Heir to the Shadows (The Black Jewels, #2)

by Anne Bishop

Why couldn’t Draca fill a table with useless bric-a-brac like everyone else? he thought sourly. At least then there would be a way to hide the damn thing since Jaenelle had put some kind of neat little spell on the cup that prevented it from being vanished. “Hell’s fire,” Andulvar finally said. “What does she put in it?” Mephis said, rubbing his stomach. Prothvar eyed Geoffrey. “You know, you’ve almost got some color.” Geoffrey glared at the Eyrien Warlord.

Butterflies churned in his stomach, and they tickled, leaving him with an irrational desire to giggle and flee. He swallowed the giggle, strapped a bit of mental steel to his backbone, and cautiously peered around the doorway.

“We could always pour it into the plants,” Prothvar said, looking around for some greenery. “I already tried that,” Saetan growled. “Draca’s only comment was that if another plant should suffer a sudden demise, she’d ask Jaenelle to look into it.”

Karla shrugged. “Oh, all right. I’ll be a polite guest.” She stepped up to Saetan, and that wicked smile bloomed. “Kiss kiss.”

The drawing room door opened. Jaenelle approached them hesitantly. Then she held out both hands in formal greeting. “Hello, Khary.” Khary looked at the offered hands and turned back to Saetan. “Did Jaenelle ever tell you about her adventure with my uncle’s stone—” “Khary,” Jaenelle gasped, glancing nervously at Saetan. “Hmm?” Khary smiled at her. “Did you know that a proper hug can toss a thought right out of a man’s head? It’s a well-known fact. I’m surprised you hadn’t heard of it.”

“I’ll accept any challenge a male wants to make,” Chaosti snapped. “The girls are between us and the food.” Chaosti sighed. “Challenging another male would be easier.” “Safer, too.”

“Have you ever heard that red-haired witches have hot tempers?” Khardeen asked as he and Chaosti followed the other males into the formal drawing room. “There are no red-haired witches among the Dea al Mon,” Chaosti replied, “and they all have hot tempers.” “Ah. Well, then.”

Saetan jumped when a hand squeezed his shoulder. “You all right?” Andulvar asked quietly. “Am I still standing up?” “You’re vertical.” “Thank the Darkness.”

Saetan placed his glasses carefully on the table. “Let’s skip the hunt and just tree the prey. Do all these letters say the same thing?” “What’s that, High Lord?” Khary asked innocently. “All of these letters give permission for an extended visit?” “So I gathered.” “Define ‘extended visit.’” “Not long. Just the rest of the summer.”

“And it is a reasonable compromise, High Lord. You get to spend time with her and we get to spend time with her. Besides, the Hall is the only place big enough for all of us. And, as my uncle pointed out, having all of us in one place would surely drive a man to drink, and that being the case, he’d rather it be you than him.”

Karla exploded into the room. “That overbearing, overdressed, over-scented sewer rat says my drawing is deficient!”

“He’s a grubby-minded prick,” Karla wailed.

“You are a Queen, yes?” Dujae continued to roar. “You do this for fun when you are finished with the hard lessons of your Craft, yes? You do this because Ladies must learn many things to be good Queens, yes? You do not make polite, itsy-bitsy drawings.”

“There is fire in your heart, yes? That fire needs charcoal and a large pad to express itself. Then when you want to draw a vase, you draw a vase.”

“I’m glad. Killing should never be easy, witch-child. It should leave a scar on your soul. Sometimes it’s necessary. Sometimes there’s no choice if we’re trying to defend what we cherish. But if there’s an alternative, take it.”

“Just because he was using words instead of a knife, you can’t dismiss it, Saetan. He hurt you.”

They know what she is. He saw Khardeen, Aaron, and Chaosti exchange a look before Khary and Aaron followed the others. Chaosti stayed by the window, waiting. Another triangle of power, Saetan thought as he approached the window. Almost as strong and just as deadly. May the Darkness help whoever stood in their way.

“I knew it,” she muttered, crossing her arms. “I knew it was written in male.” Saetan vanished his glasses. “I beg your pardon?” “It’s gibberish. Geoffrey understands it but can’t explain it so that it makes sense, and you understand it. Therefore, it’s written in male—only comprehensible to a mind attached to a cock and balls.”

Between one breath and the next, he watched a disgruntled young witch change into a sleek, predatory Queen. Even her clothes changed as she furiously paced the length of her workroom. By the time she finally stopped in front of him, her face was a cold, beautiful mask, her eyes held the depth of the abyss, her nails were painted a red so dark it was almost black, and her hair was a golden cloud caught up at the sides by silver combs. Her gown seemed to be made of smoke and cobwebs, and a Black Jewel hung above her breasts.

The hourglass was the Black Widows’ symbol, both a declaration and a warning about the witch who wore it. An apprentice wore a pendant with the gold dust sealed in the top half of the glass. A journeymaid’s pendant had the gold dust evenly divided between top and bottom. A fully trained Black Widow wore an hourglass with all the gold dust in the bottom chamber.

He could almost hear the blade against the whetstone as his temper rose to the killing edge. She had a father, a family, and yet lived without human companionship, not even a servant. Exiled here because of the Hourglass? Or because she was Witch? Once he was fit again, this father of hers would have a few things to adjust to—like the Warlord Prince who now served her.

Time moved slowly at the killing edge, measured by the beat of a war drum heart. The world became filled with individual, razor-sharp details. A blade would flow through muscle, humble bone. And the mouth would fill with the living wine as teeth sank into a throat.

“I wasn’t talking about the wave,” Lucivar said through his teeth. “I was talking about the pickleberries.” “Oh.” Jaenelle sat down near the tree stump. She gave him a slanty-eyed look. “Well, I did think the name was sufficient warning so that a person wouldn’t just sink his teeth into one.” “I was thirsty. You said they were juicy.”

“They are,” Jaenelle pointed out so reasonably that he wanted to belt her. She wrapped her arms around her knees. “The dragons were extremely impressed by the sounds you made. They wondered if you were demonstrating territorial claims or a mating challenge.”

Lucivar shuddered at the memory of biting into that aptly named fruit. Juicy, yes. When he’d bitten into it, the juice had flooded his mouth with golden sweetness for a moment before the tartness made his teeth curl and...

understand why the dragons thought he’d been showing them examples of Eyrien display. To add to the insult, the dragons had chomped on pickleberries throughout that whole damn performance while Jaenelle had n...

“What did you do to Lucivar?” Jaenelle asked, dropping the book on the table. “I thought I was the only one who made him look like that.” “Fuzzy and numb,” Lucivar murmured, resting his head against her.

“I can heal the scars on your body, but I can’t heal the scars of the soul. Not yours, not mine. You have to learn to live with them. You have to choose to live beyond them.”

Saetan crossed his arms, leaned back against the desk, and said mildly, “Witch-child, I’m going to throttle you.”

Instinctively, Lucivar bared his teeth and stepped forward to protect his Queen. Jaenelle’s aggrieved, adolescent wail stopped him cold. “That’s the sixth time in two weeks and I’ve barely been home!”

She gave them her best unsure-but-game smile.

“Witch-child, go terrify someone else for a while.”

Lucivar pulled out the chair on Saetan’s right. “Tell the Lady she’s joining us for dinner. She can come down on her own two feet or over my shoulder. Her choice.”

She moved fast. Lucivar moved faster.

In stunned silence, they watched him drag her to her place at the table and dump her in the chair. She immediately shot upward, smacking into the fist he calmly held above her head. Dazed, she didn’t protest when he pushed her chair up to the table and sat down beside her.

“Liver?” Lucivar asked. “Only if it’s yours,” she snapped, her eyes glittering queerly.

Lucivar smiled slightly.

When Jaenelle turned to her left and Saetan got a good look at her eyes, he realized that Lucivar had turned the meal into a violent, brilliantly choreographed dance designed to bring the predatory side of Witch to the surface.

Finally her attention fixed on Lucivar’s plate. Snarling softly, she licked her lips and raised her fork.

Keeping his movements slow and deliberate, Lucivar transferred the second piece of prime rib from his plate to hers. She stabbed the meat wi...

So we reached an agreement. I didn’t complain

about the way she hogged the pillows, tangled the covers, sprawled over more than her share of the bed, made those cute little noises that we don’t call snoring no matter what it sounds like, and growled at everything and everyone until she had her first cup of coffee. And she didn’t complain about the way I hogged the pillows, tangled the covers, sprawled over more than my share of the bed, made funny noises that woke her up and stopped the minute she was awake, and tended to be overly cheerful in the morning.

And the Blood shall sing to the Blood.

“About the same ratio of Blood to landen as other species,” Lucivar said, grinning. “You’re taking this a lot better than Khardeen did. He sat down in the middle of the road and became hysterical. We had to drag him over to the side before he got run over by a cart.”

Kaelas. In the Old Tongue, the word meant “white death.” It usually referred to a kind of snowstorm that came with little warning—swift, violent, and deadly.

“Forgiveness doesn’t work that way. You may want to forgive me, but you can’t do it yet. Forgiving someone can take weeks, months, years. Sometimes it takes a lifetime.

“Don’t you have to finish the kill?” “I don’t think that’ll be a problem,” Jaenelle said dryly. “Piles of Hound shit aren’t much of a threat to anyone.” Surreal paled.

“We all have facets to our personalities. This has

brought out the nastier ones in mine.

Both the Arcerian cats and the kindred tigers had a “word” for humans that roughly translated as “stupid meat.”