She’s in shock, Daemon thought. Then he looked at her eyes—and couldn’t suppress the shudder. They were sapphire ice. But behind the ice was a Queen who had been pushed far beyond even the cold rage males were capable of unleashing. Because he was looking for it, because he could descend far enough into the abyss to feel it, he sensed that Hekatah’s little gift had fully awakened the feral side, the deadly side of Witch. She was no longer a young woman who had received her father’s finger as a demand for her surrender; she was a predator studying the bait laid out by an enemy.

Dorothea and Hekatah had seen the young woman. They had no idea who they were really dealing with.

“Come with me,” Jaenelle said, lightly touching his arm before she walked out of the room.

Even through his shirt and jacket, her hand felt so cold it burned.

Careful to keep his eyes and expression bland, he looked at Surreal—and felt a little dismayed by the fury that looked back at him. That was when he realized that, despite being chilled to the bone, the room was still warm.

Jaenelle had given no outward warning of the rage just underneath the surface, no indication of power being gathered for a strike. Nothing.

He glanced at the finger again, felt his stomach clench. Then he walked out of the room.

Damn them both, Surreal thought as she stared at the finger in the box. Oh, there had been a little flicker of dismay in Sadi’s face when he first saw it, but that had disappeared quickly enough. And from Jaenelle? Nothing. Hell’s fire! She had shown more temper and concern when Aaron had been cornered by Vania! At least then there had been that freezing, terrifying rage. But the woman gets a piece of her father sent to her and…nothing. Not a damn thing. No reaction at all.

Well, fine. If that’s the way those two wanted to play the game, that was just fine. She wore a Gray Jewel and she was a skilled assassin. There was no reason she couldn’t slip into Terreille and get Lucivar and the High Lord—and Marian and Daemonar—away from those two bitches.

Surreal bit her lower lip. Well, getting all of them out in one piece might be a problem.

All right, so she’d think about it a little, work up some kind of plan. At least she was going to do something!

And maybe, while she was thinking, she would mention this little incident to Karla to see if the Black Widow still thought there was more going on than nothing.

By the time Daemon reached her workroom, the ice in Jaenelle’s eyes had shattered into razor-edged shards, and he saw something in them that terrified him: cold, undiluted hatred.

“What do you expect will happen now?” Jaenelle asked too calmly.