She didn’t try to stop Jaenelle, and she didn’t offer to go with her. She didn’t want to be around either one of them during that discussion.

“Well, that was fun,” she said, looking at Zhara. “You planning to do anything else today to create a firestorm in the city? I was thinking of doing something dull like reading or sleeping, but if you’ve got your heart set on starting a gut-spilling slaughter, I’m willing to play.”

“What are you talking about?” Zhara snapped.

You don’t know who . . . and what . . . he is, Surreal thought. She shook her head. “Never mind.” It’s too late anyway.

3

Daemon prowled the town house’s sitting room. He would have preferred walking through the city to being caged in this room, but he couldn’t tolerate one more cold look, one more silent condemnation.

The hurt went deep. The fear went deep. But the rage went much, much deeper.

Damn them all to the bowels of Hell. He’d tried to fit in. Knowing the Queens in Dhemlan would be wary of a Black-Jeweled Warlord Prince, he hadn’t worn the Black when he came to Amdarh. At least, not in public. He’d been courteous and civil, had done all the proper things a man was permitted to do when he was in an established relationship—and only the things a man was permitted to do. What had that courtesy and civility gotten him? At the first slur to his reputation, they’d condemned him of thinking more of his cock than the woman who had given everything she had to defend and protect all of them.

Jaenelle should have let them all die, should have let them all choke in the twisted, vicious cruelty Dorothea had spawned in Terreille before Witch had cleansed the taint of Dorothea and Hekatah out of the Blood. She should have—

“Is this the response of a Warlord Prince, to tuck his tail between his legs and hide in his lair instead of standing up for himself?”

That wonderful, chilling midnight voice shivered over him. Despair clawed his heart, leaving it bleeding, as he turned around.

Mother Night. Jaenelle.

She was still painfully thin, but standing there, dressed in a rose silk shirt and soft sapphire jacket and trousers, she looked like the woman he’d known and loved before she’d torn both of their lives apart to save Kaeleer. She looked like the Queen of Ebon Askavi, strong and powerful, despite the fact that it was Twilight’s Dawn and not a Black or Ebony Jewel hanging from the gold chain around her neck.

And her eyes . . . Feral. Angry.

Witch. The living myth. Dreams made flesh.

He wanted to kneel before her, wanted to surrender everything he was and could ever be, wanted to offer his life in any way she would have him.