“Papa!” Jaenelle raised a hand and waved at him—and wobbled on that bare back so dreadfully far above the ground.
Daemon’s heart bounced down to his knees and back up to his throat, but he kept his movements smooth and easy as he approached the horse, who had slowed to a walk and kept an eye on him.
“Papa! Look at me!”
“I see you, witch-child.” But he was watching the stallion. “Come on, now. Let me help you down so you can introduce your new friend properly.” And once he got her down, he would decide if she was ever getting near the horse again.
“Go over to Papa now,” she said. “We’ll get hugs!”
A Warlord Prince was a Warlord Prince, whether he walked on four legs or two. And this youngster was feeling just as possessive and territorial as Daemon.
Well, that wasn’t quite true. No one could feel as possessive and territorial about his daughter as he did.
He waited, letting the stallion move toward him, giving Opal a chance to show respect for the Black—and remain among the living.
Once Daemon had his girl safely in his arms, he looked into those gold eyes shining with excitement. It wasn’t the thought of tears that defeated him. It was the thought of how dull those eyes would be if he didn’t allow the boundaries of her world to keep expanding.
Sighing, he looked at the horse and got down to the delicate business of negotiating the rules.
Surreal stepped out of Daemon’s study and found Holt and Beale in the great hall, waiting for her.
Holt shook his head. “You’re both so strict about the on-duty rule, I didn’t think you could talk the Prince into going out there, not when you could deal with a kindred visitor.”
“You just have to know the right thing to say,” Surreal replied. And knowing when Daemon needs to set the boundaries for his daughter doesn’t hurt either—especially when being the one to set those boundaries is as much for his sake as for hers.
“You talked him into handling it,” Holt said, still shaking his head.
“I did—which means I win the bet.” She grinned and held out a hand. “That will be ten silver marks each, gentlemen. Pay up.”
ELEVEN
Surreal walked down the steps to the sunken garden that held two statues. She’d built her own little garden for quiet reflection, and came to this one only once a year on this particular day. Daemon came here often, and it held so much of his sorrow and grief she wondered how the groundskeepers could stand tending the flower beds and trimming the lawn—and cleaning the fountain where a woman with an achingly familiar face rose out of the water.
She glanced at the statue of the male, then looked away. She couldn’t help the male, so she went over to the other statue and lifted the mug she’d brought with her.
“I brought you coffee.” She poured the contents on the grass near the fountain. “Daemon’s gone to your cottage in Ebon Rih, like he does every year on the anniversary of your death. He’ll stay for a day or two, remembering you. When he comes home, he’ll sleep in his own bed for a few days while he wrestles with the question of whether having sex with me is being unfaithful to you or if still loving you is somehow being unfaithful to me. I think he’ll always wrestle with that question at this time of year. It’s not easy being the second wife, not when you were the first. I wouldn’t give it up, though.”
She vanished the mug, then stuffed her hands in the pockets of her coat. “Jaenelle Saetien is a lot like you. I think that helps Daemon. I know it helps me, because watching him deal with her reminds me of you and Uncle Saetan. Hell’s fire, you should have seen him the first time he said no and she tried to negotiate to get parts of that no turned into a yes. I can’t laugh at him when he’s losing ground, because I need him to back me when I make rules, but it is fun to watch him deal with her. And not just fun for me. Beale and Holt are often in prime position to watch our little dramas. She’s not shy the way you were. I blame her uncle Lucivar for that. I think she absorbed some of his Eyrien arrogance while she was in the womb, just by my being around him. She throws herself at the world and is confident the world will catch her. And maybe it always will.”
A tear suddenly spilled over. Surreal wiped it away. “I know you’re gone and can’t hear me, but I’ll ask anyway. You were Kaeleer’s Heart, and you were Daemon’s heart.Your death left a hole in him, and I don’t know if it will ever heal.”
“It will.”
Surreal jolted, then looked toward the stairs. “Tersa.”
Daemon’s mother joined her and smiled at the statue that wore Jaenelle Angelline’s face. “She knew Daemon’s rise out of the Twisted Kingdom needed to be a slow journey in order for his mind to heal. The same is true of his heart. A slow journey, Surreal. Be patient. It will take time, but the hole inside him is filling—and you’re one reason why it can.”
Surreal licked her lips and asked the question that had been circling in her mind ever since Nightwind showed up a few months before. “Has Jaenelle Angelline come back as Jaenelle Saetien?”
Tersa shook her head. “No. Of that I am sure.”
“But they’re so alike in some ways.”
“Yearnings can be strange things. What kind of daughter did you yearn for in the long hours of lonely nights?”
The question made her uneasy, but she answered it. “Someone like the golden-haired child I once knew, without the pain.”
“Then you have the daughter of your heart. And isn’t she also exactly the kind of daughter Daemon needs in order to heal?”
Surreal didn’t know how to answer that.
“You worry without reason,” Tersa said. “One is like the other but is not the other.”
“How can you be sure?”
Tersa brushed her fingers along Surreal’s cheek. “Witch told me.”
Daemon closed the cottage door and pressed his forehead against the wood. Most days the pain was a dull ache in the background of his life, a constant and faithful lover. Most days he barely noticed it while he was busy taking care of his family and the SaDiablo estates, and the Territory of Dhemlan.
Most days. But not on the anniversary of the day he lost his Queen, his lover, his heart. Then the pain roared back, sharp and cutting. It wasn’t fair to Surreal, but he couldn’t be around her on this day. Couldn’t even be around Jaenelle Saetien, mostly because he didn’t want to explain the tears and the hurting to his little girl.