”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
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
”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
”No,” Tersa said, her anger breaking free. ”She should
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.
Chapter Sixteen
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
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
He collapsed on the grass near the statue, sobbing.
Lucivar rested a fist against the stone wall and bowed his head.
Mother Night. Daemon had gone into that game expecting to come back for his own wedding.
He was here because Marian had ripped into him that morning, giving him the full thrust of the temper that lived beneath her quiet nature. She’d told him that, yes, he’d been hurt, but he’d been hurt
That had brought him here.
But now…
When they’d both been slaves in Terreille, he and Daemon had played games before, had used each other, had hurt each other. Sometimes they’d done it to relieve their own pain, sometimes it had been for a better reason. But they’d always been able to look past those games and forgive the hurt
He had other people now, a wider circle to love. A wife, a son. Maybe that had made the difference. He didn’t
