame someone, blame me.”
    Daemon’s annoyance held a sharper edge. “For what?”
    Lucivar stopped pacing and faced his brother. “She didn’t want to stay with the boy. Not by herself. But, Daemon, I swear by the Jewels and all that I am, I didn’t realize she was afraid to stay with the boy.”
    “None of us realized that. She wasn’t troubled being around him when we were all at the Keep for Winsol.”
    “Because we were there. She wasn’t responsible for keeping him safe. For keeping him alive.” Lucivar started pacing again. “Before she collapsed, she kept talking about the dead children, how she couldn’t save them.”
    “That answers the question of what’s been eating at her these past few weeks,” Daemon said, his voice bleak and angry.
    “I can understand her feeling raw about the children who died in the spooky house, but she’s been shouldering the weight of children who were dead before she knew they existed.”
    Saetan walked into the room.
    Lucivar pivoted and Daemon moved with him. When they stopped, they stood shoulder to shoulder as they faced the High Lord.
    “Nurian says there is nothing physically wrong with Surreal,” Saetan said.
    “Wasn’t she listening to Surreal breathe?” Lucivar snapped. “If she’s that incompetent, I’ll kick her ass out of Ebon Rih.”
    “There is nothing wrong with Nurian’s skill as a Healer,” Saetan snapped back. “But if you need to kick someone’s ass, kick your own for not considering the condition of Surreal’s lungs when you insisted that she spend several weeks in the mountains during deep winter.”
    Lucivar rocked back, hurt by the verbal slap.
    Saetan huffed out a sigh and held up a hand. “If Jaenelle had thought being here now would harm Surreal’s health, Surreal would not be here. Right now, her breathing is raspy and she probably will have a wicked bitch of a sore throat from the crying and ... screaming. And she has scrapes and bruises. But those things are understandable. Hell’s fire, she went through every