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"He was afraid of me," she whispered. "Not just me," she quickly amended. "He didn't like being around Queens. Even Kalush made him uneasy. So he was always saying things like 'ladies' do this and 'ladies' don't do that. Hell's fire, Saetan, we aren't 'ladies,' we don't want to be 'ladies.' We're witches."
He wrapped his arms around her. "Why didn't you tell me?" He seemed to be asking that a lot lately.
Jaenelle shrugged. "We hadn't gotten around to telling you that the music instructor and the dancing instructor already bolted this week."
Saetan let out a chuckling sigh. "Well, lessons and sum-
mertime are probably a bad combination anyway." He kissed her hair. "Dujae came here because he wanted to be released."
"Not really. He just needed something to spark his interest again."
Saetan watched Dujae move around the circle, gesturing, rumbling encouragement, frowning as he studied Karla's sketch before saying something that made her laugh. There was no despair in Dujae's eyes now, no hint of the pain that had driven him to seek out the High Lord.
"We aren't puppet masters, witch-child," Saetan murmured. "We're very powerful, but we must be careful about pulling strings to make other people dance."
"Depends on why the strings are being pulled, don't you think?" She looked at him with those ancient sapphire eyes and smiled. "Besides, we just overrode a silly excuse. If it was his time, he would have gone."
She returned to her spot on the floor, Karla on her right, Gabrielle on her left.
He returned to his study and waned a glass of yarbarah.
Puppet masters. Manipulators. Hekatah and her schemes. Jaenelle and her sensitivity to other hearts. Such a fine, fragile line, with intent the only difference.
He picked up the latest letter from the Dark Council. There was something beneath the terse words that disturbed him, but it was too vague for him to define. He couldn't put them off much longer. A few more weeks at most. What then?
Such a fine, fragile line.
What then?
5 / Kaeleer
Jaenelle picked up a small vial and tapped three amethyst-colored granules into the large glass bowl on the worktable. "Why are members of the Dark Council coming here?" „ Saetan eyed the thick, bubbling liquid that covered the bottom third of the bowl and sincerely hoped the stuff wasn't a new tonic. "Since my legal guardianship was
granted by the Council, they want to look in on us to see how we live."
"If they're members of the Council, they're also Jeweled Blood. They should know how we live." Jaenelle picked up a vial of red powder and held it up to the light.
Saetan crossed his arms and leaned against the wall. He wouldn't, couldn't tell her about the latest "request" from the Council. Their strident insistence had made it easy to read between the lines. They weren't just coming to look in on a guardian and his ward. They were coming to pass judgment on him.
"I'm not going to have to wear a dress, am I?" Jaenelle growled as she dipped her little finger into the vial of red powder. Using her nail as a scoop, she tapped the powder into the bowl.
Saetan bit his tongue before the lie could slip out. "No. They said they wanted to see a normal afternoon."
Jaenelle looked at him over her shoulder. "Have we ever had a normal afternoon?"
"No," Saetan said mournfully. "We have typical afternoons, but I don't think anyone would consider them normal."
Her silvery, velvet-coated laugh filled the room. "Poor Papa. Well, since I don't have to dress up and simper, I'll try not to offend their delicate sensibilities." She handed him a vial of black powder. "Put a pinch of that in the bowl and stand back."
The butterflies in his stomach' were having a grand time. "What happens then?"
Jaenelle laced her fingers. "Well, if I mixed the powders in the right proportions to the spell, it'll create an impressive illusion."
Saetan looked from his nervously smiling daughter to the bowl on the table to the vial in his hand. "And if you didn't mix them in the right proportions?"
"It'll blow up the table."
An hour later, as he lay in a deep, hot bath, soaking the soreness out of his muscles, he had to give her full marks for her fast reflexes and the strength of her protective shields. Except for knocking them both to the floor, the
explosion hadn't damaged anything in the room—except the glass bowl and the table. And he had to admit that the shape that had started rising out of the bowl had been impressive.
Two days from now, the Dark Council would come to the Hall. He would show them courtesy and endure their presence because, in the end, it didn't matter what they thought. No one was going to take her away from him. If the Council had to learn that lesson twice, so be it.
He doubted it would come to that. Remembering the awe-filled moment between the shape starting to rise from the mist and the table exploding, he let out a moan that turned into a chuckle. The Dark Council wanted to spend a typical afternoon with Jaenelle?
The poor fools would never survive it.
Chapter eight
1 / Kaeleer
It started going wrong the moment the two members of the Dark Council walked through the front door, looked around, and shivered.
SaDiablo Hall was a dark-gray structure that rose above the land and cast a long shadow. He'd built it to be imposing, but hadn't planned on having a stony-faced, Red-Jeweled butler frightening his guests before they even crossed the threshold. As for the chill in the air ... Helene had let him know, with stiff courtesy, what she thought of the Council coming to poke and pry into her domain, and all of the servants had spent the day scurrying away from the kitchen and Mrs. Beale.
Dark-Jeweled houses always had Blood servants, but whenall the witches in a household decided to express their displeasure, the phrase "cold comfort" took on a whole new meaning.
"Good afternoon," Saetan said, coming forward to greet the two men.
The elder of the two bowed. "We appreciate your taking the time to see us, High Lord. I'm Lord Magstrom. This is Lord Friall."
Saetan liked Lord Magstrom. A man in his twilight years, he had a kind face framed by a cloud of white hair and blue eyes that probably twinkled most of the time. Those eyes were serious now but not condemning. Lord Mags-
trom, at least, would make his decision based on his own integrity and honor.
Lord Friall, on the other hand, had already decided. Weedy-looking for all the hair cream and finery, he kept glancing around with distaste and dabbing his lips with a scented, lace-edged handkerchief.
