Her head ached and she felt a little sick. This wasn’t what she’d expected. Not at all what she’d expected.
“Let’s talk about Jewels,” she said. That should be safe enough.
It felt like time slowed until she would have been able to see each grain of sand fall in an hourglass if one had been present. Then Butler opened the gate in the picket fence and said, “Come in and wait.”
He went into the cottage. Saetien stepped past the gate. Just one step, but it felt like she’d crossed some threshold that would change everything.
Butler returned a minute later carrying a cloth bag. A table appeared in front of Saetien, a ball of witchlight hanging above it. He called in a purple gemstone and placed it on the table. Might be a piece of amethyst. Then again, it might be colored glass.
“Wilhelmina’s Birthright Jewel was Purple Dusk,” Butler said.
“You mentioned that before,” she replied when it seemed like he was waiting for her to acknowledge . . . something.
He opened the cloth bag and poured out pieces of colored glass, then arranged the pieces in the order of the Jewels: White, Yellow, Tiger Eye, Rose, Summer-sky, Purple Dusk, Opal, Green, Sapphire, Red, Gray, Ebon-gray—and thirteen Black.
“Jaenelle’s Birthright.”
Saetien looked at the colored glass. “Which one?” Had to be Red, if Jaenelle Angelline had worn the Black.
“All of them,” Butler said quietly.
She stared at him. “All of . . . ? How?”
“When Jaenelle was seven years old, Lorn, the last Prince of the Dragons, gifted her with a full set of Jewels, from White to Ebon-gray, and thirteen Black Jewels to hold her reservoir of power. Seven years old and she already eclipsed the High Lord of Hell’s power, already stood deeper in the abyss than he could hope to reach. So powerful. So very powerful, and able to do things no one had ever done before or will ever do again. But she was still a child, still dependent on the adults around her, still vulnerable to the demands of the adults who controlled her. A truth that pertains to all children.”
Had Jaenelle Angelline realized she was so different from the rest of the Blood? Or had she simply accepted the way things were because that was the way things were and kept tripping every time she did something no one else could do, only to have people tell her she was fibbing, that she couldn’t possibly do that?
Butler pushed the piece of dark blue glass out of the line until it was between Jaenelle’s Jewels and Wilhelmina’s.
“On that last night when everything changed, there was a children’s party. The purpose of the party was for men like Robert and Kartane to select a couple of girls who would be drugged and raped. Broken of their power. Then the girls would be declared emotionally hysterical and taken to Briarwood to cure them. Wilhelmina was chosen but Jaenelle intervened, holding off the men who were going to take Wilhelmina to a room upstairs to recover from drinking too much sparkling wine. Wilhelmina was fourteen. Jaenelle was twelve.”
Her eyes stung, but she wasn’t going to cry. Not here. Not yet. “They put something in the wine?”
“Yes. Daemon was there that night, a pleasure slave serving in Alexandra’s court. He had planned to get Jaenelle out of Chaillot, but Alexandra took Jaenelle away and left him to get Wilhelmina back to the Angelline estate. By the time he realized she’d done that in order to take Jaenelle to Briarwood and have Hayllian guards in place to capture and control him . . . Alexandra used the Ring of Obedience, poured agony into him to cripple him so that he couldn’t fight the guards. But he did fight—and he did escape, did manage to break the Ring of Obedience by unleashing the full power of his Black Jewel. That power also ripped through the Blood in Beldon Mor, shattering a lot of Jewels, killing some people. When it was over, Wilhelmina was wearing a Sapphire Jewel.” Butler tapped the piece of glass. “This Jewel. Jaenelle’s Sapphire. Wilhelmina couldn’t use it—she wasn’t powerful enough to use it—but there were shields in that Jewel that kept her protected from men like Robert. When she made the Offering to the Darkness and acquired her own Sapphire Jewel, Jaenelle’s Sapphire disappeared.”
Butler called in another piece of dark blue glass and set it next to Wilhelmina’s Purple Dusk. Then he moved the other Sapphire back in line with the rest of Jaenelle’s Jewels. He hesitated a moment before moving six of the black pieces just enough to separate them from the rest. “When Jaenelle made the Offering to the Darkness—something she had to do before setting up her official court—six of the Black Jewels were transformed into a Jewel called Ebony. Darker than the Black, and a much deeper reservoir of power. Power beyond imagining—until the war between Kaeleer and Terreille.”
He gathered up all the pieces of glass and put them back in the bag. “That’s enough for today.”
“But . . . What about my father? Did he escape with her?”
Butler hesitated. “No. He and Saetan managed to keep Jaenelle connected to her body—and he got her promise that she wouldn’t sever the connection between her body and her Self. But after that ordeal, he was too exhausted, too damaged, to do anything more. It was Cassandra, the previous Queen of Ebon Askavi, who took Jaenelle to the Keep. And it was Surreal who helped Daemon elude the guards who were hunting for him and found a place for him to hide until he recovered.” He shuddered. “Enough.”
The table vanished. Butler walked into the cottage and closed the door.
Still so much she wanted to know, but she felt battered and already had so much to think about.
As she walked away from the cottage, the witchlight that had hung above the table faded, and another witchlight appeared above the pony cart.
Kieran studied her face. “You got some answers?”
“Some.”
“Not what you expected?”
“No. But it’s given me a lot to think about.”
Kieran didn’t try to fill the silence, and she was grateful. She did have a lot to think about. Like, her father wore a Black Jewel. Yes, it had been made into a pendant and a ring, and there were probably smaller chips of the Jewel that he used for other things, but it was still one Jewel.
Jaenelle Angelline had been powerful enough to need thirteen Black Jewels for her reservoir of power. When she was seven years old.
How old had she been when she had started protecting her sister from men like Robert Benedict and Kartane SaDiablo?
If Jaenelle had loved Wilhelmina that much, what had gone wrong between them?
THIRTY-SEVEN
*Puppy school, Saeti? We go to puppy school?*
Saetien buttoned up the long thick sweater and eyed Shelby’s wagging tail. She’d planned to go to the stables and work with Ryder and Kildare for a bit, maybe see if they’d let her ride one of the regular horses so that she could understand the difference between them and the kindred.
“I don’t know if we’re allowed to go to puppy school.”
*Why not?*
“I—”
He started whining—that particular pitch of whining that made it sound like his little heart was breaking because she wouldn’t allow him to do something.
She wouldn’t give in to that whine. She wouldn’t. It wouldn’t be good for him if she buckled and gave in.
Hell’s fire, had her father felt like this when she’d whined about not getting something she wanted? Where did an adult draw the line between buckling in order to stop that sound and compromising in a way that was reasonable?