“You mean a secret wedding?” Yes! But common sense, which he was really beginning to resent, intruded once more. “There isn’t a Priestess in Kaeleer who would be willing to marry us in secret and risk the wrath of the Queens who rule Kaeleer—not to mention Lucivar and Saetan.”

She took his face in her hands. “Daemon,” she said, her voice full of laughter, “I’ve just discovered something about you. As much as you know and as much as you’ve experienced, you can still be naive about some things.”

His mouth hung open, and no brilliantly phrased words came out.

After giving him a smacking kiss on the forehead, Jaenelle got out of bed and headed for the adjoining bathroom. “If we leave within the hour, we can get there by this afternoon.”

“Where?”

“Since we’ll have to rent a Coach here in Amdarh to ride the Winds to the Hall, contact Ladvarian and tell him to have one of our private Coaches ready so we aren’t home long enough for anyone to ask questions. And tell him not to bring anyone except Kaelas.”

“Why do we have to bring him?” Daemon grumbled as he got out of bed and slipped on a robe.

Jaenelle paused at the bathroom door. “Daemon? Where are you planning to sleep for the next decade?”

Hell’s fire. “Fine. All right. I’ll tell the Sceltie to bring the cat.”

She just smiled and closed the bathroom door.

Great. Wonderful, Daemon thought as he left their room to use the bathroom down the hall. She had a point about placating those two. If Ladvarian’s feelings were hurt by being excluded, the Sceltie could make his life very difficult. And Kaelas had a few points of his own. They were called teeth and claws. Pissing off an Arcerian cat who was a Red-Jeweled Warlord Prince and who already resented that a human male was claiming a piece of Jaenelle’s bed wasn’t the best way to begin his new position as a husband.

As he adjusted the water in the shower, he contacted Ladvarian on a psychic spear thread and delivered Jaenelle’s instructions—and felt grateful the dog didn’t ask any questions since he didn’t have any answers.

That done, he stepped into the shower and quickly washed while he considered if he was amused or insulted by Jaenelle’s “discovery.”

Growing up under Dorothea’s control had stripped him of innocence at a very early age, and there was little, if anything, of a twisted, vile nature that he hadn’t experienced. The Darkness only knew all that he’d done, but one thing he knew with absolute certainty: He was not naive.

2

Surreal stared at Helton. “They left?”

“Immediately after breakfast,” Helton replied.

“Did Prince Sadi say where he and Lady Angelline were going?” Lucivar asked.