“Is that a cat?” Andulvar asked, his eyes on the kitten. “I saw you arrive when I left the school eyrie.”
Well, that explained the boy’s hurry to get home.
“Can you say hello to our guests?” Lucivar said.
“Hello.” That aimed at the kitten.
“The other guests?”
Andulvar blinked, then turned his head. “Hi, Uncle Daemon.” He gave more of his attention to Grizande as he reached for Jaalan. “Who are you? Is this your cat?”
“Boyo, you’re fondling the tail of a Warlord Prince,” Lucivar said.
“Huh?”
“This is Lady Grizande,” Daemon said. “That is Prince Jaalan.”
The titles seeped into his boy’s brain. “They’re Blood?”
“They are Blood,” Lucivar agreed. Then he sighed. The boy was focused on the cat. The kitten was focused on the boy’s wings. “Come on.”
Lucivar led his guests and son into the eyrie, then turned and took the kitten through the glass doors that led to the play yard. He set Jaalan on the grass and gave boy and kitten a stern look. “No teeth, no claws, no fists. Play nice or you won’t be allowed to play together. Understood?”
“Yes, Papa,” Andulvar said.
Lucivar wasn’t sure how much the kitten understood, but the adults would soon find out. “All right. Go play.” He walked back into the eyrie and looked at Grizande, who watched the kitten bound after the boy. “There are shields around the yard to keep them from falling off the mountain. They’ll be all right.” More or less.
“Big noisy stay outside?” Grizande asked.
Daemon chuckled.
Lucivar grinned. “Yeah. Until the big noisy is tired enough to be quiet.” He sensed Marian’s presence a moment before she entered the front room. “Marian, this is Grizande. Witchling, this is my wife, Marian.”
He felt Grizande brace for an attack.
Marian walked up to Daemon first and gave him a kiss on the cheek before turning to the girl. “Welcome, Grizande. I have a room ready for you, if you’d like to see it.” She frowned. “Where is . . . ?”
A happy shout coming from the play yard.
“Oh,” Marian said. “Well, they can’t get into too much trouble out there.”
“One Warlord Prince is Lucivar’s son and the other is a tiger kitten,” Daemon said in a tone that sounded insincerely helpful. “How much trouble can they be?”
Marian smacked Daemon’s arm and huffed while she tried not to laugh.
Grizande blinked.
“I’ll keep an eye on them.” Daemon sounded chastened—and amused.
Grizande blinked again.
And so your education begins, witchling, Lucivar thought.
“I’ll show you to your room,” Marian said, focusing on Grizande. She looked at the men. “You two do whatever you’re supposed to do.”
“Well, that put you in your place,” Daemon said when the women headed into the warren of rooms that made up the eyrie.
“You’re one of the two, old son,” Lucivar replied. He watched Andulvar and Jaalan for a minute. “The girl is fairly easy with Warlord Princes but struggles with other women.”
“I noticed. But she trusted a Black Widow enough to leave everything she knew and come to the Hall.”
“If the girl is being hunted, do you think that Black Widow is still alive?”
The air chilled. “I’ll ask some of the demon-dead to keep watch for any Tigre witches arriving in the Dark Realm. If something happened to the people who helped Grizande get away, I’ll know soon enough.”
You’ll know when they die. But if they’re captured and tortured, who can say how long they’ll endure before you have an answer?
“Tigrelan is not our Territory, Prick. There’s nothing we can do.”
“I know. But that girl isn’t in Tigrelan anymore.”
“No,” Daemon said too softly. “She’s under my hand now.”
Protected by the High Lord of Hell. And Witch.
Grizande followed the female Lucivar called wife. Same as mate?
As they walked through wide corridors carved from the living mountain, she looked for cages and traps. For betrayal.
Marian opened a door and walked into a room that held a large bed and small bedside tables, a wardrobe and dresser, a chair and floor lamp. A window without bars, but shields could also make a prison. This witch didn’t have that kind of power, but if she wanted it to be so, would Prince Lucivar use his Ebon-gray to create a cage?
“This room is closer to our bedroom, in case you have any questions or wake up uneasy,” Marian said. “The bathroom is just down the corridor. I’ll show you.” A hesitation. “Did anyone at the Hall ask you about moontime supplies? Do you need some? Or any other supplies?”
Kindness. Caring. Grizande looked around the room. Simple. Clean. But the quilt on the bed, in colors of the forest . . .
When she pressed her hand against it, she could pick up some of Marian’s psychic scent. Too much scent for just handling. Scent held over from the making? “Beautiful,” she said softly.
“Thank you.”
“You make?”
“Yes, I did.”
Memories almost forgotten out of necessity rose and raked Grizande’s heart.
“Grizande?” Marian sounded concerned, as if feelings mattered.
How to explain to this woman when she didn’t have the words anyone here would understand? “Mother.” She waved a hand to indicate the room and what its clean simplicity meant.
“This reminds you of her?” Marian asked.
She nodded. “Dead long time.”
“Ah.” A pause. “Would you like a hug?”
“Hug?”
Marian opened her arms. An invitation.
The Hourglass had raised her, protected her, trained her in basic Craft, because of her bloodline. But they had kept their distance from her. It hurt now to be held by a woman, by a mother. It hurt—but it also felt good. Felt safe in a way her mind barely remembered but her body did.
“You’ve had an eventful couple of days,” Marian said. “Would you like to stay in your room and rest or come out and join us?”
“Join big noisy.”
Marian laughed. “Come on, then.”
When they reached the large front room, Marian stopped and looked around. “I guess we’re on our own. Oh! Daemon.”
Prince Sadi appeared in an archway. “Darling, do you mind if Grizande and I use your kitchen table?”
“I don’t mind as long as you don’t get in the way of me making dinner,” she replied.
“I would never get in the way of dinner preparations,” he said dryly. “Not with your hoard.”
Grizande followed them into the kitchen. Marian pulled food out of a cold box and set bowls and other tools on the counter. Humming a tune that sounded bittersweet, she began her work.
Prince Sadi took a seat at the table and indicated that Grizande should sit beside him. He placed a sheet of paper and a writing tool in front of her. He picked up another writing tool, and on the paper in front of him made careful shapes. Then he pointed to the paper in front of her. “Now you try.”
She studied the shapes on his paper, picked up her writing tool, and copied them.
The Prince nodded. “That is your name. That is how ‘Grizande’ looks in the common tongue.” He looked at her. “In Tigre?”
She wrote her name in the language of her people. He studied it, copied what she’d done, then asked, “Is that correct?”
“Yes.” Her name. The Hourglass had taught her what they could of the common tongue, but they hadn’t known this.
The Prince drew more symbols below her name. “Daemon.”