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"You found the body?"
Dorothea hesitated. "No. That's all the Warlords found." She pointed at the sheet. "But don't take my word for it. See if even you can stomach what's locked in that blood."
Lucivar took a deep breath. The bitch was lying. Shehad to be lying. Because, sweet Darkness, if she wasn't . . .
Daemonhad been offered his freedom in exchange for killing Jaenelle. He had refused the offer—or so he had said. But what if hehadn't refused?
A moment after he opened his mind and touched the bloodstained sheet, he was on his knees, spewing up the meager breakfast he'd had an hour before, shaking as something deep within him shattered.
Damn Sadi. Damn the bastard's soul to the bowels of Hell. She was achild\ What could she have done to deserve this? She was Witch, the living myth. She was the Queen they'd dreamed of serving. She was his spitting little Cat.Damn you, Sadi!
The guards hauled Lucivar to his feet.
"Where is he?" Philip Alexander demanded.
Lucivar closed his gold eyes so that he wouldn't have to see that sheet. He had never felt this weary, this beaten. Not as a half-breed boy in the Eyrien hunting camps, not in the countless courts he'd served in over the centuries since, not even here in Pruul as one of Zuultah's slaves.
"Where is he?" Philip demanded again.
Lucivar opened his eyes. "How in the name of Hell should I know?"
"When the Warlords lost the trail, Sadi was heading southeast—toward Pruul. It's well-known—"
"He wouldn't come here." That shattered something deep within him began to burn. "He wouldn't dare come here."
Dorothea SaDiablo stepped toward him. "Why not? You've helped each other in the past. There's no reason—"
"Thereis a reason," Lucivar said savagely. "If I ever see that cold-blooded bastard again, I'll rip his heart out!"
Dorothea stepped back, shaken. Zuultah watched him warily.
Philip Alexander slowly lowered his arms. "He's been declared rogue. There's a price on his head. When he's found—"
"He'll be suitably punished," Dorothea broke in.
"He'll be executed!" Philip replied heatedly.
There was a moment of heavy silence.
"Prince Alexander," Dorothea purred, "even someone from Chaillot should know that, among the Blood, there is no law against murder. If you didn't have sense enough to prevent an emotionally disturbed child from toying with a Warlord Prince of Sadi's temperament . . ." She shrugged delicately. "Perhaps the child got what she deserved."
Philip paled. "She was a good girl," he said, but his voice trembled with a whisper of doubt.
"Yes," Dorothea purred. "A good girl. So good your family had to send her away every few months to be ... reeducated."
Emotionally disturbed child. The words were a bellows, stoking the fire within Lucivar to ice-cold rage. Emotionally disturbed child.Stay away from me, Bastard. You'd better stay away. Because if I have the chance, I'll carve you into pieces.
At some point, Zuultah, Dorothea, and Philip had withdrawn to continue their discussion in the cooler recesses of Zuultah's house. Lucivar didn't notice. He was barely aware of being led into the salt mines, barely aware of the pick in his hands, barely aware of the pain as his sweat ran into the new lash wound on his back.
All he saw was the bloodstained sheet.
Lucivar swung the pick.
Liar.
He didn't see the wall, didn't see the salt. He saw Daemon's golden-brown chest, saw the heart beating beneath the skin.
Silky . . . court-trained . . .liar!
2 / Hell
Andulvar settled one hip on a corner of the large, blackwood desk.
Saetan glanced up from the letter he was composing. "I thought you were going back to your eyrie."
"Changed my mind." Andulvar's gaze wandered around the private study, finally stopping at the portrait of Cassandra, the Black-Jeweled Queen who had walked the Realms more than 50,000 years ago. Five years ago, Saetan had discovered that Cassandra had faked the final death and had become a Guardian in order to wait for the next Witch.
And look what had happened to the next Witch, Andulvar thought bleakly. Jaenelle Angelline was a powerful, extraordinary child, but still as vulnerable as any other child. All that power hadn't kept her from being overwhelmed by family secrets he and Saetan could only guess at, and by Dorothea's and Hekatah's vicious schemes to eliminate the one rival who could have ended their stranglehold on the Realm of Terreille. He was certain they had been behind the brutality that had made Jaenelle's spirit flee from her body.
Too late to prevent the violation, a friend had taken Jaenelle away from her destroyers and brought her to Cassandra's Altar. There, Daemon Sadi, with Saetan's help, had been able to bring the girl out of the psychic abyss long enough to convince her to heal the physical wounds. But when the Chaillot Warlords arrived to "rescue" her, she panicked and fled back into the abyss.
Her body was slowly healing, but only the Darkness knew where her spirit was—or if she would ever come back.
Pushing aside those thoughts, Andulvar looked at Saetan, took a deep breath, and puffed his cheeks as he let it out. "Your letter of resignation from the Dark Council?"
"I should have resigned a long time ago."
"You had always insisted that it was good to have a few of the demon-dead serving in the Council because they had experience but no personal interest in the decisions."
"Well, my interest in the Council's decisions is very personal now, isn't it?" After signing his name with his customary flourish, Saetan slipped the letter into an envelope and sealed it with black wax. "Deliver that for me, will you?"
Andulvar reluctantly took the envelope. "What if the Dark Council decides to search for her family?"
Saetan leaned back in his chair. "There hasn't been a
Dark Council in Terreille since the last war between the Realms. There's no reason for Kaeleer's Council to look beyond the Shadow Realm."
"If they check the registers at Ebon Askavi, they'll find out she wasn't originally from Kaeleer."
"As the Keep's librarian, Geoffrey has already agreed not to find any useful entries that might lead anyone back to Chaillot. Besides, Jaenelle was never listed in the registers—and won't be until there's a reason to include an entry for her."
"You'll be staying at the Keep?"
"Yes."
"For how long?"
Saetan hesitated. "For as long as it takes." When Andulvar made no move to leave, he asked, "Is there something else?"
