Judging the distance to the water, Daemonar created a Green bubble shield around them and folded his wings.
Jaenelle Saetien screamed as they fell.
*Hold . . . ,* he began on a psychic thread.
No time. They hit the water and went down like a stone halfway to the bottom of the pool before the buoyancy of the bubble shield popped them back to the surface. They rolled a bit in the Craft-made bubble before he eliminated the shield and they went under a second time.
“You okay?” he asked when they surfaced.
She tipped her head back and whooped, a sound full of the joy he also felt. “That was wonderful! Daemonar, let’s . . .”
“Hell’s fire,” he muttered when he spotted movement on the riverbank.
“What?” Treading water, she looked in the same direction. “Uh-oh.”
“Yeah. Uh-oh.”
Lucivar Yaslana, the Warlord Prince of Askavi, stood on the bank, watching them. He didn’t shout, didn’t make a come-here motion with his hand. He just watched them.
That could not be good.
“Come on,” Daemonar said. “We’d better not keep him waiting.”
They swam to the bank, fighting the current with every stroke. Well, he fought the current, aiming for the ground where his father waited. Jaenelle Saetien either wasn’t strong enough or wasn’t trying hard enough to reach stern judgment, so the river floated her away from her uncle. Lucivar paced her, letting her struggle—more than necessary, in Daemonar’s opinion—until she finally reached the river’s edge.
Lucivar reached down and pulled her up to the bank.
Daemonar let the current take him to that spot on the bank. When Lucivar reached down, he accepted his father’s hand, unable to decipher the look in those gold eyes. His father had a volatile temper, even by Eyrien standards. It should have been in evidence and wasn’t—and that was a worry.
“It was my fault, Uncle Lucivar,” Jaenelle Saetien said. “It was my idea to build the raft.”
“I figured that.” Lucivar looked them over. Satisfied that there were no apparent injuries, he studied the river and said mildly, “Listen carefully, witchling. If you ever test that river and waterfall again—or any river or waterfall anywhere in Askavi—without my permission, you will be banned from Askavi for a year. All of Askavi, including my home. Do you understand me?”
Daemonar’s jaw dropped, and he imagined his expression matched Jaenelle Saetien’s. No visits for a year?
“But . . . ,” Jaenelle Saetien began.
“Do. You. Understand?”
Oh, Hell’s fire. There was the heat of temper under the mildness.
“Yes, sir,” she replied.
“Then let’s get you home and into dry clothes.” Lucivar wrapped them both in Red shields and took them with him when he caught the Red Wind, one of those psychic roads in the Darkness, and headed back to the Yaslana eyrie.
The Winds were connected to the power in the Jewels the Blood wore. The darker the Wind, the faster you traveled. Traveling on the Red, which Daemonar couldn’t have used on his own since the Red was darker than his Green, they arrived at the eyrie too fast. He wasn’t ready for the reckoning that had to be coming.
When they arrived at the eyrie, Lucivar handed Jaenelle Saetien over to Daemonar’s mother, Marian, then looked at him.
“Get cleaned up. I’ll be waiting for you in my study.”
“Yes, sir.” Nothing else he could say.
“Do I want to know what the two of you were doing?” Marian asked.
“No, Auntie Marian, you really don’t,” Jaenelle Saetien replied.
“I want to know,” Andulvar said, joining them in the large front room.
*I’ll tell you later,* Daemonar said on a psychic spear thread.
He smelled like the river, which wasn’t a bad smell at all, but because he’d be closed in a room with his father and wasn’t sure what kind of discussion they were going to have, Daemonar took a fast shower before getting dressed and reporting to his father’s study.
He usually liked the room in the family eyrie where his father took care of the business of ruling Ebon Rih, the valley that lived in the shadow of the mountain called Ebon Askavi. Also known as the Keep, Ebon Askavi held a vast library, was the repository for the Blood’s history, a sanctuary for the darkest-Jeweled Blood—and the private lair of Witch.
He often did his schoolwork in his father’s study, sitting quietly while Lord Rothvar, Lucivar’s second-in-command, reported on the Blood and landen villages in the valley or received orders for the other Eyriens who protected Ebon Rih. The men knew he listened, and he knew anything they considered private was discussed on a psychic communication thread. He also knew that when Lucivar, who had trouble reading, asked him to read a document out loud, it was as much to give him a glimpse at what it meant to be a leader as it was to help his father.
Maybe someday, if he proved worthy, he would be the one ruling Ebon Rih while Lucivar took care of holding the lines of Blood law and honor throughout the rest of Askavi.
Since he couldn’t measure how much trouble he was in while standing outside the door, Daemonar knocked, waited for permission to enter, and went in.
Lucivar wasn’t sitting behind the desk; he leaned against it and gave the boy a careful study before shaking his head. “Tell me all of it.”
Daemonar told him all of it, from the first glimmer of the idea to building the raft. He even threw in the words about the difference between calculated risks and foolish ones—and heard his father snort in an effort to suppress a laugh.
Still no sign of anger or disappointment or anything except . . . amusement?
“Hold out your arms,” Lucivar said.
Daemonar obeyed and said nothing while Lucivar ran his hands over shoulders and arms before moving around to examine back muscles.
“You are going to be hurting sore by tomorrow, boyo,” Lucivar said. “You don’t have the muscles or the strength yet to carry that much weight safely.”
“I wouldn’t have dropped her,” he replied defensively.
“No, you would have gone down with her, because that’s who you are.” Lucivar came around again and looked Daemonar in the eyes. “Smarter to use Craft and the reservoir of power in your Jewels to lift something that’s too heavy to lift otherwise. So I guess those are the Craft lessons we’ll be working on this week.”
Lucivar’s hands rested on the boy’s shoulders, and the strength and power Daemonar felt in those hands reminded him that he had a lot of growing up to do.
“Did you have fun challenging the rapids?” Lucivar asked, that mild tone still a worry to the boy.
“Yes, sir.” Daemonar grinned. Couldn’t help it.
“Then I guess another thing you need to learn is how to build a better raft.”
He studied his father. “You’re not angry.”
Lucivar stepped back to lean against the desk again. “Well, I can’t get pissy about you and Jaenelle Saetien doing the same thing your aunt Jaenelle and I did. Only we rode those rapids and went over that waterfall on a raft built out of nothing but kindling and Craft. Twice.”
“Twice?” Daemonar’s voice rose to the point of cracking. “Hell’s fire! Doing it once was a dumb-ass thing to do but . . .” He stopped and considered who he was talking to. “I mean . . .”
“It was a dumb-ass idea. Both times. But I imagine I did it for the same reason you did. That sparkle in the eyes that warns you that she’s going to try this with or without you, and the thought of her doing it without whatever skill and strength you can give . . .”
“No.” Daemonar shook his head. “We couldn’t do that.”