The Shadow Queen (26 page)

Gray saw the shock on the men’s faces. Saw Shira pale.

“Cassidy . . . ,” Shira said.

“It grows where a witch was killed,” Cassidy said. “It grows where her blood was spilled in violence. So many died in that spot.”

“Mother Night,” Ranon said.

Gray wasn’t sure which of them was still shaking—he or Cassie—until she pulled away from him to sit up on her own.

It was him.

“Can I have more of that?” Cassie asked, reaching for the tonic bottle.

Shira handed it over without a word.

“Do you know who might have died here,Theran?” Ranon asked.

Theran looked sick. “I’m not sure. Thera, I think. And Talon’s wife.”

“I’ve seen so much of this stuff growing in Dena Nehele— and in the Shalador reserves,” Ranon said. “Was told it was just a weed, an invasive weed. Mother Night.”

Feeling timid, Gray touched Cassie’s shoulder. “What do we do now?”

“It’s overgrown with weeds and hasn’t been tended for too long,” Cassie said. “So we’ll tend that ground and the witchblood that grows there.” She paused. “The Black Widows in the Dark Court told me that witchblood knows the name of the one who has gone, and if you know how, the plant can tell you whose blood nourished the seed.”

Mutters. Murmurs. Shira shuddered.

“I can ask how it’s done—if you want to know,” Cassie said, looking at Shira.

“I—Grayhaven?” Shira said, looking at Theran.

“I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t know if . . . I don’t know.”

Cassie nodded. When she shifted position, Theran offered a hand to help her stand up.

Gray got to his feet, wincing a little and pretending he didn’t see the way Shira was studying him before Ranon pulled her up.

“We’re going to clean up that ground,” Cassie said.

*Gray and Cassie need to rest,* Vae said.

“Yes, they do,” Shira said. “Lady Cassidy’s hands are still fragile, and if she’s going to stay out here and supervise, I want Gray to stay close by and keep her company. But I’d like to help clean up that part of the garden.”

“So would I,” Ranon said.

“Gray?” Theran said. “Do you have tools we could use?”

Gray called in the tools he’d vanished, handing them out as Theran, Ranon, and Archerr came up to claim them.

“The short-handled claws would work better for the tight places,” he said. “They’re still in the shed.”

“I’ll get them,” Ranon said, handing the hoe to Shira.

They worked in the garden the rest of the morning, moving carefully between plants that now held a different meaning.

Gray watched them, frustrated because all he
could
do was watch. There was an odd comfort in knowing Cassie was just as frustrated that she couldn’t help.

And there was no comfort at all in the way Theran kept looking at Cassie when he thought no one was watching.

CHAPTER 16

TERREILLE

“
I
don’t know which one is harder to get through,” Cassidy muttered a couple of days later as she stomped to the garden to work off a little frustration. “A man’s head or ground as solid as rock.”

The day they’d all worked together to clean up the part of the garden filled with witchblood, she’d
thought
she and Theran had finally settled into some kind of understanding, that he might actually
listen
to what she was saying instead of telling her it couldn’t be done “that way.” Hell’s fire! Anyone with a pebble’s worth of brain could figure out Dena Nehele couldn’t be ruled in “the ordinary way.” They didn’t have enough Queens to rule in “the ordinary way.” That had been the point! And there was nothing unusual about males ruling on a Queen’s behalf. It was done all the time in Kaeleer. Her cousin Aaron ruled Tajrana, the capital city of Nharkhava, on his Queen’s behalf. And Prince Yaslana ruled Ebon Rih. And she
knew
there were Warlords assigned to be a Queen’s representative who, in essence, ruled their home villages.

How in the name of Hell was she supposed to decide which available Queens might be able—and willing—to rule more than their little villages if she couldn’t talk to them? But
Prince
Grayhaven kept finding reasons for her not to travel and see other parts of Dena Nehele, and he was just as quick with the excuses for why the other Queens—even with an escort of Warlord Princes—couldn’t come to Grayhaven to talk to her.

And none of the other Warlord Princes challenged his asinine statements because he was
Grayhaven.

“The man farts every time he opens his mouth,” Cassidy muttered as she reached the big stone shed.

She closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and blew it out. “And Poppi would whack your butt if he heard you say that,” she scolded herself.

“I’m Grayhaven.”

Cassidy took a step closer to the shed’s open door. Nobody in the part of the shed she could see. Most of the tools were stored neatly now, except for that jumble of things in the back left corner.

She looked at the old blanket that separated Gray’s room from the rest of the shed.

“I’m Grayhaven.”

“Gray?” she called softly. Theran was still in the house, so who was talking to Gray? The voice sounded familiar, but it was muffled too much for her to be sure, except it sounded male—and young.

Then Gray’s voice rose in a kind of desperate keening. “I’m Grayhaven!
I’m Grayhaven!
”

“Gray!”

She rushed to the doorway and pulled the blanket aside—and saw him shivering on a pathetic excuse of a bed, caught in some kind of nightmare. He was wearing trousers and nothing else, and she felt her knees grow weak as she stared at the scars on his back.

“Mother Night, Gray,” she whispered. “What did they do to you?”

She wanted to touch him, wanted to shake him out of the nightmare—or the memory—but she was afraid touching him might frighten him even more.

She braced herself and said in a firm voice, “Prince Gray, your presence is requested.”

He jerked, whimpered. But she thought her use of Protocol had pulled him out of the dream-memory, because the next thing he said was, “Cassie?”

It took him a couple of tries to turn himself so he was facing the doorway. “Cassie?”

His dark hair was matted with sweat, and his face had the drawn, exhausted look of a man who had endured too much.

“What’s your name?” Cassidy asked, keeping her voice Queen firm. “What’s your full name? Your real name?”

He hesitated, then said, “Jared Blaed Grayhaven.”

She looked at the room—at the straight-backed chair that had a flat stone under one leg to keep it from wobbling, at the broken-down chest of drawers that had a single lamp, at the bookcase that had only one unbroken shelf.

“This is the best he could do?” she asked too softly as she looked at the room, piece by piece. “You’re his family, and this is the best he would do?”

She backed out of the room, letting the blanket fall across the opening.

“Cassie?” Gray called.

She walked out of the shed, her stride lengthening with every step she took toward the house.

“Cassie!”

She couldn’t stop, couldn’t answer. Because every step stoked her fury just a little more.

“This was your idea to begin with,” Ranon said, dogging Theran’s footsteps with as much persistence as that damn Sceltie. “Why are you so determined now to stand in the way?”

“I’m not standing in the way,” Theran tossed over his shoulder.

“You won’t even give Cassidy the courtesy of listening to what she has to say.”

He turned on Ranon. “If Warlord Princes are going to rule Dena Nehele, what was the point of trying to get a Queen?”

“And what’s the point of having a Queen if you won’t let her do anything?” Ranon snapped. “I can understand not wanting her to travel around the Territory right now, but why are you so determined not to have the few Queens who are left come to Grayhaven to meet her? After all, she
rules
them now.”

“And how many of those Queens that we passed over are going to be impressed with a witch who wears a Rose Jewel?” Theran asked, feeling bitter again. He had to hide that bitterness from Talon, but he’d be damned if he’d hide it from the rest of the First Circle. Especially Ranon.

“The Shalador Queens might be willing to come and talk to her—
and
listen to what she has to say,” Ranon said.

“Shalador.
Shalador.
That’s all you harp about, isn’t it? Every meeting of the First Circle, you bring up something about the reserves.”

“Someone has to remember our people,” Ranon said with his own touch of bitterness.

“Just because our Queen has given her consent for you to mount a Black Widow—”

“Watch your tongue, Grayhaven,” Ranon snarled.

Theran caught a movement out of the corner of his eye and turned to see Cassidy coming toward him, her hands clenched and a look on her face....

“You coldhearted son of a whoring
bitch
!”

She rammed him with a force that knocked him into the wall.

Instinct and temper took over, and he shoved her hard enough that she would have fallen if Ranon hadn’t caught her. She shook off the Opal-Jeweled Warlord Prince, and the expression on Ranon’s face would have been amusing if the woman didn’t look ready to kill someone.

“You made such a point of
family
, you bastard,” Cassidy snarled. “The
family
wing was to be off-limits to the court because this had been the Grayhaven
family
home.”

“Why are you so pissed about that now?” Theran shouted.

“Because he’s
family
!” she shouted back. “But you stick him in a damn gardening shed, don’t even let him come in for meals, all because someone hurt him, scarred him so he isn’t perfect anymore, and you won’t accept anyone or anything that isn’t perfect, will you? Well, you’re not perfect either,
Grayhaven
. Far from it.”

Theran looked at her in disbelief. “This is about Gray?”

“YES,THIS IS ABOUT GRAY!”

She used Craft to enhance her voice, and that shout rattled the windows. And brought everyone running.

“Shit,” Ranon said softly, turning and raising a hand to stop the men who rushed into the room from the other door.

“Jared Blaed Grayhaven,” Cassidy said with a kind of cold anger that put a chill down Theran’s spine. “Family, isn’t he?”

“We’re cousins,” Theran replied cautiously. He wore Green. She wore Rose. He wasn’t in any danger. Not from her. But he couldn’t forget right now that she had the backing of the kind of power that could wipe Dena Nehele and its people out of existence.

“Cousins,” Cassidy said. “But he’s not good enough to be
family
, is he? Not good enough to stay in your precious house.”

“He can’t stay here.”

“Why?”

Something snapped inside him. Something that had festered for a lot of years. Something that cut him every time he’d heard that desperate keening.

“Because he was tortured here,” Theran shouted. “
Here
, in this house. For
two years
they beat him and hurt him and did things he only remembers in nightmares. And do you know why they did that? Because they thought he was me! Because that bitch thought she had captured the last of the Grayhaven line, and she savored every wound she inflicted.

“And he never told them they’d caught the wrong boy. Never told them he wasn’t Grayhaven. Jared Blaed. That was his name then. Cousins through our mothers, who could trace their line back to Thera and Blaed. He protected me in the only way he could for
two years
.”

Theran turned, paced, circled. Wanted to beat her with words.

“Do you think I want him out in that damn shed? No,
Lady
, I don’t.” He blinked back the tears stinging his eyes—and refused to see the tears in hers. “But he’s terrified to come into this house. He won’t even come to the kitchen door to get food. We bring it out to the stables for him. He had to come with us. We couldn’t leave him in the mountain camp, even though the other rogues up there were willing to look after him. But he’s in that shed because it’s the best
he
can do. All he can tolerate.”

Cassidy squared her shoulders and raised her chin. “I’m sorry for that. I didn’t know. But that doesn’t change anything,Theran. He is your family, and he will have a room in the family wing.”

“Haven’t you been listening?”

“I don’t care if he never sets foot in this house or never sets foot in that room, but he will have a proper room in the family wing, just like you and Talon. He will know it is there if he wants it. And if he’s more comfortable staying in the shed, then it will be fixed up.”

“We can’t afford to be—” Theran began.

“This isn’t a suggestion, and it’s not a request,” Cassidy snapped. “This is an order,
Prince
. Get it done.”