Her hand shook a little. “Tersa is a shattered chalice.”

Daemon closed his eyes. A shattered chalice. A shattered mind. She was talking about madness.

“Give me your hand,” Tersa said.

Too unnerved to question her, Daemon held out his left hand.

Tersa grabbed it, pulled it forward, and slashed his wrist with the chalice’s jagged edge.

Daemon clamped his hand over his wrist and stared at her, stunned.

“So that you never forget this night,” Tersa said, her voice trembling. “That scar will never leave you.”

Daemon knotted his handkerchief around his wrist. “Why is a scar important?”

“I told you. So you won’t forget.” Tersa cut the strands of the tangled web with the shattered chalice. When the last thread broke, the chalice and web vanished. “I don’t know if this will be or if it may be. Many strands in the web weren’t visible to me. May the Darkness give you courage if you need it, when you need it.”

“The courage for what?”

Tersa walked away.

“Tersa!”

Tersa looked back at him, said three words, and vanished.

Daemon’s legs buckled. He huddled on the ground, gasping for air, shuddering from the fear that clawed at his belly.

What had the one to do with the other? Nothing. Nothing! He would be there, a protector, a shield. He would!

But where?

Daemon forced himself to breathe evenly. That was the question. Where.

Certainly not in Maris’s court.

It was late morning before he returned to the house, aching and dirty. His wrist throbbed and his head pounded mercilessly. He had just reached the terrace when Maris’s daughter, Marissa, flounced out of the garden room and planted herself in front of him, hands on her hips, her expression a mixture of irritation and hunger.

“You were supposed to come to my room last night and you didn’t. Where have you been? You’re filthy.” She rolled her shoulder, looking at him from beneath her lashes. “You’ve been naughty. You’ll have to come up to my room and explain.”

Daemon pushed past her. “I’m tired. I’m going to bed.”

“You’ll do as I say!” Marissa thrust her hand between his legs.

Daemon’s hand tightened on Marissa’s wrist so fast and so hard that she was on her knees whimpering in pain before she realized what happened. He continued squeezing her wrist until the bones threatened to shatter. Daemon smiled at her then, that cold, familiar, brutal smile.

“I’m not ‘naughty.’ Little boys are naughty.” He pushed her away from him, stepping over her where she lay sprawled on the flagstones. “And if you ever touch me like that again, I’ll rip your hand off.”

He walked through the corridors to his room, aware that the servants skittered away from him, that an aftertaste of violence hung in the air around him.

He didn’t care. He went to his room, stripped off his clothes, lay down on his bed, and stared at the ceiling, terrified to close his eyes because every time he did he saw a shattered crystal chalice.