Surreal crossed her legs and continued to play with the bottle of dark liquid. “Names first. Then we’ll begin.” She focused on the Queens: Dinah, Kathlene, Felisha, and Azara.
“We’re Queens, but Zoey is treated like she’s special,” Azara said.
“Because she’s tonguing a Yaslana,” Dinah said, sneering.
Well, you won’t last long here, Surreal thought. “That’s not the reason she’s special. Do you all realize that Zoey is the reason you’re here? That she’s the reason this protected training at the Hall was set up in the first place?” She waved a hand at the four Queens. “Did any of you know that?”
All four shook their heads, and Dinah looked miffed that she might owe Zoey anything.
Surreal wasn’t sure if they truly didn’t know why the Hall had become a training ground or if they didn’t want to admit knowing they were chosen to be here because they’d also been targeted by the coven of malice.
She looked at the four Queens, one by one, and held up the bottle of dark liquid. “Want to be special like Zoey?”
All the girls looked at the bottle.
“Safframate. A powerful, vicious aphrodisiac. One teaspoon of this, in this concentration, will guarantee you about seventy-two hours of agony and suffering and sexual need so fierce you’ll be begging and screaming for the boys to mount you and ram their cocks into you hour after hour after hour after hour. You’ll be torn and bloody and half mad from the pain, not to mention that your power will be broken and you’ll no longer wear a Jewel, and it still won’t be enough. But you won’t have to worry about that if you want to try a dose here. I’ll put a Gray shield around your room so the boys can’t reach you. I can’t say whether ramming a dildo between your legs and breaking the hymen will break your power the same as a flesh-and-blood cock, but I wouldn’t advise trying it. Of course, if you pound on the walls of the room until the bones in your hands break and the tendons in your shoulders tear, well, those things can be healed almost as good as new. You’re young and healthy, so the odds are good that your body won’t give out before the drug finally burns out of you. And if you spend weeks or months or years having nightmares, if you startle when someone approaches you without warning, if you flinch because of the lightest touch? Well, everything has a price, doesn’t it? You may still be a virgin who will have to go through her official Virgin Night; you may still have your power; but you won’t be innocent. You won’t be who you were. This will change you, will scar your body, mind, and heart.”
Smiling, Surreal waggled the bottle and looked at Kathlene, the Queen directly in front of her. “Want to have your life ripped apart in order to be special like Zoey?”
Kathlene swallowed hard. She shook her head.
Felisha shook her head. Azara hesitated, then shook her head. Dinah stared at the bottle.
Surreal stared at Dinah. “You have some romantic notion that Sadi would service you in order to see you through those seventy-two hours?” She shook her head. “If you were dosed by someone else at the Hall, he would do what was required to help you by arranging for trained individuals to walk with you, run with you, spar with you, as a way to help you burn out the drug. They would do that for hours, until you were too physically exhausted to stand. And while those individuals were giving you that help, Sadi would be taking apart the person who drugged you, layer by layer, piece by piece, body and mind—and he would find out everything that person knew, including any possibility of collusion on your part. And if you should be so foolish as to take the drug yourself in a misguided attempt to get him into your bed? Sugar, he would stand there and watch you suffer for the whole seventy-two hours, without any help from anyone.”
She looked at all of them. “Any questions? No? Then you should go on to your classes.”
They scurried out of the room—except Zoey’s five friends. Three hung back, leaving Jhett, the Black Widow, and Arlene, the Healer, to approach her.
“What happened to Zoey was private,” Jhett said. “It wasn’t fair to tell the rest of them without her consent.”
“You think no one has noticed how she reacts to an unexpected touch?” Surreal countered. “You think some of the girls haven’t done exactly that, coming too close to her without warning, just because they know how she’ll react even if they don’t know why? People, especially Queens, need to understand that there is a price for being special, and that price is usually very high. Zoey receives extra care and attention because she is still healing. Those other girls attacking her, whether they use words or fists, because she is still healing? Zoey’s friends should have had a quiet word with Lady Nadene or Lord Holt or Prince Raine to make them aware of what was happening, especially if yesterday wasn’t the first time the other Queens took a swipe at her. Protecting your Queen is one of the duties of members of a First Circle. It’s not tattling or bitching or whatever else someone might want to call it. It is your duty.”
“Would reporting it make a difference?”
She vanished the bottle. “Well, I’m here—aren’t I?—having this little chat with all of you because someone did report what happened. And you should all be grateful that Sadi is not here today.”
“You wouldn’t have let anyone take a dose of that,” Arlene said. “Since it’s so awful and possibly lethal, you wouldn’t have let anyone try it. Would you?”
Surreal just smiled—and walked away.
NINETEEN
Lucivar prowled one of the sitting rooms near the Queen’s part of the Keep, working to keep his temper leashed.
Children made mistakes. They were children, after all. But for this mistake? He needed to wrap a hammer in velvet in order to deliver the correct blow for this child.
He felt the presence of the Black, knew the moment Sadi set the Coach on the landing web closest to that part of the Keep.
*Bastard?* he called on a spear thread.
*Prick?*
*The Queen wants to see Daemonar first. But I want a word with the boy before he stands before her.* He waited a beat before adding, *I’ll deal with my daughter my way.*
He felt Daemon’s hesitation, and appreciated that his brother wanted to soften the blow heading toward the family’s sensitive child. Then something changed—and a chill filled the link between them.
*Yes,* Daemon purred, *better if you deal with her.*
Daemon broke the link.
Lucivar continued prowling the sitting room. Before leaving the Hall, Daemon had contacted him on an Ebon-gray psychic thread and told him Titian had crossed a line and had behaved in a way that wouldn’t be tolerated in an actual court, and Daemonar was hurting because of it. That told him enough, especially since Daemon was coldly displeased with Titian.
Daemon arrived a few minutes later, escorting all the troublesome children into the room.