Anne Bishop - Queen of Darkness

Her birthday would be coming up soon. Would she mind having a wedding on her birthday? Well, maybe he would. He didn’t really want to share the celebration of their wedding day with anything else. But they could have it soon after that. She would still be tired, still be recovering from this spell, but they could find a quiet place for the honeymoon. It didn’t matter where.

Where was she? Maybe she was already in her room, recovering. Maybe that’s what Draca was going to tell them-that Jaenelle had prevented the war, that Kaeleer was safe. As soon as this announcement was over, he’d slip up to her room and snuggle in next to her. Well, he’d take a bath first. He wasn’t exactly smelling his best at the moment.

Where was she?

Then he looked at Lorn and felt a flicker of uneasiness.

No. They had saved her. The triangle had saved her. She’d expended so much of herself, had risen so far out of herself she’d been plummeting back down, but they had stopped the fall. They had stopped the fall.

Lucivar came up beside him, close enough to brush shoulders with him. Saetan stepped up on his other side with Surreal close by.

Draca picked something up from the Throne’s seat, hesitated, then turned to face them.

Daemon froze.

She was holding Jaenelle’s scepter. But the metal was all twisted, and the two Ebony Jewels were shattered. Not just drained. Shattered. So was the spiral horn.

”The Queen of Ebon Asskavi iss gone,” Draca said quietly. ”The Dark Court no longer existss.”

Someone began screaming. A scream full of panic, rage, denial, pain.

It wasn’t until Lucivar and Saetan grabbed him and held him back that he realized the person who was screaming was himself.

”What was the point of it?” Gabrielle demanded angrily while the tears fell unheeded. ”What was the point of offering the memories if they weren’t going to do any good?”

Surreal raked her fingers through her hair and decided smacking someone probably wasn’t going to help much. Well, it would make her feel better. Thank the Darkness she and Uncle Saetan had been able to heavily sedate Daemon. He couldn’t have tolerated any of this right now.

She would have liked to have found out more about this memory thing, but she was more intrigued by the fact that Tersa seemed too calm and undisturbed-and also a little angry. It would take someone mucking up something very important to make Tersa angry.

”Yes, Tersa,” Karla said testily, ”what was the point?”

”Blood is the memory’s river. And the Blood shall sing to the Blood,” Tersa replied.

Gabrielle said something succinct and obscene.

”Shut up, Gabrielle,” Surreal snapped.

Tersa was sitting on the long table in front of the couch, next to a pile of wooden building blocks. Surreal crouched down beside her. ”What were the memories for?” she asked quietly.

Tersa brushed her tangled hair away from her face. ”To feed the web of dreams. It was no longer complete. It had lived, it had grown.”

”But she’s gone!” Morghann wailed.

”The Queen is gone,” Tersa said with some heat. ”Is that all she was to you?”

”No,” Karla said. ”She was Jaenelle. That was enough.”

”Exactly,” Tersa said. ”It is still enough.”

Surreal jolted, hardly daring to hope. She touched Tersa’s hand, waited until she was sure she had the woman’s attention. ”The Queen is gone, but Jaenelle isn’t?”

Tersa hesitated. ”It’s too soon to know. But the triangle kept the dream from returning to the Darkness, and now the kindred are fighting to hold the dream to the flesh.”

That brought protests from Gabrielle and Karla.

”Wait a minute,” Gabrielle said, glancing at Karla, who nodded. ”If Jaenelle is hurt and needs a Healer, she should have us.”

”No,” Tersa said, her anger breaking free. ”She should not have you. You could not look at what was done to that flesh and believe it could still live. But the kindred do not doubt. The kindred will not believe anything else. That is why, if it can be done, they are the ones who can do it.” She jumped up and ran out of the room.

Surreal waited a moment, then followed. She didn’t find Tersa, but she found Graysfang hovering nearby, whining anxiously.

She studied the wolf. Kindred do not doubt. They would sink in and fight for that dream with fangs and claws and never give it up. Well, she would never have a snout that could smell tracks, but she could damn well learn how to be as stubborn as a wolf. She would sink her teeth into the belief that Jaenelle was simply recovering somewhere private after performing an extremely difficult spell. She would sink in and hold on to that.

For Jaenelle’s sake.

For Daemon’s sake.

And for her own sake, because she wanted her friend to come back.

Daemon walked down the steps that led to the garden in the Hall, the garden that had two statues.

When he woke up from the sedative Surreal and Saetan had given him, he had asked to leave the Keep. They had gone with him. So had Tersa.

Lucivar hadn’t.

That had been a week ago.

He wasn’t sure what he’d done during the days since. They had simply passed. And at night…

At night, he crept from his own bed into Jaenelle’s because it was the only place he could sleep. Her scent was there, and in the dark, he could almost believe that she was simply away for a little while, that he would wake one morning and find her cuddled up next to him.

He stared at the statue of the male, with its paw/hand curved protectively above the sleeping woman. Part human, part beast. Savagery protecting beauty. But now he saw something else in its eyes: the anguish, the price that sometimes had to be paid.

He turned away from it, walked over to the other statue, stared at the woman’s face-that familiar, beloved face- for a long, long time.

The tears came-again. The pain was always there.

”Tersa keeps telling me that it will be all right, to trust one who sees,” he told the statue. ”Surreal keeps telling me not to give up, that the kindred will be able to bring you back. And I want to believe that. I need to believe that. But when I ask Tersa about you directly, she hesitates, says it’s too soon to know, says the kindred are fighting to hold the dream to the flesh. Fighting to hold the dream to the flesh.” He laughed bitterly. ”They’re not fighting to hold the dream to flesh, Jaenelle. They’re fighting to put enough of you together again for there to be something for the dream to come back to. And you knew what would happen, didn’t you? When you decided to do this, you knew.”

He paced, circled, came back to the statue.

”I did it for you,” he said quietly. ”I bought the time, I played the game. For you.” His breathing hitched, came out in a sob. ”I knew I would have to do some things that wouldn’t be forgiven. I knew it when you asked me to go to Hayll, but I did it anyway. F-for you. Because I was going to come back to you, and the rest of it wouldn’t matter. B-because I was coming back to you. But you sent me there knowing you wouldn’t be here when I got back, knowing…” He sank to his knees. ”You said no sacrifices. You made me promise I wouldn’t make any sacrifices. But what do you call this, Jaenelle? What do you call this? When I got back, we were going to get m-married…. And you left me. Damn you, Jaenelle, I did this for you, and you left me. You left me.”