Ladies like to seem mysterious.

Not Lady Jaenelle Benedict. She didn’t try to be mysterious, she simply was. She walked in full sunlight shrouded in a midnight mist that swirled around her, hiding, revealing, tantalizing, frightening. Her honesty had been blunted by punishment. Perhaps that was for the best. She was good at dissembling, had some understanding about her family’s reaction if they learned some of the truths about her, and yet she couldn’t dissemble enough because she cared.

How many people knew about her? Daemon wondered as he brushed his hair. How many people looked upon her as their secret?

All the stable lads as well as Guinness knew she rode Dark Dancer.

But Philip, Alexandra, Leland, Robert, and Graff didn’t know.

Cook knew about her ability to heal. So did Andrew. So did a young parlor maid who’d had her lip split by the senior footman when she refused his amorous advances. Daemon had seen her that particular morning with her lip still leaking blood. An hour later she had passed him in the hallway, her lip slightly swollen but otherwise undamaged, a stunned, awed expression in her eyes. So did one of the old gardeners, who now had a salve for his aching knees. So did he.

But Philip, Alexandra, Leland, Robert, and Graff didn’t know.

Wilhelmina knew her sister disappeared for hours at a time to visit unnamed friends and an unknown mentor, knew how the witchblood had come to grow in that alcove.

He knew about her midnight wandering and her secret reading of the ancient Craft texts, knew there was something terrifying and beautiful within the child cocoon that, when it came of age and finally emerged, would no longer be able to live with these people.

But Philip, Alexandra, Leland, Robert, and Graff didn’t know. They saw a child who couldn’t learn simple Craft, a child they considered eccentric, strange, and fanciful, a child willing to speak brutal truths that adults would never speak and didn’t want to know, a child they couldn’t love enough to accept, a child who was like a pin hidden in a garment that constantly scratched the skin and yet could never be found.

How many beyond Chaillot knew what she was?

But not Philip or Alexandra or Leland or Robert or Graff. Not the people who should protect her, keep her safe. They were the ones she wasn’t safe from. They were the ones who had the power to harm her, to lock her away, to destroy her. They, the ones who should have kept her safe, were her enemies.

And, therefore, they were his.

Daemon studied his cold reflection one last time to make sure nothing was out of place, then joined the family for dinner.

6 / Terreille

Leland smiled nervously and glanced at the clock in her brightly lit sitting room. Instead of cards, the table held a bottle of chilled wine and two glasses. The bedroom door stood partially open, and soft light spilled out.