He found her in the kitchen, humming off-key as she took a wineglass out of the cupboard. Her shapeless, mud-colored gown was streaked with dirt. Her long braided hair, faded now to a dusty red, was veiled with cobwebs. When she turned toward the door, still unaware of his presence, the firelight smoothed most of the lines from her face, lines he knew were there because they were in the portrait that hung in his private study, the portrait he knew so well. She had aged since the death that wasn’t a death.

But so had he.

He dropped the sight shield and psychic shield.

The wineglass shattered on the floor.

“Practicing hearth-Craft, Cassandra?” he asked mildly, struggling to tamp down an overwhelming sense of betrayal.

She backed away from him. “I should have realized she’d tell you.”

“Yes, you should have. You also should have known I’d come.” He tossed his cape over a wooden chair, grimly amused at the way her emerald eyes widened when she noticed how heavily he leaned on the cane. “I’m old, Lady. Quite harmless.”

“You were never harmless,” she said tartly.

“True, but you never minded that when you had a use for me.” He looked away when she didn’t answer. “Did you hate me so much?”

Cassandra reached toward him. “I never hated you, Saetan. I—”

—was afraid of you.

The words hung between them, unspoken.

Cassandra vanished the broken wineglass. “Would you like some wine? There’s no yarbarah, but I’ve got some decent red.”

Saetan settled into a chair beside the pine table. “Why aren’t you drinking yarbarah?”

Cassandra brought a bottle and two wineglasses to the table. “It’s hard to come by here.”

“I’ll send some to you.”

They drank the first glass of wine in silence.

“Why?” he finally asked.

Cassandra toyed with her wineglass. “Black-Jeweled Queens are few and far between. There was no one to help me when I became Witch, no one to talk to, no one to help me prepare for the drastic changes in my life after I made the Offering.” She laughed without humor. “I had no idea what being Witch would mean. I didn’t want the next one to go through the same thing.”

“You could have told me you intended to become a Guardian instead of faking the final death.”

“And have you stay around as the loyal, faithful Consort to a Queen who no longer needed one?”

Saetan refilled the glasses. “I could have been a friend. Or you could have dismissed me from your court if that’s what you wanted.”

“Dismiss you? You? You were…are…Saetan, the Prince of the Darkness, High Lord of Hell. No one dismisses you. Not even Witch.”

Saetan stared at her. “Damn you,” he said bitterly.

Cassandra wearily brushed a stray hair from her face. “It’s done, Saetan. It was lifetimes ago. There’s the child to think about now.”

Saetan watched the fire burning in the hearth. She was entitled to her own life, and certainly wasn’t responsible for his, but she didn’t understand—or didn’t want to understand—what that friendship might have meant to him. Even if he’d never seen her again, knowing she still existed would have eased some of the emptiness. Would he have married Hekatah if he hadn’t been so desperately lonely?