Anne Bishop - Shalador's Lady

“Because, like his brother, he hasn’t taken into account that having the stamina to run other grown men into the ground is not the same thing as trying to keep up with a small, bright boy who leaps into exploring the world with all the arrogance of his race—to say nothing of having inherited Lucivar’s confidence in being able to meet any challenge the world foolishly chooses to toss at him.”

“Oh.”

“Were you disappointed that you didn’t make love last night?”

She gave him a dry smile. “Frankly, I’m not sure either one of us could have stayed awake through the whole thing if we’d tried.”

End of discussion , Saetan thought. Except it wasn’t. Not quite. “He’s also concerned about how you’ll respond to him the next time he goes into rut—which will be fairly soon.”

The look in her sapphire eyes sizzled along his nerves. He was her adopted father, and he had never thought of her physically in any other way. But he was also a man and a Warlord Prince, and there was always a sexual awareness between a Warlord Prince and his Queen, even when there was no desire to do anything with that awareness.

When Daemon was caught in the rut’s sexual madness, how much of his relief came from physical sex and how much came from the knife-edged dance of being with Witch in the Misty Place deep in the abyss—of being with the living myth when she revealed the Self that lived within the human body? The Self that was not completely human.

The sizzle faded. He had to clear his throat before he could speak. “I’ll tell Daemon not to worry about the rut.”

*I’ve never worried about the rut,* she told him using a psychic thread.

Now he understood why she didn’t.

Jaenelle closed the distance between them and hugged him. Then she gave him a bright smile. “I’d better get back to the Hall before Daemonar gets his Unka Daemon into trouble.”

“I thought Daemonar had given up the baby talk.”

“Oh, he has for the most part. But he likes the sound of ‘unka,’ and his uncle doesn’t insist that he say the word correctly.”

Saetan smiled. “I see. Off you go, witch-child. Try to keep them both out of the trees, will you?”

“I’ll do my best.”

Later, when he was alone in his suite, preparing to sleep through the midday hours, he allowed himself to remember her in that moment when she showed him a side of Witch a father would never see.

And he allowed himself one moment to envy his son—and to wish he could have been the lover instead of the father.

Propped up on one elbow, Ranon watched Shira’s slow return to awareness after the climax that was the finale of a long, slow, intense evening of lovemaking.

Before coming together in Cassidy’s court, they’d had five years of fast, furtive coupling because his interest would have drawn the wrong kind of attention to the Black Widow Healer. Five years when he’d tried to stay away from her and had been unable to resist being with her. Five years of love always being entwined with fear.

Twice that five years, actually, if he counted the years before they became lovers. He had been twenty and still adjusting to the Opal power that coursed through him after he’d made the Offering to the Darkness. She had been sixteen—a young Black Widow, born to the Hourglass Covens, who was just beginning the secret training that would hone the Craft she instinctively knew, as well as the open training required to be a Healer.

They had both been visiting friends in a village that wasn’t home to either of them. They had met by chance when their companions had chosen the same dining house for the midday meal. And that meeting had shaped their hopes and dreams for the next ten years.

Now, thanks to Cassidy, he and Shira could spend time together openly, could spend the night together, could begin to build a life together. That alone would have earned Cassidy his loyalty. The fact that she was proving to be a far stronger ruler than any of them had expected from a Queen who wore a Rose Jewel had earned his respect and a different kind of love. Her will was his life, and he would do everything he could to help her rule Dena Nehele—and by doing so he would do more than he’d dreamed possible for the Shalador people.

“What are you looking at?” Shira asked, her dark eyes reflecting the pleasure of their lovemaking as well as amusement.

His thoughts had drifted beyond her bedroom, but his eyes had been focused on her breasts.

He lowered his head and placed one warm kiss between her breasts before saying, “A Shalador beauty.”

Her response was a little snort. “I know what I look like.”

“But you don’t see what I see,” Ranon said. He was considered a handsome man. The sharp features typical of his people gave his face a rugged handsomeness that went well with a warrior’s lean body, and he had the dark eyes, dark hair, and golden skin that made Shaladorans distinct from the brown-skinned, long-lived races or the fair-skinned races like the people of Dena Nehele.

She had the look of their people, too, and many men had thought the sharp bones of her face and the curves that lacked abundance made her less appealing as a lover—and her sharp tongue and temper discouraged most men from getting close to her. But it was exactly those things about her that excited him in ways no other woman had, and he understood why Gray could look at Cassidy—whom even the most generous supporter could not call pretty—and see a beautiful woman.

Shira turned her head away from him, an evasive movement that wasn’t typical of her.

He considered his words. You don’t see what I see. Then he considered the nature of a Black Widow’s Craft and felt a chill settle in his belly.

“Shira? Have you seen something in a tangled web?”

“I can’t talk about it.”

“Can’t or won’t?”

“Can’t, won’t. The words make no difference.”

They made a difference to him. His voice went flat. “You saw something in a web of dreams and visions. Didn’t you?”

“I can’t speak of it, Ranon. None of us will speak of it.”

The chill in his belly turned to jagged ice. “How many Black Widows have seen this?”

She sighed, a sound full of exasperation and a hint of anger.

He shifted away from her, sat up, and wrapped his arms around his bent knees. He had no right to push. If she felt he needed to know, she would have told him. Hell’s fire! She was the one who had pushed him to come to Grayhaven when Theran had first summoned the Warlord Princes to talk about bringing a Queen from Kaeleer. She hadn’t told him anything then, either. She’d just said he had to go.

The Hourglass didn’t divulge what they saw in their tangled webs. Not very often, anyway. And not directly. But a Black Widow never made a suggestion about an action to take without a reason.

“Is it something to do with Cassidy?” he asked.

She didn’t answer.

“Shira . . .” He didn’t know what to ask.

Finally Shira asked quietly, “Who has your loyalty, Prince Ranon? Tell me the list in order.”

His heart ached, but she had asked. Because he would give her nothing less than honesty, the words had to be said. “I love you with everything I am, but my first loyalty is to my Queen. Then you, then our people, then Dena Nehele.”

She sat up and pressed a hand against his face. When he looked at her, she said fiercely, “Remember the order of that list. Hold on to it with everything you are.”

Was she warning him that something might happen to Cassie when they went to the Shalador reserves?

“Hold on to it the same way you’ve held on to your honor,” Shira said.