She opened the door and stopped. “Do you believe in unicorns?”

Saetan smiled. “I knew them once, a long time ago.”

The smile she gave him before disappearing down the corridor lit the room, lit the darkest corners of his heart.

“Hell’s fire! What happened, SaDiablo?”

Saetan waggled Jaenelle’s abandoned shoe at Andulvar and smiled dryly. “A Craft lesson.”

“What?”

“I met the butterfly maker.”

Andulvar stared at the mess. “She did this? Why?”

“It wasn’t intentional, just uncontrolled. She isn’t cildru dyathe either. She’s a living child, a Queen, and she’s Witch.”

Andulvar’s jaw dropped. “Witch? Like Cassandra was Witch?”

Saetan choked back a snarl. “Not like Cassandra but, yes, Witch.”

“Hell’s fire! Witch.” Andulvar shook his head and smiled.

Saetan stared at the shoe. “Andulvar, my friend, I hope you’ve still got all that brass under your belt that you used to brag about, because we’re in deep trouble.”

“Why?” Andulvar asked suspiciously.

“Because you’re going to help me train a seven-year-old Witch who’s got the raw power right now to turn us both into dust and yet”—he dropped the shoe onto the chair—“is abysmal at basic Craft.”

Mephis knocked briskly and entered the study, tripping on a pile of books. “A demon just told me the strangest thing.”

Saetan adjusted the folds of his cape and reached for his cane. “Be brief, Mephis. I’m going to an appointment that’s long overdue.”

“He said he saw the Hall shift a couple of inches. The whole thing. And a moment later, it shifted back.”

Saetan stood very still. “Did anyone else see this?”

“I don’t think so, but—”

“Then tell him to hold his tongue if he doesn’t want to lose it.”

Saetan swept past Mephis, leaving the study that had been his home for the past decade, leaving his worried demon-dead son behind.

CHAPTER TWO

1 / Terreille

In the autumn twilight, Saetan studied the Sanctuary, a forgotten place of crumbling stone, alive with small vermin and memories. Yet within this broken place was a Dark Altar, one of the thirteen Gates that linked the Realms of Terreille, Kaeleer, and Hell.

Cassandra’s Altar.

Cloaked in a sight shield and a Black psychic shield, Saetan limped through the barren outer rooms, skirting pools of water left by an afternoon storm. A mouse, searching for food among the fallen stones, never sensed his presence as he passed by. The Witch living in this labyrinth of rooms wouldn’t sense him either. Even though they both wore the Black Jewels, his strength was just a little darker, just a little deeper than hers.

Saetan paused at a bedroom door. The covers on the bed looked fairly new. So did the heavy curtains pulled across the window. She would need those when she rested during the daylight hours.

At the beginning of the half-life, Guardians’ bodies retained most of the abilities of the living. They ate food like the living, drank blood like the demon-dead, and could walk in the daylight, though they preferred the twilight and the night. As centuries passed, the need for sustenance diminished until only yarbarah, the blood wine, was required. Preference for darkness became necessity as daylight produced strength-draining, physical pain.