Daemon closed the book and set it on the round table beside the chair. “Did you and Beron have a good dinner?”
“We did. An entertaining one with some of his friends from the theater.” He studied Daemon Sadi and felt his stomach sink. “Sir? Is there a problem?” The request to see him wouldn’t have been casual if there had been an accident or serious illness within the family. But something had happened.
“No, there’s no problem—and you are not going to make a fuss about this.”
That didn’t sound good. “About what?”
“Titian had dinner with me tonight, and we talked about permission before action.”
“Per—What?” He stared at Daemon. “You said no, of course.”
Daemon slowly rose from his chair. “As a matter of fact, I did give my permission.”
He wanted to punch his uncle. He really, really did. But challenging a Black-Jeweled Warlord Prince was just plain stupid. “Which one of those aristo curs—”
“Lady Zoela.”
He could have sworn that his brain spun a couple of times. “What?”
“Zoey,” Daemon said patiently.
“Zoey is a girl.”
“We’ve noticed that.”
“But . . .” This study had an annoying lack of room to pace, so he circled the open floor space as he tried to regain his balance. “Is this our fault?”
Daemon blinked. “I beg your pardon?”
“Is Titian attracted to a girl because of us, because of the way we are?”
Daemon delicately scratched an eyebrow with one long black-tinted nail. “Boyo, even for a man in our family, that is an arrogant statement.”
“You know what I mean.”
“No, I don’t.”
“We’re bossy and volatile and there’s the sexual heat everyone else has to deal with, and we’re born to stand on killing fields and that makes us different from other men. That’s a lot for a girl to live with.”
It was Daemon’s smile that warned him he was close to getting a whack upside the head.
“Titian adores her father, and she’s fond of you most of the time,” Daemon said. “So if I were you, I would not voice those reasons to anyone else.”
Daemonar spun around and headed for the door. He felt the Black lock even before his hand closed on the knob—and he felt the chill in the room warning him that he had provoked Daemon’s temper. “I need some air. I need to think. Please.”
The room chilled a little more. Then the Black lock vanished.
He opened the door and rushed out of the town house.
Needed to think. Needed to talk to someone who might understand.
He spread his wings and flew to another part of the city. A few minutes later, he knocked on the door of Beron’s flat.
“Well, that was disappointing,” Daemon muttered as he poured himself a brandy. He’d expected surprise, certainly. Hell’s fire, he’d been surprised. But he hadn’t expected the boy’s total refusal to accept Titian’s choice.
He could keep Daemonar leashed to some degree. But Lucivar . . .
He swallowed the brandy, then reached for his brother on an Ebon-gray psychic thread. *Prick?*
*Bastard?*
*Am I interrupting something?* Considering the lateness of the hour, he could be interrupting something.
Amusement. *Nothing that will earn you a fist in the ribs.*
Would that be true after this conversation? *We need to talk.*
*About?*
*Permission before action.*
A pause. *Daemonar is interested in someone?*
*Not Daemonar. Titian.*
A long pause. Even the distance between Amdarh and Ebon Rih couldn’t mask the heat of rising temper. *Who?*
Daemon sighed and prepared to fight. *Zoey.*
A long pause. Then Lucivar said, *Huh. You drew the lines?*
*I did.*
*I’ll be there in a couple of days.*
*Luci—*
Lucivar had already broken the link between them.
Daemon returned to his chair and picked up the book. Instead of reading, he sat for a long time and thought about the many flavors of love—and thought about what it would mean to someone like Titian if her family wouldn’t accept her feelings.
Beron didn’t immediately agree with him, but he listened while Daemonar told him about Titian and poured out all his concerns about her reasons for choosing Zoey.
“I could use something stronger than that,” he said as he watched Beron prepare some kind of tea.
“Maybe you could, but you’re getting a cup of the Lady’s blend of tea,” Beron replied with a smile. “What do you think Jaenelle Angelline would say about your . . . opinions?”
“Thank the Darkness, she is never going to find out.” At least, he wasn’t going to tell her.
Beron poured the tea into two large mugs and set one in front of Daemonar before taking a seat on the opposite side of the table. “Jaenelle and I were good friends for most of her life. When she was fifteen, we were in school together for a short while. When my mother was killed, I was still a youth too young to live on my own, and Jaenelle was thirty-five. She and Daemon stood against my grandfather and became legal guardians for Mikal and me, assuring that we could follow our dreams. She was the reason I was able to come to Amdarh and study at the school for dramatic arts.
“My grandfather isn’t a bad man. He loved my mother, but he didn’t want her son on the stage. She was a Queen after all, and he had been fiercely proud of her. He would arrange to meet me in the city or summon me to have dinner with him, but every meeting was a heavy-handed attempt to get me to come live with him so that he could shape me into what he thought I should be. Eventually, I stopped meeting him, but I sent him tickets to every opening night and looked for him, hoping he’d come just once to see me perform and understand how much I love acting. But he never came. Not once. Jaenelle and Daemon came to every opening night.”
Beron drank some of his tea. “While I was in school, and all the years after, I would come to the town house once a week for dinner. Sometimes both of them were in residence, sometimes one or the other. Jaenelle always knew when I’d wrangled with my grandfather, and she would make up this blend of tea to quiet the mind and soothe the heart. Sometimes we’d talk. Sometimes we just sat and drank this tea—and I would feel better.
“When I got out of school and rented my first flat, proclaiming my independence, or as much independence as one can have in this family, Jaenelle took me to the tea broker—a small shop crammed with jars of teas and herbs. It’s still in business. I can show you where to find it if you’re interested. Anyway, she asked the teaman to make up two jars of the Lady’s blend.” Beron smiled. “Jaenelle’s special blend that she had created from the teas in his shop. It didn’t taste quite the same when I made it for myself. Her handling the tea added something extra, something that was just her.”
Dangerous ground because he heard a yearning beneath the words. “Do you miss her?” Daemonar asked.
“I do. But when I’m feeling heartsore for some reason, I make a cup of this tea, and it’s like she’s here again, listening to what my heart can’t put into words.”
“What do you think she would say about Titian?”
Beron gave him a long look. “Your sister is quiet and she’s sensitive—and she has the lesson of your father’s reaction to Jillian’s first romance.”
“Everyone remembers my father’s reaction to seeing Lord Dillon put a hand on Jillian’s breast.”
“Exactly. Titian isn’t the kind of girl who would take a chance of upsetting her father—or her uncle. Daemonar, you don’t know if the girls are thinking of hot petting and kisses that involve tongues . . .”