The Shadow Queen

So she got up feeling pissy. If she hadn’t been eavesdropping, she would have had a good ride last night and would have been feeling just fine this morning.



But she was out there digging in that damn garden so everyone would know little Cassidy was feeling pouty.



She’d snapped at Ranon when he’d gone out to talk to her, told him flat out to leave her alone. And when he, Theran, had approached her, she had screamed at him. Screamed. Scared Gray so much the boy had been hovering around the terrace ever since.



She’ll stop when she gets tired of playing the wounded party, Theran thought. Hell’s fire, it’s not like I actually did anything.



“What in the name of Hell is going on here?”



Theran spun around and stared at the Red-Jeweled Eyrien standing in the doorway. A Warlord Prince whose glazed gold eyes were a warning that the man was standing close to the killing edge, if he wasn’t already dancing on it.



Ranon shifted into a fighting stance.



The Eyrien stepped out on the terrace, ignoring Ranon, his eyes fixed on Cassidy.



“You don’t want to start a pissing contest with me,” the Eyrien said to Ranon. “You really don’t.” He turned his head, and Theran felt the punch of power as those gold eyes stared at him.



He was looking at death. This man was a stranger who had walked into his home and should be challenged, but he knew, with absolute certainty, that he was looking at death.



Then the Eyrien fixed his eyes on Gray. “You do anything to piss her off?” he asked mildly.



Gray shook his head.



“Then get me two large buckets of cold water, and put them over there.” He pointed to a spot near the stairs leading down to the lawn. “Do it now.”



Gray bolted.



“What are you going to do?” Theran asked.



“What you should have done,” the Eyrien replied. “Take care of your Queen.”



“She ordered us to leave her alone,” Ranon said.



The Eyrien snorted. “And you let her get away with that? Well, she knows better than to say that to me.”



As soon as Gray returned with the buckets of water, the Eyrien headed for Cassidy. When he got close to her, he whistled sharply.



Her head came up—and the hoe came up like a weapon. The Eyrien simply grabbed the wood between her hands and tugged. She yanked back. He tugged. Then he yanked, lifting her off her feet for a moment before he turned and walked back to the terrace, dragging her with him.



Her feet kept trying to find purchase, but she skimmed along the top of the grass while the Eyrien ignored her increasingly shrill demands.



“It’s my hoe!” Cassidy yelled, still fighting the Eyrien as he yanked her up high enough to clear the terrace steps. “Let go! It’s mine!”



“Uh-huh.” The Eyrien set her down in front of the buckets.



“Mine!”



A fast twist of his wrist, and the length of the hoe handle between Cassidy’s hands snapped off cleanly. He tossed it off the terrace.



“You broke my hoe!” Cassidy wailed. “You broke my hoe!”



As she threw down the broken pieces, the buckets rose up behind her and doused her with cold water.



Her shriek had all of them jumping back. Except the Eyrien.



“Have I got your attention now, witchling?” the Eyrien asked.



“You—” Cassidy blinked. Stared at the man.



“Yeah. Remember me?”



“Oh, shit.” Her eyes skipped over Theran and settled on Ranon and the others before coming back to the Eyrien.



“Listen up, Cassie, because I’ll only tell you this once,” the Eyrien said. “If you have a problem with your court, you deal with your court. And if they end up with a few bruises because of it, so be it.”



“A Queen doesn’t do that to her court,” Cassidy said.



The Eyrien grabbed her wrists and turned her hands palms up. “And a woman doesn’t do this to herself.”



Theran looked at Cassidy’s hands and felt his stomach roll. How could she have done that? Why didn’t she stop?



She looked at her hands—and grew pale.



“You ever do anything like this again, I’ll haul you back to Kaeleer,” the Eyrien said. “And I’ll bury anyone who tries to stop me.”



“You have no right to—”



“You do anything like this again, I will haul you back to Kaeleer, and you can explain to your father why you did this to his daughter.”



Kick in the gut. Her lower lip quivered. Her eyes filled with tears. The damn Eyrien knew right where to hit her to take all the fight out of her.



Bastard.



“Do you have a Healer?” the Eyrien asked.



“Yes,” Cassidy said.



“Then you call her, and you get those hands fixed. I’ll look in on you in a little while. We’ve got some things to talk about.”



She stumbled a little when she headed for the door, and she flinched away from him when Theran reached out to give her a little support through the doorway.



He waited until he was sure she was out of sight and hearing before he looked at the Eyrien. “Who do you—”



His back slammed into the house. The Eyrien’s forearm pressed against his chest, holding him in place.



Hell’s fire. He hadn’t even seen the man move.



“The only reason a woman does that to herself is because she’s running from pain that hurts a lot more,” the Eyrien snarled. “And in my experience, the source of that kind of pain is usually attached to a cock. I’m guessing you’re the reason she was out there this morning. Whatever the problem is, you’d better fix it. Because if I ever find her in that shape again, boyo, I will skin you alive.”



The Eyrien stepped back. Theran sagged against the wall.



The Eyrien looked at Ranon, who stiffened but offered no challenge. “Does the Master of the Guard live in this house?”



“Yes,” Ranon replied. “But he’s not available until sundown.”



“I’m aware of that. I have a delivery for him. And a few things to discuss.”



The Eyrien walked into the house. No one asked him where he was going.



“Mother Night,” Ranon said. Then he looked at Theran. “You all right?”



“Bruises. Nothing more.” Except he had looked at death.



The Eyrien wasn’t bluffing about skinning him alive.



Cassidy walked into the healing room Shira had set up in the wing that held the working rooms for the court.



“What’s going on?” Shira said. “Ranon keeps calling me on a psychic thread, telling me to get to the healing room as fast as I can, and I’ve never heard him sound so nervous. What’s . . . ?”



Cassidy held out her hands.



“Mother Night!”



Shira hurried around the table where she mixed her tonics and healing brews. Her hands hovered around Cassidy’s but didn’t touch.



Cassidy kept her eyes fixed on a spot over Shira’s left shoulder. “Can you fix them?”



Shira let out a quivering sigh. “I think so. It’s going to take a while just to clean them out and see how bad it really is, but I think so.” She led Cassidy to a chair at one end of the table.



Cassidy sat quietly, cocooned in pain. She didn’t pay attention as Shira hustled around the healing room, gathering supplies and starting a series of different brews to cleanse and heal. But she did look over when Shira placed a basin on the table.



“What’s that for?” she asked.



Shira gave her a long look. “This isn’t going to be easy, and I’m thinking one or both of us is going to need to puke in that basin before this is done.”



Gray followed the Eyrien who had dared to dump cold water over Cassie. Who had yelled at Cassie.



Bastard.



Why didn’t Theran or Ranon say anything? Why did they let him do that?



The bastard had no right. He—“had no right!”



The Eyrien stopped and turned his head just enough to indicate he knew someone was behind him. Had probably known all along.



The man was power and temper like he’d never felt before, but he would have his say.



“She’s our Queen!” Gray shouted. “Ours! You had no right to be scolding her or getting her wet.”



The Eyrien turned to look at him. “Your Queen,” he said quietly. “Why didn’t you stop her?”



His eyes filled with frustrated tears. “She wouldn’t let me. She ordered me to stay away, to leave her alone. And she got hurt.” His shoulders sagged. “She got hurt.”



The Eyrien took a step closer. “The first law is not obedience. The first law is to honor, cherish, and protect. The second is to serve. The third is to obey.”



“But if you don’t obey, you get punished.”



The Eyrien studied him. “Everything has a price. You take a chance of being punished, even killed, for challenging a Queen even if you’re doing it to protect her, but you accept that risk and do what you should. If the Queen is truly worthy of your loyalty, she’ll understand the reason for the challenge and back down. Doesn’t mean she’ll like it or be happy with the man, but she’ll back down.”



“She told everyone to leave her alone.” It had been so painful to watch her, to know she was hurting and not be able to stop her.



“Someone hurt her and—”



“Who?” Gray felt something in him stir. “Who hurt Cassie?”



“I don’t know, and that’s healthier for everyone,” the Eyrien said. “I do know she was hurting before she went out into the garden, and she was trying to sweat out some of the hurt and temper. Her First Escort should have given her an hour; then he should have used Protocol to stop her. And if that didn’t work, he should have fought her into the ground.”



Gray frowned. “Protocol? But those are just words.”



“Yeah. And one sentence that used the right words could have stopped this.”



He’d gotten a glimpse of Cassie’s hands. One sentence could have stopped that?

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