That much done, he pulled out his pocket watch and gave it a long look. “Time to be heading home, Caitie girl.”
Which meant it was time for Saetien to pack up too; the Warlord with the cart came trotting up the lane and would not take kindly to being kept waiting for long.
Saetien eyed the Scelties. Shelby just wagged his tail, but the adult Sceltie who had been watching his two sheep . . . Someone besides Caitie’s father had decided it was time for the girls to go home and play with the foals.
“Caitie can ride with me and see Stormchaser before going home,” Saetien said as she wiped off Eileen’s gardening tools and gathered up the rest of her supplies.
“Well then, I’ll ride along with you.”
They climbed into the cart and headed home, with Caitie’s father riding alongside.
She’d left the wheelbarrow piled high with weeds again, and no one could miss the difference between the ground she and Caitie had cleared and all the work still to be done.
But there was a different kind of work that needed to be done once the sun set.
“Do you want to come inside?” Butler asked when Saetien arrived that evening.
“No, I want you to show me how to use Craft to remove something from the ground,” she replied as she walked over to a spot in the flower beds and pointed to a clump of plants. “How do I remove that using Craft?”
“You could use a shovel or a spade.”
“I could if you had tools that weren’t falling apart.” She took a breath. “Let’s pretend there is a buried chest and I don’t have any tools and I’m miles from any town, and I want to get the chest out of the ground because it might contain something important. How would I do that?”
“So we’re after buried treasure—is that it?” He sounded amused—and he sounded intrigued. Willing to play along.
“Yes.” Had her father tried to show her how to do this bit of Craft? Probably. But somehow, learning from him had made everything so dreadfully important because he was so important. And things had changed inside her head when Papa stopped being just Papa and was also the Warlord Prince of Dhemlan in a way that made that title more than just words.
But Butler could teach her how to extract buried treasure from the ground.
“All right, then. With a lot of practice you could stand a few feet away and pass the chest through the ground like you’d pass any object through another, or you could vanish the chest and call it back in. But if you’re not sure what’s in the chest, and you have to dig it out without doing any actual digging . . .” Butler knelt in front of the bed and waited for Saetien to join him. He hesitated a moment, then put his hands over hers. “You want to take care to get all of what you’re after, but you don’t want to spend your power on taking up more than you need. So first you release a psychic thread to give you the shape of the object.” He guided her hands, let her follow the power he was using to shape the lesson. “Once you have the shape—you don’t want to nip off a corner of the chest and have the treasure spilling out—you create a shield around it, like this. And then you . . . lift.”
The clump of plants rose out of the ground, soil clinging to the roots.
“Since this isn’t a chest, what are you going to do with the plants?” Butler asked.
“Put them back tonight,” Saetien replied, lowering the clump of plants into the hole created by their removal. “I haven’t decided if they will stay or go.” She stood and brushed off her trousers.
Butler sat back on his heels and waited.
“Did he know?” Saetien finally asked. “Did Daemon Sadi know how much pain Jaenelle Angelline endured in order to come back to him? Was he . . . selfish . . . not letting her go?”
Butler rose and stared at the land beyond the cottage. “He knew there was pain. Everyone who saw her could sense that there was pain. He knew she was fragile for months after he was allowed to bring her back to the Hall. But she never shared what it felt like as her body exploded and was caught in all the healing webs the Arachnians had made. Daemon did not—and does not—know the extent of that pain or what it felt like when she rose from the healing webs too soon and had to endure the rest of the healing awake and aware. At that point, she was the primary Healer and was putting her own body back together. He didn’t know what that felt like. Neither did Saetan or Lucivar.”
“Why do you?” she asked softly.
“A few years before her body died of old age, Jaenelle and I talked about that time in her life. She shared with me the truth about what happened to her when she unleashed her power to save her friends and Kaeleer. She opened a place within herself that she’d kept well guarded for all those years, and I felt what she felt in that moment. Hideous, unimaginable pain. I wept for her, and she said, ‘Everything has a price, Butler. To be with Daemon? It wasn’t too high a price to pay.’ ”
Saetien couldn’t blink back all the tears. “He meant that much to her.”
“He still does,” Butler said gently.
“But why did she tell you?”
“She’d spun a tangled web of dreams and visions, and it showed her that she needed to tell me about that time because I would meet someone someday who would be on a heart quest and would need to know. I guess that’s you.”
Her breath caught. A sob escaped. Butler gathered Saetien in his arms and held her while she cried.
Butler, it’s time.
Sometimes a heart had to break in order to heal. He and Jaenelle understood that all too well.
“Her road isn’t yours,” he said. “You have to find the shape of your own life, Saetien. And you will find it if you allow yourself to look.”
They were still standing there when Kieran drove up to take Saetien home.
SIXTY-ONE
Daemon studied the two letters, then opened Kieran’s first.
A careful report about Saetien’s activities. Puppy school. Playing with the foals. Making a friend her equivalent age.
Everything right and proper for an aristo girl visiting an aristo family, especially the family of the Warlord of Maghre. But not a word about Butler, which had to be a deliberate omission.
Sighing, Daemon set Kieran’s letter aside before opening Saetien’s letter.
He read it twice and still didn’t know what to think.
A quick knock on the study door before Surreal walked in. “Sadi, I’m heading back to the sanctuary.” She paused. “Is something wrong?”
“A letter from Saetien.”
“Has she learned anything about Wilhelmina Benedict?”
“I don’t know.” Daemon checked the back of the letter in case he’d missed something. He hadn’t. “She’s seriously pissed off at Butler for neglecting his gardens, which could be lovely if someone cared about them, and for being so indifferent about his gardening tools that he’s let them rust and rot.”
“Being demon-dead, I don’t imagine he spends much time in the garden,” Surreal said.
“That doesn’t seem to be a sufficient excuse.”
Surreal blew out a breath. “Well, she always was pretty fierce about that patch of garden that you and Tarl let her claim for her own.”
“And woe to any gardener in training who overlooked a weed growing anywhere near her patch.” Daemon folded the letter and vanished it.
“What are you going to do?”
He gave Surreal a dry smile. “Figure out how to answer her letter without getting Butler into more trouble.”