Queen of the Darkness

"My apologies, Lady. Since you twist so much yourself, I'll do my best not to add to it."



She gave herself a moment to think. "You're deliberately trying to provoke me. Why? So you can justify executing me?"



"Oh, I already have all the justification I need for an execution," Saetan said mildly. "No, it's simpler than that. Your being terrified of me gets us nowhere. If you're angry, you'll at least talk."



"In that case, I want my granddaughters returned to me."



"You have no right to either of them."



"I have every right!"



"You're forgetting something very basic, Alexandra. Wilhelmina is twenty-seven. Jaenelle is twenty-five. The age of majority is twenty. You have no say in their lives anymore."



"Then neither do you.They should decide to stay or leave."



"They've already decided. And I do have far more say in their lives than you. Wilhelmina signed a contract with the Warlord Prince of Ebon Rih. He, in turn, serves in the Dark Court. I'm the Steward. So court hierarchy gives me the right to make some decisions about her life."



"What about Jaenelle? Does she serve in this Dark Court, too?"



Saetan gave her an odd look. "You really don't understand, do you? Jaenelle doesn't serve, Alexandra. Jaenelle is the Queen."



For a moment, the conviction in his voice almost convinced her.



No.No. If Jaenelle were really a Queen, she would haveknown. Like would have recognized like. Oh, theremight actually be a Queen who ruled this court, but it wasn't,couldn't be, Jaenelle.



But his declaration gave her a weapon. "If Jaenelle is the Queen, you have no right to control her life."



"Neither do you."



Alexandra clamped her hands around the arms of the chair and gritted her teeth. "The age of majority acknowledges certain conditions that have to be met. If a child is deemed incapable in some way, her family maintains its right to take care of her mental and physical well being and make decisions on her behalf."



"And who decides if the child is incapable? The family that gets to maintain control of her? How very convenient. And don't forget, you're talking about a Queen who outranks you."



"I forget nothing. And don't you try to take the moral high ground with me—as if you had any concept of what morality means."



Saetan's eyes iced over. "Very well, then. Let's take a look atyour concept of morality. Tell me, Alexandra. How did you justify it when it was obvious Jaenelle was being starved? How did you justify the rope burns from her being tied down, the bruises from the beatings? Did you just shrug it all off as the discipline needed to control a recalcitrant child?"



"You lie!" Alexandra shouted. "I never saw any evidence of that."



"You just tossed her into Briarwood and didn't bother to see her again until you decided to let her out?"



"Of course I saw her!" Alexandra paused. An ache spread through her chest as she remembered the distant, almost accusing way Jaenelle would look at them sometimes when she and Leland went to visit. The wariness and suspicion in her eyes, directed at them. She remembered how much it had hurt, and how Leland wept silently on the way home, when Dr. Carvay had told them that Jaenelle was too emotionally unstable to have any visitors. And she remembered the times she had felt relieved that Jaenelle was safely tucked away so others wouldn't have firsthand knowledge of the girl's fanciful tales. "I saw her whenever she was emotionally stable enough to have visitors."



Saetan snarled softly.



"You sit there and judge me, but you don't know what it was like trying to deal with a child who—"



"Jaenelle was seven when I met her."



For a moment, Alexandra couldn't breathe. Seven. She could imagine that voice wrapping itself around a child, spinning out lies. "So when she told her stories about unicorns and dragons, you encouraged her."



"I believed her, yes."



"Why?"



His smile was terrible. "Because they exist."



She shook her head, struck mute by the collision of too many thoughts, too many feelings.



"What would it take to convince you, Alexandra? Being impaled on a unicorn's horn? Would you still insist he was a fanciful tale?"



"You could trick anyone into believing anything you choose."



His eyes got that glazed, sleepy look. "I see." He stood up. "I don't give a damn what you think of me. I don't give a damn what you think about anything. But if I sense one flicker of distress from Wilhelmina or Jaenelle because of you, I'll bring everything I am down on you." He looked at her with those cold, cold eyes. "I don't know why Jaenelle ended up with you. I don't know why the Darkness would place such an extraordinary spirit in the care of someone like you. You didn't deserve her. You don't deserve even to know her."



He walked out of the room.



Alexandra sat there for a long time.



Tricks and lies. He'd said Jaenelle had been seven, but how old had she really been when the High Lord first started whispering his sweetly poisoned lies into a child's ear. Perhaps he had even created illusions of unicorns and dragons that looked real enough to be convincing. Maybe the uneasy way Jaenelle had sometimes made her feel had really been an aftertaste of him and not the child herself.



She couldn't deny that horrors had been done at Briarwood. But had those men done those things by choice or had an unseen puppet master been pulling the strings? She had experienced Daemon Sadi's cruelty. Wasn't it likely that his father had refined his taste for it? Had all that pain and suffering been caused in order to make one particular child so vulnerable she became emotionally dependent on these men?



Dorothea had been right. The High Lord was a monster. Sitting there, Alexandra was certain of only one thing: she would do whatever she had to in order to get Wilhelmina and Jaenelle away from him.



He felt Daemon's hands slide up his shoulder blades, then settle on his shoulders a moment before those strong, slender fingers began kneading tight muscles.



"Did you tell her Jaenelle is Witch?" Daemon asked softly.



Saetan took a sip of yarbarah, the blood wine, then closed his eyes to better savor the feel of tension and anger draining away as Daemon coaxed his muscles to relax. "No," he finally said. "I told her Jaenelle was the Queen, which should have been enough, but..."



"It wouldn't have mattered," Daemon said. "That last night, at the Winsol party, when I finally understood what Briarwood really was, I had intended to tell Alexandra about Jaenelle. I'd convinced myself that she would help me get Jaenelle away from Chaillot."



"But you didn't tell her."



Daemon's hands paused, then started working on another group of knotted muscles. "I overheard her tell another woman that Witch was only a symbol for the Blood, but if the living myth did appear, she hoped someone would have the courage to strangle it in its cradle."



A bolt of anger flashed through Saetan, but he couldn't tell if it was his or Daemon's. "Mother Night, how I hate that woman."



"Philip and Leland aren't exactly innocent."



"No, they're not, but they only follow Alexandra's lead both as their Queen and the family matriarch. She accused me of spinning lies to ensnare Jaenelle, but how many lies didthey tell by cloaking them in the conviction of truth?" He made a sound that might have been a bitter laugh. "I can tell you how many. We had years to observe the emotional scars their words left on her."



"And what happens when she finds out they're here?"



"We'll deal with that when it comes."



Daemon leaned closer, brushed his lips against Saetan's neck. "I can create a grave no one will ever find."



The kiss followed by that statement jolted Saetan enough to remember that this son still needed careful handling. He might indulge in imaginary gravedigging to channel some of his anger, but, just then, Daemon wouldn't hesitate to do it.



He jolted again when he felt the feather-light brush of dark, feminine power across the deepest edge of his inner barriers.



"Saetan?" Daemon said too softly.



Wolf song filled the night.



"No," Saetan replied gently but firmly as he stepped away far enough to turn and face Daemon. "It's too late for that."



"Why?"



"Because that chorus of welcome means Jaenelle is back." When Daemon paled, Saetan ran a hand down his son's arm. "Come to my study and have a drink with me. We'll bring Lucivar with us since he's probably fussed over Marian enough by now to annoy her."



"What about Jaenelle?"



Saetan smiled. "Boyo, after one of these trips, greeting males, no matter who they are, comes in a poor third on her list of priorities—the first being a very long, hot bath and the second being an enormous meal. Since we can't compete with those, we might as well sit back and relax while we wait for her to get around to us."



11 / Kaeleer



Surreal stormed through the corridors. Each time she came to an intersection, a silent, solemn-faced footman pointed in the right direction. Probably the first one had warned the others after she'd snarled at him, "Where's the High Lord's study?"



It struck her as a little odd that none of the servants had seemed startled by her roaring through the corridors wearing nothing but a nightgown. Well, considering that the witches had to deal with the males who lived in this place, it probably wasn't unusual.



When she finally reached the staircase that led down to the informal receiving room, she hitched her nightgown up to her knees to keep from tripping on the hem, raced down the stairs and into the great hall, and swore because the marble floor was cold against her bare feet. In lieu of a knock, she walloped the study door once and then stomped up to the blackwood desk where Saetan sat watching her, a glass of brandy raised halfway to his lips.



Daemon and Lucivar, comfortably slouched in two chairs in front of the desk, just stared at her.