Trying to change the subject, boyo? All right, I’ll let you lead this dance
.
For the moment.
Using Craft, Rainier called in a rectangular box and floated it over to the desk, placing it directly in front of Daemon.
Jewelry box, Daemon decided, leaning forward to study the flowers and leaves carved into the top. The box itself was excellent in craftsmanship and sufficient as a Winsol gift, so when he opened the lid, he whistled softly.
A gold metalwork gauntlet. Delicate-looking, if you ignored the talons on the ends of the articulated fingers. A weapon disguised as a pretty.
“It’s a Winsol gift for Surreal,” Rainier said. “Do you think she’ll like it?”
“It’s beautiful and deadly,” Daemon replied. “She’ll love it.” He closed the box and returned it to Rainier before offering the man a brandy.
Something was wrong here. Very wrong.
Rainier had been a dance instructor for years. Hell’s fire, he’d been Jaenelle’s dance instructor—a young Warlord Prince who had been able to hold his own with Jaenelle and the coven of young Queens who had been her closest friends.
Now Rainier worked for him, and he paid the man a generous salary. But he recognized Banard’s work. The jeweler made some pieces that wouldn’t beggar an ordinary man’s pocket for a year, but that custom-made gauntlet wasn’t one of them.
What was Rainier trying to prove?
“What are your plans for Winsol?” Daemon asked.
“I’m going to Dharo to spend some time with my family,” Rainier replied, his smile looking sicker than before.
Why?
Daemon wondered.
They usually prefer that you keep your distance.
Hadn’t Rainier made a family visit a few weeks ago? Right around the time when something began to go wrong with the healing of his leg?
“Unless there’s something you need from me,” Rainier added.
“No, I don’t—” A thought occurred to him, and he didn’t think he’d get an honest answer without inflicting some pain. So he would inflict the pain.
“It’s come to my attention that there is a traditional Winsol dance. It would be prudent for me to learn it.”
“Don’t look to me to teach you,” Rainier said. “I’m crippled.”
At least he didn’t have to dig for the bitterness festering inside the other Warlord Prince.
“And who do you blame for that, Rainier?” Daemon asked too softly, leaning back and steepling his fingers again.
“I don’t blame anyone,” Rainier snapped. “It happened.”
“Yes, it happened, because you did what you were supposed to do—defend and protect.”
“Not well enough. Three children died and Surreal got poisoned. I didn’t protect them well enough, and I lost . . .” He swallowed, obviously fighting not to say more. “I was a dancer. It’s all I’ve ever been. All I wanted to be. I’ll never be that again.”
“Are you sure?” Daemon asked.
“Yes, I’m sure!”
Daemon hesitated, but it had to be said. “Everything has a price, Prince Rainier. An escort’s life is always on the line.”
“I know that.”
“Do you? You were wounded in battle. It doesn’t matter what the battleground looked like; that’s the truth of it. You’re not the first man who’s had to rebuild his life because of battle scars.You won’t be the last.” Knowing that he wasn’t getting through to the man, Daemon unleashed some of his own frustration. “You could have lost your leg instead of losing some mobility. Hell’s fire, Rainier,
you could have died in that place
.”
“Maybe it would have been better if I had,” Rainier said softly.
Daemon felt his temper rise from the depth of his Black Jewel—sweet, cold, and deadly. Rainier wasn’t stupid. He knew who would be waiting for him if he got maudlin enough to commit suicide. The boy thought he had troubles now? Wait until Saetan got done explaining things to the fool—especially a fool who had helped himself become demon-dead sooner than he should have.
But it might explain Rainier buying a gift he really couldn’t afford. And Lucivar needed to be aware of that possibility.
“What’s the state of your finances?” Daemon asked.
Rainier blinked. Then color stained his cheeks. “Frankly, Prince Sadi, that’s none of your business.”
“I just made it my business. Do you want to find out how fast I can acquire every scrap of private information about you, or are you going to answer the question?”
Rainier squirmed. “I’m doing all right. I have some savings.”
“Your salary will continue, paid quarterly as usual,” Daemon said.
“For what?” Rainier let out a pained laugh. “There’s not much I can do.”
“I have some thoughts about that, but right now you can make some effort to heal.” Daemon put enough ice in his voice to have Rainier’s eyes fill with wariness. “I’ll take care of the rent on your apartment in Amdarh, as well as any other necessary expenses like food.”
“I don’t need your charity, and I don’t want your pity,” Rainier snapped.
“You’re not getting either, so shut up.” But it was becoming clear that someone was giving Rainier heavy doses of both, and those things could become more crippling than a damaged leg.
Daemon huffed out a sigh. “You’re going to have to come to terms with what you can do physically and what you can’t. I can’t help you with that, but I can make things easier for a while so that you can concentrate on healing. You’re a good Warlord Prince, Rainier, and a good escort. Too good to lose because you’re having trouble finding your balance.”
Another pained laugh. “That’s a good way of putting it.”
“After Winsol, you’ll be spending a few weeks in Ebon Rih with Lucivar.”
And may the Darkness have mercy on you.
“So I suggest you visit your family in Dharo and enjoy the festivities.”
“Am I dismissed?” Rainier asked, his voice a shade too polite.
“Yes, you’re dismissed. Happy Winsol, Rainier.”
Rainier pushed himself to his feet, then leaned on the cane. “Happy Winsol, Prince.”
Daemon suspected that he and Rainier were both wishing each other a lot of things at that moment, and “happy” wasn’t one of them.
He waited until he was sure he’d given Rainier enough time to leave the Hall. Then he left his study—and didn’t have to go far, since Beale was waiting for him.
“Lady Karla requests your presence,” Beale said.
He’d known when the Queen of Glacia had arrived. It was hard to miss that particular psychic scent—and hard to miss the presence of a Gray-Jeweled witch in his home.
“She’s waiting for you in her suite,” Beale added.
“And Lady Angelline?”
“The Lady has gone to the Keep. She intends to be back in time for dinner, but said if she was late, you should start without her.”
Not likely, but he didn’t need to say it, since it was already understood by the household staff.
Daemon made his way through the Hall’s corridors to the section that held the family’s suites of rooms. When Jaenelle was fifteen, the coven came to spend a summer, reuniting with the special friend they thought had been lost. The coven—and the boyos who also came for that afternoon tea and never quite went home again—had been given suites. Even now, when those Ladies were the Queens of their own Territories, those suites were still theirs, a second home and a place where they still gathered as friends and Sisters.
Karla’s suite looked out over Jaenelle’s courtyard. He knocked on Karla’s door and didn’t get an answer. His hand hovered over the door’s handle, but he tried another approach before reacting as if something was wrong.
*Karla?* he called on a psychic thread.
*Come on through,* she replied. *I’m down in the courtyard.*
He entered her sitting room and hurried to the glass doors that led out to the balcony. He paused then, reassured when he saw her standing near the drained fountain, her face raised to the sun. Moving more leisurely, he went down the nearest set of stairs and joined her.
“Kiss kiss,” Karla said, giving him a wicked smile.
Raising the hand she offered, he kissed her knuckles.
“Darling, isn’t it a bit cold out here?” he asked.
“Your blood must be thin if you think this is cold. Which you wouldn’t notice as much if you put on a coat.”
At least he had put a shield on his shoes to keep his feet dry and protect the leather.
She linked her arm in his and sighed. “Glacia’s winter has too much bite for me a lot of days, so I wanted to take advantage of spending a little time outside in softer weather.”
“Meaning a
little
snow on the ground and air that doesn’t freeze your lungs?” Daemon asked dryly.
“Exactly.”
He felt her shiver and led her to the stairs. “Enough.”
“Bossy.”
“Protective.”
“Bossy.”
He bared his teeth and said, “Kiss kiss,” which made her laugh.
He didn’t know if it was proof of Beale’s uncanny timing or if Karla had made the request earlier, but they entered the sitting room moments before Holt brought a tray of coffee and pastries.
“You look good,” Daemon told her as he poured coffee for both of them.
And she did, despite her face having thinned and aged a decade more than her years. Whether that aging was due to the task of ruling Glacia or a result of the poisoning she’d survived two years ago, he couldn’t tell.
“Flattery will not get you the last nutcake,” Karla said, taking the cup he offered. “I do feel good most of the time. Oh, my legs feel the weather, so there are uncomfortable days, but unlike people whose brains are attached to their penises, I’ve actually done what I was told to do in order to get better and keep my legs as healthy as they can be.”
Shit. “So this isn’t a social call?”
“Jaenelle asked me to come and look at Rainier. Provide a second opinion as a Healer.”
Daemon stiffened. “
Jaenelle
asked for a second opinion?”
“Tells you something is wrong, doesn’t it?” Karla sipped her coffee. “Doesn’t matter what Jewels she wears; Jaenelle is the most brilliant Healer in the entire Realm. If she can’t heal something, it can’t be healed. I’m testimony to what she can do. I shouldn’t have survived that brew of poisons I was given when my uncle Hobart tried to regain control of Glacia. And having survived, I shouldn’t be as healthy as I am.”
“Do you . . .” Daemon swallowed some coffee to wet a suddenly dry throat. “Do you sometimes wish she’d let you die? You wouldn’t be walking with a cane, wouldn’t have weak legs, if you’d made the transition to demon-dead.”
“That’s your cock talking,” Karla said.
“It is n—” He stopped. Thought. “Rainier.”
“Yes. Rainier.”
He set his cup down on the table in front of the sofa. “He won’t come all the way back, will he?”
“No, his leg will never be what it was. It will never support him the way it did before that Eyrien war blade cut through all that muscle and half the bone. If he’d gone down and stayed down, any of us—Gabrielle, me, Jaenelle—could have healed him and brought him almost all the way back. Maybe so close to all the way back he could do whatever he wanted to on that leg as long as he gave it some care. But he slapped shields around his leg and kept fighting.”
“He did what he had to do.”
“I know. But that leg will never be the same because of it, and he knows that.”
“Does he?”
“Yes, he does. He’s fighting it, Daemon. I don’t know what he’s doing or why, but I can see the results. Jaenelle has had to rebuild that bone and muscle so many times, there is almost nothing left to work with. Something is riding him, and riding him hard, but if he doesn’t stop damaging that leg, he really will be crippled.”
“He’s not a fool,” Daemon said.
“No,” Karla said quietly. “He’s scared. That’s worse.”
“Anything I can do?”
She shook her head. “No, there’s nothing you can do. And there is nothing I can do that Jaenelle hasn’t done.”
“Maybe having a leg so damaged there is no possible way to dance is easier for him than a leg that is almost whole but not whole enough.”
“Maybe, but I wouldn’t have thought Rainier was that much of an ass.” Karla selected a pastry. “Is he still going for this extra training with Lucivar?”
“He’s going. And he’s already been told if he doesn’t show up on his own, Lucivar will hunt him down and drag him all the way to Ebon Rih.”
“Well, then. I’m sure things will get sorted out—one way or another.”
Since he could imagine how things would get sorted out if Rainier started a pissing contest with Lucivar, he changed the subject. “How is Della? Is she excited about Winsol?”
Karla laughed. “She’s more excited that I’ve agreed to let her start learning basic healing.”