The Hall might be the family seat, but it didn’t feel like a home. Not to her. It was too big, too imposing, too full of people who were neither friends nor family in a way that allowed her to simply be herself. The town house in Amdarh, which was Dhemlan’s capital, suited her—a small house in a large city. The Hall suited Daemon, giving him the breathing room he needed to be away from people who might be overwhelmed by his sexual heat and respond in a way that put them, and everyone else, in danger.
And Jaenelle Saetien? A child between. The estate offered her space to ride and walk and explore, either on her own or with a Sceltie or two for company, or with Mikal, who lived with Tersa and was Daemon’s ward. The girl enjoyed physical activities and the protected independence that came from being able to go to the village without an adult in tow. But she also enjoyed the theater and the parks and the shops that were in Amdarh, even if she had less independence in a city that size. She enjoyed mingling with girls from other aristo families when they gathered for some event.
Fortunately, the movement between one residence and the other wasn’t unusual. Sometimes Daemon came with them. Sometimes she planned the time in Amdarh to coincide with his staying at the Keep. Either way, her goal never changed—to keep her daughter safe and let her grow up without the scars that had marked her life, and Daemon’s life . . . and Jaenelle Angelline’s life.
In that, she and Daemon were united.
After purchasing two books, Surreal walked to a dining house. She didn’t offer an explanation for why she was dining out instead of going to the Hall, and no one asked. Everyone in the village knew that Jaenelle Saetien was visiting her cousins in Ebon Rih, and Surreal often had dinner in Halaway, alone, during those times—or when Sadi was also not in residence.
He was there, at the Hall. She could feel the presence of the Black. That dark power ran under the whole village as well as the SaDiablo estate, both a comfort and warning to Halaway’s residents.
Funny how she hadn’t been as aware of it during the years she’d lived in the village.
When she was a child, she’d had a crush on Daemon Sadi, who already was a young man when she met him and had been a pleasure slave for centuries by then. She’d had a girl’s romantic notion of what it would be like to be with him. As a young whore, whose training he had financed because that was the only kind of help she would accept from him at the time, she’d gotten drunk one night and made a mistake that had provoked him into showing her what sex wrapped in cold rage could feel like. That was the night she had brushed against the side of his temper the rest of the Blood called the Sadist.
Then there was the night when Saetan Daemon SaDiablo, Prince of the Darkness and High Lord of Hell, had gone to his final death and become a whisper in the Darkness. She and Daemon came together as a way of dealing with a painful loss. If she hadn’t gotten pregnant that night, maybe they would have become lovers, maybe not. But because Daemon had been taken from his father at so young an age, and because of what had happened to him after that, he couldn’t tolerate her leaving with his child. So she agreed to marry him, and at the time, she’d believed her reasons to be sound.
A mistake. They were good as partners, good as friends. She’d had plenty of time to think about the night that had damaged their marriage and almost destroyed Sadi, and she could admit now, to herself, anyway, that she should have declined when he invited her to play, should have retreated to her room and closed the door. That might have bruised his feelings a bit, but he would have shaken off that particular edge of desire by morning and her refusal wouldn’t have changed things between them. Not like her accepting the invitation had done.
That invitation hadn’t been about sex, as fabulous and terrifying as the sex had been. Not really. Not at the core. That’s what she finally realized after years of struggling to understand why she’d run away instead of confronting Daemon the next morning. She’d run in order to survive because, that night, what Daemon had really offered was to be a husband to her in the same way he had been with Jaenelle, offering everything, holding back nothing. And Daemon holding back nothing . . .
She’d run from him, and she’d run from the truth, was still running in some ways because she was afraid of what would happen to the family, to Dhemlan, to the whole damn Realm if she spoke the truth.
She didn’t want to be a wife in the same way Jaenelle Angelline had been. Couldn’t be a wife in that way. Not to the High Lord of Hell or the Sadist. Sadi’s partner and lover? The Warlord Prince of Dhemlan’s second-in-command? Yes, she could be those things, enjoyed being those things. That woman could aim a crossbow at a man and establish boundaries without hurt or harm. Sadi hadn’t expected his second-in-command or his friend to accept everything he was. But a woman who was his wife in the fullest sense of the word? Oh, yes. He would expect her to accept all of him.
After all, his first wife had done exactly that.
He didn’t want to cause her pain. If she asked to end the marriage, he would let her go. And then? All the women who romanticized what it would be like to be with Daemon, who thought it would be wonderful and exciting to be surrounded by his sexual heat but didn’t understand what it would feel like to be surrounded by it day after day after day, who hadn’t any notion of everything he was . . . They would swarm around him, an irritation that frayed his control until the leashes that held his temper and the Sadist in check snapped.
The slaughter would be horrific.
For everyone’s sake, she couldn’t leave Sadi without the protection of having a wife. But sometimes—often, lately—she wished Jaenelle Angelline hadn’t made being Sadi’s wife look so damn easy.
* * *
◆ ◆ ◆
Daemon felt Surreal’s return to the Hall a few minutes before he felt the departure of the Ebon-gray.
Dhemlans, Eyriens, and Hayllians were the three long-lived races, their life spans measured in thousands of years. Too many years. While generations of other races bloomed and faded like summer flowers, the long-lived grew slowly—spurts of growth followed by long plateaus before reaching the next level of maturity. But races that measured their lives in centuries also needed more time to let go of words or actions that had caused a wound.
On the surface, Lucivar behaved toward Surreal as he’d always done, with a mix of caution for the Gray-Jeweled witch who was a highly skilled assassin and a willingness to fight her into the ground if that was what had to be done. But under the surface, Lucivar was still pissed off that Surreal’s choice to suffer in silence when she’d been overwhelmed by her husband’s sexual heat instead of talking to someone—anyone—had led to Daemon making mistakes that had resulted in his coming too close to shattering his mind again and sliding into the Twisted Kingdom.
There had been hurt on both sides, and if Surreal had talked to him after he’d made the mistake of allowing the Sadist to play as lover, their lives and marriage might have been very different. But they all knew if someone had told him outright that he would have to endure hideous pain for months and almost lose his sanity in order to bring Witch back into his life in any way, he would have done it without a second thought, would have embraced that pain and paid any price.