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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