But… Everything has a price. If he was going to lose the companionship of almost everyone he had ever cared about, the reward would have to justify the cost.

“I can do this,” he crooned, slowly circling around her. “I can keep Dorothea and Hekatah off-balance enough to keep the others safe and also prevent those Ladies from giving the orders to send the Terreillean armies into Kaeleer. I can buy you seventy-two hours, Jaenelle. But it’s going to cost me because I’m going to do things I may never be forgiven for, so I want something in return.”

He could taste her slight bafflement before she said, “All right.”

“I don’t want to wear the Consort’s ring anymore.”

A slash of pain, quickly stifled. “All right.”

“I want a wedding ring in its place.”

A flash of joy, immediately followed by sorrow. She smiled at him at the same time her eyes filled with tears. “It would be wonderful.”

She meant that. So why the sorrow, why the anguish? He would have to deal with that when he got back.

His temper was already getting edgy, dangerous. “I’ll take that as a ‘yes.’ There are things I’ll need that I can’t create well enough for this game.”

“Just tell me what you need, Daemon.”

He didn’t want to do this. Didn’t want to go back to that kind of life, not even for seventy-two hours. He was going to mutilate the life he’d begun to build here, and the coven, the boyos, they would never—

“Do you trust me?” he snapped.

“Yes.”

No hesitation, no doubts.

He finally stopped moving and faced her. “Do you know how desperately I love you?”

Her voice shook when she answered, “As much as I love you?”

He held her, held on to her as his lifeline, his anchor. It would be all right. As long as he had her, it would be all right.

Finally, reluctantly, he eased back. “Come on, we’ve got a lot of work to do.”

“That’s the last of it,” Jaenelle said several hours later. She carefully packed the box that held all the spelled items she had created for him. “Almost the last of it.”