Karla sniffed. "You don't think my drawings are good either."
Dujae flipped to the last sketch. "What is this?" he demanded, stabbing the paper with his finger.
Karla pulled her shoulders back and narrowed her eyes.
Saetan stifled a groan and held on tighter.
"It's a vase," she said coolly.
"Vase. Bah!" Dujae ripped the page from the pad, crumpled it, and threw it over his shoulder. He pointed at Karla.
Did Dujae realize just how close his finger was to Karla's teeth?
"You are a Queen, yes?" Dujae continued to roar. "You do this for fun when you are finished with the hard lessons of your Craft, yes? You do this because Ladies must learn many things to be good Queens, yes? You do not make polite, itsy-bitsy drawings." He scrunched up his shoulders, scrunched up his face, tucked his wrist under his chin, and made tiny scratching motions. "Bah!" He pulled Karla out of Saetan's arms, spun her around, engulfed her hand in his own, and began making large, circular motions. "There is fire in your heart, yes? That fire needs charcoal and a large pad to express itself. Then when you want to draw a vase, you draw a vase."
"B-but—" Karla stammered, watching her hand sweep round and round.
"That vase you try to draw, that is someone else's vase. Use it as a model. Models are good. Then you drawyour
vase,the one that reveals the fire, the one that says I am a" witch, I am a Queen, I am—" Dujae finally hesitated.
"Karla," she said meekly.
"karla!"Dujae roared.
"What's going on?" Jaenelle asked from the doorway. Gabrielle stood beside her.
Saetan settled on the corner of his desk and crossed his arms, resigned to whatever the little darlings were about to do.
Seeing the other girls, Dujae released Karla and stepped back.
"Do we have any charcoal?" Karla asked, wiping her eyes.
"We have some, but Lord Stuffy says charcoal is messy and not the proper medium for Ladies," Gabrielle said tartly.
Saetan stared at Gabrielle and wondered what sort of idiot he'd hired as an art instructor.
Then he felt the blood rush out of his head. He gripped the desk, willing himself not to faint. He'd never fainted. This would be a very bad time to start.
With the other girls around them, he hadn't recognized the triangle of power. Karla, Gabrielle, Jaenelle. Three strong Queens who were also natural Black Widows.
May the Darkness be merciful,he thought.That trio could tear apart anything or anyone —or build anything they wanted.
"High Lord?"
Saetan blinked. He took a deep breath. His lungs still worked, sort of. Finally sure he wasn't going to keel over, he looked around. Dujae was the only one left in the room.
Dujae twisted his cap. "I did not mean to interfere."
"Too late now," Saetan muttered.
Three blond heads appeared at the study door.
"Hey," Karla said. "We've got the charcoal and large sketch pads. Aren't you coming?"
Dujae continued to twist his cap. "I cannot, Ladies."
"Why not?" Jaenelle asked as the three of them entered the study.
Dujae looked beseechingly at Saetan, who refused to look at anything but the point of his shoe.
"I—I am Dujae, Lady."
Jaenelle looked pleased. "You paintedDescent into Hell"
Dujae's eyes widened.
"Why can't you give us drawing lessons?" Gabrielle said.
"I am a demon."
Silence.
Karla cocked a hip and crossed her arms. "What, there's some rule that says drawing has to be taught in the daytime? Besides, the sun's up now and you're here."
"That's because the Hall retains enough dark power so that sunlight doesn't bother the demon-dead when they're inside," Jaenelle said.
"So that's not a problem," Karla said.
"And if you don't want to be here during the daylight hours, candle-lights or balls of witch light would make a room bright enough to work in," Gabrielle said.
Dujae looked helplessly at Saetan. Saetan studied his other shoe.
"Is your ego so puffed up that it's beneath you to teach a few little witches how to draw?" Karla asked with sweet malevolence.
"Puffed up? No, no, Ladies, I would be honored but—"
"But?" Jaenelle asked softly in her midnight voice.
Dujae shuddered. Saetan shivered.
"I am a demon."
Silence.
Finally Karla snorted. "If you don't want to teach us, just say so, but stop using a paltry excuse to weasel out of it."
They left, closing the study door behind them.
Dujae twisted his cap.
Saetan stared at his shoe. "Dujae," he said quietly, "it takes a strong but sensitive personality to deal with these young Ladies, not to mention talent. If you decide to become their art instructor, I can either provide you with wages which, I admit, aren't much use in the Dark Realm, or you can add whatever you want for your own projects to the list of supplies you'll provide me for them. However, if you decide to decline"—he looked Dujae in the eye—"you can go out there and try to explain it to them."
There was panic in Dujae's eyes. There was also only one door out of the study.
"But, High Lord, I am a demon."
"Didn't impress them, did it?"
Dujae sagged. "No." Then he shrugged and smiled. "It has been a long time since I have done portraits, and they have interesting faces, yes? And too much fire to be wasted on polite, itsy-bitsy drawings."
Saetan waited half an hour before strolling into the great hall. Staying well in the background, he watched the coven.
The girls were sitting on the floor in a circle, busily sketching a still life of vase, apple, and trinket box. Dujae squatted next to Kalush, explaining something in a rumbling murmur before turning to Morghann, who had a stick of charcoal poised above her sketch pad.
Jaenelle put down her pad, wiped her fingers on the towel she was sharing with Karla, and approached him, smiling, nothing more than a delightful, delighted woman-child enjoying a creative endeavor.
Saetan slipped an arm around her waist. "The truth, witch-child," he said quietly. "Was the other one really a bad instructor?"
Jaenelle ran her finger down the gold chain that held his Birthright Red Jewel. "He wasn't right for us, any of us, and—"
He wouldn't let her duck her head, wouldn't let her hide the eyes he was learning to read so well, that told him so much. "And?"
"He was afraid of me," she whispered. "Not just me," she quickly amended. "He didn't like being around Queens. Even Kalush made him uneasy. So he was always saying things like 'ladies' do this and 'ladies' don't do that. Hell's fire, Saetan, we aren't 'ladies,' we don't want to be 'ladies.' We're witches."
He wrapped his arms around her. "Why didn't you tell me?" He seemed to be asking that a lot lately.
Jaenelle shrugged. "We hadn't gotten around to telling you that the music instructor and the dancing instructor already bolted this week."
Saetan let out a chuckling sigh. "Well, lessons and sum-
mertime are probably a bad combination anyway." He kissed her hair. "Dujae came here because he wanted to be released."
"Not really. He just needed something to spark his interest again."
Saetan watched Dujae move around the circle, gesturing, rumbling encouragement, frowning as he studied Karla's sketch before saying something that made her laugh. There was no despair in Dujae's eyes now, no hint of the pain that had driven him to seek out the High Lord.
"We aren't puppet masters, witch-child," Saetan murmured. "We're very powerful, but we must be careful about pulling strings to make other people dance."
"Depends on why the strings are being pulled, don't you think?" She looked at him with those ancient sapphire eyes and smiled. "Besides, we just overrode a silly excuse. If it was his time, he would have gone."
She returned to her spot on the floor, Karla on her right, Gabrielle on her left.
He returned to his study and waned a glass of yarbarah.
Puppet masters. Manipulators. Hekatah and her schemes. Jaenelle and her sensitivity to other hearts. Such a fine, fragile line, with intent the only difference.
He picked up the latest letter from the Dark Council. There was something beneath the terse words that disturbed him, but it was too vague for him to define. He couldn't put them off much longer. A few more weeks at most. What then?
Such a fine, fragile line.
What then?
5 / Kaeleer
Jaenelle picked up a small vial and tapped three amethyst-colored granules into the large glass bowl on the worktable. "Why are members of the Dark Council coming here?" „ Saetan eyed the thick, bubbling liquid that covered the bottom third of the bowl and sincerely hoped the stuff wasn't a new tonic. "Since my legal guardianship was
granted by the Council, they want to look in on us to see how we live."
"If they're members of the Council, they're also Jeweled Blood. They should know how we live." Jaenelle picked up a vial of red powder and held it up to the light.
Saetan crossed his arms and leaned against the wall. He wouldn't, couldn't tell her about the latest "request" from the Council. Their strident insistence had made it easy to read between the lines. They weren't just coming to look in on a guardian and his ward. They were coming to pass judgment on him.
"I'm not going to have to wear a dress, am I?" Jaenelle growled as she dipped her little finger into the vial of red powder. Using her nail as a scoop, she tapped the powder into the bowl.
Saetan bit his tongue before the lie could slip out. "No. They said they wanted to see a normal afternoon."
Jaenelle looked at him over her shoulder. "Have we ever had a normal afternoon?"
