She didn’t realize she had spoken out loud until the room turned to ice. “I want to go home,” she said in a small voice. “Can you arrange that?”

“It would be my pleasure,” Saetan crooned.

4 / Kaeleer

Daemon stared with intense dislike at the blackwood hourglass floating outside Jaenelle’s door. When he’d noticed it the first time he’d tried to check on Jaenelle, Ladvarian, the Sceltie Warlord, had explained what it meant. So he had accepted Ladvarian’s offer to act as guide and had done a little exploring of the Keep. Returning an hour later, he’d discovered that the hourglass had been turned, the sand trickling into the base to mark another hour of solitude. This was the third time the sand had almost run out, and this time he was going to be waiting at the door when the last grain of sand dropped.

“You are impatient?” asked a sibilant voice.

Daemon turned toward Draca, the Keep’s Seneschal. When they had first arrived at the Keep, Lucivar had given him a cryptic warning: Draca is a dragon in human form. The moment he’d seen the Seneschal, he’d understood what Lucivar meant. Her looks, combined with the feel of great age and old, deep power, had fascinated him.

“I’m worried,” he replied, meeting the dark eyes that stared right through him. “She shouldn’t be alone right now.”

“Yet you sstand outsside the door.”

Daemon gave the floating hourglass a killing look.

Draca made a sound that might have been muted laughter. “Are you alwayss sso obedient?”

“Almost never,” Daemon muttered—and then remembered who he was talking to.

But Draca nodded, as if pleased to have something confirmed. “It iss wisse for maless to know when to yield and obey. But the Conssort iss permitted to bend many ruless.”

Daemon considered the words carefully. It was hard to catch inflections in that sibilant voice, but he thought he understood her. “You know more of the finer points of Protocol than I do,” he said, watching her closely. “I appreciate the instruction.”

Her face didn’t alter, but he would have sworn she smiled at him. As she turned away, she added, “The glasss iss almosst empty.”

His hand was on the doorknob, quietly turning it as the last grains of sand trickled into the hourglass’s base. As he opened the door, he saw the hourglass turning to declare another hour of solitude. He slipped quickly into the room and closed the door behind him.

Jaenelle stood by a window, looking out at the night, still dressed in the black gown. As a man, that gown appealed to him in every way a woman’s garment could, and he hoped she didn’t just wear it for formal occasions.

He stepped away from those thoughts. Not only were they useless tonight, they teased his body into wanting to respond to her in a way that wouldn’t be acceptable.