“Your father takes calculated risks, not foolish ones,” his grandfather had said once. “He measures risk against his own strength and skill, as well as the strength and skill of the people with him. As you get older, he’ll expect you to do the same.”
“There is a difference between taking a calculated risk and a foolish one,” Daemonar said, echoing words that lingered in his memory. “We take the time to make this ride a calculated risk, or we walk away.”
She wouldn’t walk away. Not completely. If he insisted on walking away today, she’d test a raft and a river at another time in another place without him, and that was unacceptable. She was family, and it was his duty and privilege to honor, cherish, and protect.
“But . . .”
“What are you going to say to our fathers if either of us gets hurt because you were impatient?” he asked.
She sat back on her heels and sighed. “That’s hitting below the belt.”
That was where truth, when it was inconvenient, usually hit.
Jaenelle Saetien might want to try things that were risky, but she would yield if he would get in trouble because of her actions. Well, she would yield most of the time, unless the impulse to do something overwhelmed every bit of common sense that should warn her about how her father would react to a particular scheme.
She was the daughter of the Warlord Prince of Dhemlan, and even though she loved her father, sometimes being the daughter of a powerful man was a burden. Daemonar understood that kind of burden. He was the son of the Warlord Prince of Askavi—the feared Demon Prince of Askavi. Those two men were not only brothers united by family and their service to a Queen unlike any other in the history of the Blood, they were also the most powerful, and dangerous, men in the entire Realm of Kaeleer.
But they were still men, and fathers, and if their children felt a reckless need to explore what could be done with Craft, that inclination must have been inherited from them. Right?
He’d point that out if he had a chance to argue his reasoning for doing this harebrained adventure before his uncle or father killed him flatter than dead.
Jaenelle Saetien sighed again. Then she shrugged, accepting the need to put in the work before having fun, and began helping him piece the branches together to provide the snuggest fit, using Craft to trim them to the best shape while he wrapped power from his Green Birthright Jewel around the twine to make it stronger without making it thicker.
Finally satisfied that the raft was the best one they could make, he secured the last branch. “I guess we’re ready.”
Daemonar looked at Jaenelle Saetien. She looked at him. And they grinned.
He wore a Green Jewel. She wore an extraordinary Birthright Jewel called Twilight’s Dawn, which had a range of Rose to Green power. It had been a gift from Witch, the Queen of Ebon Askavi, the living myth. Auntie J. no longer walked among the living, but she was still his Queen. Would always be his Queen. And that was a secret known only to the other men who also still served her—his father and uncle.
Now Jaenelle Saetien tapped into the Green strength in her Jewel to help him float the raft on air and guide it to the water. He steadied the raft until she stepped on it and had her balance. Then he got on behind her, his legs spread in a fighting stance, his dark membranous wings opened halfway to help them keep the raft balanced. Calling in the last branch they’d collected and hadn’t used, he pushed off from the bank, dropped the branch, and settled his hands on his cousin’s waist.
“This is wonderful!” Jaenelle Saetien said as they floated down the river.
Daemonar scanned the river and the banks, watching one for debris that could snag the raft and upend it and the other for any Eyrien who might have spotted them and sent word to his father on a psychic communication thread.
He felt the change in the river, saw the white water and boulders seconds before Jaenelle Saetien said, “Uh-oh.”
He wrapped an arm around her waist and closed a fist around some of her tunic, wishing she had worn something with a belt. Easier to hold on to someone if they wore a belt. He’d remember that for next time.
“Here we go,” he said as they hit the rapids.
He leaned this way and that way, using his whole body to steer the raft around the boulders as best he could.
Not easy, he thought, exhilarated by the challenge. Not easy, but, sweet Darkness, this is fun.
He saw sky ahead of them and mist from the waterfall. One more tight passage and—
He leaned one way. Missing her cue for the first time, Jaenelle Saetien leaned the other way. Instead of skimming past a boulder, they hit with enough force that it took all the skill he had to keep the raft from flipping and tossing them onto the boulders or into fast-moving water.
They hit another boulder and spun—and the raft began breaking under them, the twine snapping from the strain, despite the coating of Green power.
“Hang on!” he shouted, wrapping both arms around her as the raft reached the end of the rapids and shot over the falls.
They rode the raft down partway. Then the last of the Green power he’d used on the twine burned out, and what was left of the raft fell apart.
Should they go down ahead of all those branches or behind them? Ahead, they’d have all that wood coming at them, and even if he shaped a shield around them, one of them could receive a nasty knock on the head if they surfaced right in front of one of the heavier branches.
Behind, then.
Daemonar spread his wings, pumping hard to get some height—or at least delay the plunge into the pool below long enough for the branches to move downriver.
Jaenelle Saetien was younger than his sister, Titian, but the girls were about the same size. He hadn’t considered either of them large, but, Hell’s fire, it was everything he could do to hold that weight—and he wouldn’t be able to hold her much longer.
Judging the distance to the water, Daemonar created a Green bubble shield around them and folded his wings.
Jaenelle Saetien screamed as they fell.
*Hold . . . ,* he began on a psychic thread.
No time. They hit the water and went down like a stone halfway to the bottom of the pool before the buoyancy of the bubble shield popped them back to the surface. They rolled a bit in the Craft-made bubble before he eliminated the shield and they went under a second time.
“You okay?” he asked when they surfaced.
She tipped her head back and whooped, a sound full of the joy he also felt. “That was wonderful! Daemonar, let’s . . .”
“Hell’s fire,” he muttered when he spotted movement on the riverbank.
“What?” Treading water, she looked in the same direction. “Uh-oh.”
“Yeah. Uh-oh.”