That was why one of his visits to Tersa each week began with an innocuous question about the everyday world. Sometimes she answered the question; sometimes she plucked an answer from the fragments of her mind that he couldn’t translate into something that made sense. But he came every week and asked a question, waiting for this day.
This day, when she would give the second warning, and he would know that the threat had grown to the point where he would recognize it.
“What can get rid of the weeds?” he asked quietly. “What can cleanse the Terreillean soil out of Kaeleer’s ground?”
“Ice. And fire.”
Cold and heat? Or his icy rage and Lucivar’s hot temper?
She rose, a smooth movement—and a sharp reminder that his mother, with her tangled hair and tangled mind, was just approaching her autumn years. Then she handed him the basket of weeds and said, “Put those in the compost bin.”
He emptied the basket into the bin before returning to the kitchen and setting the basket by the door.
She turned toward him, her face brightening with a delighted smile. “It’s the boy. It’s my boy.”
She said the words as if he’d just arrived.
“Hello, darling.” He walked up to her and gave her a kiss on the cheek.
“Have you come to visit?”
“I have.” He waited until she went to the sink to wash her hands before asking, so casually, “Who were you talking to out in the garden?”
The clarity in her gold eyes had nothing to do with sanity and everything to do with who he suspected she had been before she’d been broken, before she’d sacrificed her sanity to regain some of the Hourglass’s Craft.
“Tersa? Who were you talking to?”
“The Queen’s weapon.”
Surreal called in the two trunks she used when traveling to the SaDiablo estates and left them where the senior maid assigned to look after her room and wardrobe at the Hall would be able to sort the clothes that needed washing from those that just needed airing.
She wasn’t looking forward to meeting with Sadi to discuss the events she was sure were going to break a District Queen’s court and divide a village between two aristo families who claimed grievous harm had been done to their children. Grievous harm had been done to both children, but it was the boy who had died just hours before she’d arrived. And it was the boy she’d personally escorted to the Keep to be confined while he made the transition to demon-dead—and to await the High Lord’s pleasure.
She had a feeling the prick-ass’s time in Hell would be short and painful since he had dosed the girl with safframate—a drug that, in very small doses, would enhance a lover’s staying power and was mostly used within a court under specific circumstances. In Kaeleer, anyway. In Terreille, it had been used to create a sexual need beyond sanity, making the person a desperate participant in what amounted to prolonged rape, whether that person was male or female.
Sometimes the sexual need erupted as violence. Lucivar had torn women apart under the influence of safframate, had left courts choking on the carnage his rage had produced. Daemon had never experienced an erection or arousal under the influence of safframate, but Surreal wondered if the Sadist had been born in the pain produced by the drug when that pain had no outlet.
Whether the boy had given the girl too much or whether the girl was one of the individuals who reacted with rage instead of arousal didn’t matter at this point. Surreal hadn’t been able to tell what the girl had used to strike the first blow that put the boy on the ground because she’d ripped through skin and muscle and had managed to pull out the boy’s entrails with her hands.
There was no law against murder among the Blood, but rape was punished by slow execution, so while she had a little sympathy for the boy’s shocked parents, she sided with the girl’s family, especially after a quick search of the boy’s pockets uncovered a vial with a second dose of safframate.
Now she had to tell the Warlord Prince of Dhemlan that a drug he hated was being used in his Territory in the same way it had been used in Terreille. And she had to tell him that she suspected that the boy’s father had supplied his son with the drug. Which meant they would be studying the ebb and flow of sexual activity in and around that village, from the District Queen’s court on down because a man who gave safframate to his son probably used it himself to “persuade” women who didn’t want his attention.
Having a good idea how Daemon would react, she wasn’t sure if she wanted him to stay with her tonight, just for company, or if she hoped he would choose to sleep alone—or sleep in the High Lord’s suite, away from the family wing.
Well, she would decide about the sleeping arrangements after she had a chance to measure his mood and temper. A quick psychic probe when she’d first arrived home told her he was in Halaway, probably visiting Tersa. That, too, would determine what she needed to ask of him for her own safety, as well as the safety of everyone else at the Hall.
No point waiting inside when her own skin felt itchy from the need to move. She’d go out to the back lawn and work with the Dea al Mon fighting knives, going through the warm-ups and exercises that kept her skills as sharp as the blades she used.
She’d changed clothes and was lacing up the ankle boots she used for these exercises when Jaenelle Saetien knocked on her bedroom door and walked in before she had a chance to answer.
“It’s courteous to wait to be invited,” Surreal said, struggling to keep her tone mild. “Especially when you get so upset about anyone entering your room before you give permission.”
Jaenelle Saetien just shrugged, as if she couldn’t make the connection between her intense desire for privacy and respecting someone else’s privacy.
Some days Surreal dealt with the girl who had grown up in this house—a girl who was usually full of curiosity, intelligence, courage, kindness, and enough sass to stand up for herself without forgetting courtesy and manners. Other days she wrangled with a pissy, bitchy stranger who wore her daughter’s face. Couldn’t tell day by day—or even hour by hour—which one it would be.
She might have enjoyed being pissy and bitchy at the same age if she’d grown up in a different way and could have indulged in such emotions. Or maybe she’d just channeled those feelings into the way she’d used a knife for some contracts.
“I’m going outside to work with the Dea al Mon knives. You’re welcome to join me.”
Jaenelle Saetien wrinkled her nose. “Who wants to get sweaty?”
Someone who wants to survive. And the girl I saw today got a lot more than sweaty. “Suit yourself. If you have anything to discuss with your father, you should do it before I sit down with him.”
“Why?” That habitual hint of annoyance changed to a concern that might be genuine. “Did something happen on your trip?”
“Yes, it did.”
Hesitation. “Do you have to tell him today?”
“Since this will produce a storm that will roll through every village and court in Dhemlan, yes, I have to tell him.”
Jaenelle Saetien looked alarmed. “What happened?”
“A boy died, but it was the way he died and why he died that will produce the storm.”
“What did he do?” She sounded so much younger than she had a minute ago.
Surreal weighed her answer against the painful truth: the girl who had been drugged was the same age as Jaenelle Saetien—a girl nowhere near old enough to have her Virgin Night and come away from the experience with her Jewels and power intact. “He used a drug that should have made it easy for him to rape a girl. She fought back. She survived. He’s dead.”