“Hayllian memorabilia?” Daemon asked.
“Don’t know.” She called in a folded sheet of paper and set it on the desk. “That’s their name and what your estate manager knew about them. Or Lucivar’s manager, since Yaslana owns the deed to that Dhemlan estate.”
“Are you going to live there?”
“No. I’ll stay at the family estate when I’m visiting. I bought this place as a sanctuary for girls who were broken on their Virgin Night and need a safe place to heal and learn who they are now.” She felt the air turn cold. “It’s always tragic when a witch is broken, but the breaking isn’t always deliberate.”
“Something compelled you to set up this place now,” Daemon pointed out.
“Maybe it’s as simple as feeling like I can’t help my own daughter because she doesn’t want my help, but maybe I can do some good for other girls.”
Daemon took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “What can we do for our own girl?”
“I don’t know, Sadi. Let her go to Ebon Rih. Let Lucivar deal with her for a couple of days.”
“If she’s like this with him, he’ll drop her in a cold mountain lake.”
She shrugged. “It might do her some good.”
EIGHTEEN
Daemonar sat on the riverbank, staring at a familiar waterfall and fighting to keep a rein on his tongue and his temper as he listened to Jaenelle Saetien’s tearful . . . rant . . . about a dress. She’d needed someone to listen, and she’d needed to say things away from the adults, and had asked him to bring her here.
Now he knew why.
When there was silence for a full minute—he counted—he finally looked at her. “Your father bought you a dress that cost more than Tamnar earns in a year, and you’re pissed at him because he wouldn’t buy another dress when you already knew he would only buy one?”
“He was supposed to buy me another dress! Everyone else’s father—”
“Whose father?”
“Everyone—”
“Everyone is no one. Who, exactly, was going to have a second dress for this dance? Give me names, Jaenelle Saetien. If someone told you this, then that person knows the names of the girls whose fathers are so indulgent or so spineless that they buckle under a girl’s petty whining. So who is going to have a second dress for a school dance?”
“You don’t understand!”
“I understand that your father drew a line and held it, just like he’s always done. Just like my father does. You were testing him to see if he would give in to your hysterics about a dress, as if that would prove he loves you. But if he’d given in after he’d set the terms, you would have lost respect for him. He held the line because he does love you, and if you stopped being a whiny, selfish brat for a minute, you’d realize that.”
She leaped to her feet, her hands clenched into fists. “You take that back, Daemonar. You just take that back.”
He rose to his feet slowly enough to be insulting. “No.” He gave her a lazy, arrogant smile. “If you throw a punch at me, I’ll hit back. Do you really want to explain to my father why we’re fighting?”
She hesitated, as he’d known she would. Then she came back swinging—verbally. “Everyone—”
“I don’t want to hear about everyone. But let’s say there were a few girls who brought a second dress to the dance, intending to change halfway through. I’ve seen how long it takes you and Titian to get ready to see an amateur musical evening in Riada. If you’d brought a second dress, the dance would have been over by the time you left the changing room.”
“That’s not true!”
He’d had enough. “Come on. I’ll take you back to the eyrie.”
“I want to stay here a while longer.”
“I’m not leaving you here alone, and I want to go home.”
“Are you afraid I’ll throw myself in the river?”
“A few months ago, I would have said you wouldn’t do something that stupid. Now? Yeah, I think you would do it for the drama, to prove how unhappy you are about not getting your way about some damn dress.”
She stared at him, clearly insulted—and hurt. “You said you had my back. You’ve always said that.”
“And I do. But having your back doesn’t mean agreeing with you all the time or giving in to whatever you want to do. Sometimes having your back means fighting you into the ground if I think you’re wrong.”
“I bet if precious Jaenelle Angelline had wanted something Lucivar had considered stupid, he would have gone along with it.”
Scalding fury flooded through him before he tightened the leash on his temper and regained control. “Based on the stories my father has told me about his dealings with the witch who was his sister and Queen, you would have lost that bet.”
He took a step toward her. She took a step back.
“Do you hear yourself, Jaenelle Saetien? Do you think acting like some petty bitch is going to impress anyone?”
“I’m not! Why is everyone against me?”
He had one more thing to say to her. “Titian was excited about this dance. Instead of being at the school, she’s home. Did you wonder why? Did you ask her? Or are you so self-absorbed that you don’t care about anyone else anymore?”
He grabbed her and caught the Green Wind, taking them back to the eyrie. He dropped from the Wind when they were close to home, glided in low until he was over the flagstone courtyard, and then dropped Jaenelle Saetien almost on top of his father.
He didn’t stop, didn’t land. He made a tight turn and flew to the communal eyrie, where he hoped to find someone who was in the mood to spar. He really needed to work off some temper. If he couldn’t find anyone at the communal eyrie, well, he was pretty sure Lucivar soon would be in the mood to oblige.
Jaenelle Saetien straightened her clothes and raised her chin—and tried not to shiver at the way Uncle Lucivar’s eyes traveled down her body.
“Well,” he finally said, “since neither of you are bloody, I guess I don’t need to know what you were wrangling about. This time.”
She heard the warning.
“Besides,” he continued, “I already have enough testing the leash on my temper.”
“Why?” she asked.
That lazy, arrogant smile. Daemonar had that smile too.
“The next bitch who uses words to hurt my daughter is going to lose her tongue. And I don’t give a damn who she is.” He turned and walked into the eyrie, leaving the door open.
Jaenelle Saetien stood outside until she was fairly sure he was somewhere deep in the eyrie. She started to rush to Titian’s room, then stopped and looked out the glass doors that opened to the yard. Spotting Titian at the far end, she ran across the yard.
Her cousin sat cross-legged, on air, her drawing board and box of pastels also balanced on air. She didn’t look distraught or weepy or . . . anything.
Since her trousers already felt damp from sitting on the riverbank, Jaenelle Saetien also used Craft to sit on air. “Why didn’t you stay at school and go to the dance?”
Titian carefully put one pastel back in the box and carefully—too carefully?—selected another. “Some of the girls said the boys wouldn’t want to be seen dancing with a fat bat. Why would I want to spend an evening standing against the wall, watching everyone else have fun? Or pretend they’re having fun.”
Calling an Eyrien a bat was a serious insult. Not as bad as calling an Eyrien a Jhinka, but close.
“You’re not fat.” An uneasiness went through her. “Which girls?”
“Doesn’t matter who said it. It doesn’t matter if the aristo girls think I’m an Eyrien rube. The art classes are good. Really good. I’m learning so much, and that’s mostly why I wanted to go to that school.”