“Are you telling me this shit is being brought in through this Gate in Askavi?” He felt his temper burn hot and fierce as he rose to the killing edge.
“Some of it,” Daemon said. “It’s likely coming in through other Territories that have a Gate, but there’s nothing I can do about that except inform the Queens.”
“Why didn’t you tell me until now?”
“I had no way to confirm it.” A quiet laugh, cutting and cold. “Oh, I knew from having chats with fools who didn’t survive the attempt to return to Terreille that items were being smuggled in because any goods coming into Dhemlan are inspected, and these items weren’t something anyone wanted me to know about. But the smugglers didn’t know what they were bringing into Kaeleer, just that the money was worth the risk.”
“Inspectors can be bribed to let goods in.”
“Not after they are required to witness a slow execution of someone who had betrayed my trust.”
The murderously sweet smile. The glazed eyes.
Hell’s fire, Bastard. You won’t be able to hide who, and what, you are for much longer.
Lucivar looked at the sack. “I gather this smuggler didn’t live long enough to deliver the goods. So what’s inside?”
Daemon raised a hand. Using Craft, he opened the sack.
Lucivar’s breath caught. His stomach rolled. And everything in him screamed that he needed to fight.
“Coincidence?” Daemon asked. “Or was this shipment timed for a particular event?”
He stared at the gold rings lying on top of other items. He didn’t need to touch one to feel the malevolence crawling through the metal.
“A Ring of Obedience is the only way to control a Warlord Prince if he doesn’t choose to serve.” Daemon waited a beat, then said, “Orian?”
“She’s ignored Daemonar since that collision when they were children. She resents him for the training she was required to have with the Queens in Ebon Rih.” The girl was especially resentful for the apprenticeships she’d had to serve in the courts of the Queens ruling Agio and Doun since she’d had to live away from home and those Queens had insisted that fun was a reward for good work and good behavior.
For a while, it had seemed the time away had helped Orian settle back into the girl she had been before her mother had embraced a warped idea of what a Queen was entitled to claim.
“She was at the eyrie tonight,” Daemon pointed out.
“Every Eyrien youngster within the appropriate age was invited to the eyrie. And Daemonar’s Rihlander friends as well, both male and female, aristo and not aristo.”
“If your boy is old enough to make the Blood Run, Orian is old enough to have her Virgin Night. And once that happens, she won’t continue to ignore him, Prick. He is a handsome young man who comes from a wealthy, powerful aristo family. He is also the only available Eyrien Warlord Prince in Kaeleer. And in case you hadn’t noticed, he’s entered the first stage of his sexual heat.”
Lucivar vanished his war blade, then scrubbed his hands over his face. “I noticed. And I noticed how all the females in Riada have noticed. He and I have talked about why some people respond differently to him now.”
“Which of us is going to tell him about the Ring of Obedience and what it can do—and why he needs to be vigilant from now on?”
“I’ll tell him, and I’ll let him know he can talk to you as well.”
“Don’t soften it, Lucivar. Give him the worst truth you know about being Ringed.”
“His first lesson as a man?”
“At least he’s learning it when he’s old enough to be considered a man.”
Lucivar shivered at the reminder that, in so many ways, Daemon was what he was because of what had been done to him as a child. “Let’s get out of here. We’ve been gone long enough.”
Daemon vanished the sack. “I’ll look through what’s here and let you know if anything else poses a threat.”
Nodding, Lucivar led the way out of the Sleeping Dragon. Before they caught the Winds back to the eyrie, he said, “Who is going to tell Witch?”
“I will,” Daemon replied.
“I guess it’s time to prepare for war.”
“We don’t know the enemy yet.”
“But we know one of the weapons the enemy will bring to the fight.” As soon as he said the words, Lucivar felt the change in his brother’s temper.
“Yes,” the Sadist whispered. “We know that much.”
ELEVEN
After a few days of Daemonar’s silence and sharp looks, Lucivar was delighted to see Titian when she walked into his study. He understood his boy’s need for distance after being told—after being shown—what a Ring of Obedience could do, but he wondered if he’d made a mistake sharing one memory of how the Ring was used to punish a man.
Pushing that worry aside, he smiled at Titian. His smile faded when she closed the door, perched on the edge of one of the chairs in front of his blackwood desk, and gave him a smile that held a lot of nerves and a dollop of courage.
He knew what that meant. His sweet little witchling was about to stab him in the heart.
“Father . . .” She hesitated.
Father, not Papa. Another sign that she was shedding—or shredding—childhood. And that meant he had to strap some steel to his spine and help her.
“Titian . . . ?”
“I want to go to school. To study art. It’s time, Papa.”
It was time. Titian had been drawing and painting for centuries now, developing her own artistic style. During all those years, she’d retreated from every suggestion he or Daemon had made about taking lessons. Now, it seemed, she was ready to take that step.
And now, it seemed, he wasn’t quite as ready to let her go.
Show some balls, old son. “All right. We can look into . . .”
“In Amdarh,” Titian added hurriedly. “There’s a private school in Amdarh that has an art course. Zoey is going to be there. Lady Zhara has already reviewed the school’s credentials and given her approval. But . . .” She winced. “It’s expensive, but I could use my allowance to help pay for it.”
Lucivar sat back and eyed his daughter. Did she think the cost was the issue? He might live simply for a man who came from an aristo bloodline, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t wealthy. Taken as a whole, the SaDiablo family was the wealthiest family in the entire Realm of Kaeleer. Daemon had seen to that, as had their father before him.
In Amdarh, Titian would be under Daemon’s hand, even if she boarded at the school. He could count on his brother to know what was happening in his daughter’s life—or at least know as much as any man could know about a daughter.
He pushed back from the desk and headed for the door. “Come with me.”
She followed him through the eyrie’s corridors until they reached the large front room. He kept going, using Craft to open the glass doors to the yard where the children played and practiced their fighting skills in good weather. As he walked into the yard, he called in two sparring sticks and held one out to her.
“Papa . . .”
She seemed to wilt in front of his eyes, reminding him how easily this child’s heart could bruise, how easily she could be damaged by harsh or cutting words.
“Papa, I don’t want to learn to fight.”
But you have to learn, witchling, even if it’s not the same kind of fighting your brothers embrace. “This isn’t about learning to fight. This is about proving you can defend.”
She met his eyes. As timid as she was so much of the time, she always had the courage to meet his eyes—something even her brothers didn’t do.