The Queen's Weapons by Anne Bishop

Author:Anne Bishop [Bishop, Anne]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781984806673
Google: RFzrDwAAQBAJ
Publisher: Penguin
Published: 2021-03-09T00:00:00+00:00

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The Ebon-gray arrived at the town house. An hour later, the Black departed.

Daemonar stared at a chapter he was supposed to read for tomorrow’s class and waited for a summons that didn’t come until Lucivar gave him a psychic tap and told him it was time for dinner.

Uncomfortable subjects were set aside, which meant no one asked about the school. Instead, Lucivar and Surreal talked about the SaDiablo vineyards and the book Jillian had written, which had been purchased by Uncle Daemon’s publishing house. Talking and teasing to cover the fact that Aunt Surreal felt uneasy about the most lethal side of Uncle Daemon’s temper coming to the surface at the school.

As soon as dinner was over, Surreal excused herself and went to her room. He and Lucivar walked over to the sitting room in the other side of the town house.

Lucivar poured two fingers of whiskey into two glasses, then handed one to him before settling into a chair designed for Eyriens. “Tell me what happened today. All of it.”

“Didn’t Uncle Daemon tell you?”

“He did. Now I want to hear it from you.”

He told his father all of it, starting with the warm-up and sparring with Titian and Zoey, his meeting with Prince Raine, and his reaction when he returned to his room after his shower and realized what Krellis and the other two boys had done. He tried to be matter-of-fact about his decision to summon the Warlord Prince of Dhemlan because Uncle Daemon had told him to report any trouble at the school and how that wasn’t the side of his uncle’s temper that had responded to his summons. Finally, he told Lucivar what the Sadist had said—and done.

He sipped the whiskey. A far better blend than the stuff Tamnar had purchased. “Before I walked into the dining room, I heard Aunt Surreal tell you that I might have danced with the Sadist.” He’d heard the phrase before, but now he had some idea of what it meant.

“Have you left anything out?” Lucivar asked.

“No, sir.”

“Then you didn’t dance with the Sadist. You brushed against that side of Daemon’s temper, saw a little of what he can do, but his attention and his rage weren’t aimed at you.”

That attention had been aimed at him once when he’d been in the Queen’s part of the Keep. Auntie J. had stopped whatever might have happened, but he remembered how it had felt when the Sadist had focused on him and seen a rival or adversary or enemy.

A pause. Then Lucivar said, “What you also saw was that the Sadist trusted your judgment when you asked him to stop. He trusted that the punishment and pain he’d inflicted sufficiently balanced the offense because you told him it was enough. He doesn’t offer that trust to many people.”

“Did Aunt Surreal ever dance with the Sadist?” He knew that Daemon and Surreal had a different kind of marriage from his parents. If Aunt Surreal couldn’t cope with being around the Sadist, that would explain a lot about their living arrangements.

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