Twilight's Dawn Read Free Page A

spooky house that had been built to trap, and kill, some of their family. He wasn’t sure why he hadn’t said anything. Maybe because he’d been afraid he would be asked to step aside? After all, Tersa was Daemon’s mother, not his, and when the real son was present, a surrogate wasn’t needed. Or maybe, like his father, he had gotten into the habit of not mentioning any relationship that would have given Luthvian an excuse to feel neglected or cast aside. Even now, when his mother was a whisper in the Darkness and truly gone, he had continued to keep his visits to Tersa private. Either way, by the time Daemon came to Kaeleer, the visits were a long-established habit that he didn’t discuss with anyone.
    “Do you want food?” Tersa asked. “There are some scrambled eggs and toast left. The boy made them.”
    In that case, he wasn’t going to refuse. No one made scrambled eggs better than Daemon—including his own darling hearth witch wife. Which was something he would never ever admit to anyone. Especially Marian.
    Since Allista hadn’t joined them, he figured she had already eaten or would fend for herself, so he got a fork out of the drawer, hefted the bowl, leaned a hip against the counter, and began to eat.
    “You should sit at the table,” Tersa said.
    “I can eat just fine where I am.” She looked like she was about to scold, so he added casually, “Did you eat?”
    “I ate.”
    He caught the hesitation before she answered. She would have eaten something. Daemon wouldn’t have left if she hadn’t. But she still had the skinniness of someone who had been half-starved for too many years, and even now, when there was plenty of food, she sometimes became too distracted by something only she could see and forgot to eat.
    So he never wasted an opportunity to feed her.
    Scooping up another forkful of scrambled eggs, he held it in front of her. “Open up.”
    Her mouth remained stubbornly shut.
    He sighed—but his eyes never left her face and his hand remained steady. “Am I going to have to embarrass myself by making funny noises like I do with Daemonar?”
    Her mouth fell open in surprise, and he slipped the fork in before she realized what he was doing.
    She scowled at him. He grinned at her. And prudently ate a couple of forkfuls of egg himself before offering her another.
    Tersa waved him off and got her own fork.
    They polished off the eggs—and he made her work to claim the last bite—then he finished off the toast while enjoying a mug of coffee.
    “Were you able to do it?” he asked as he rinsed off the dishes and set them in the sink.
    Tersa frowned at him. “I was able to do it, but . . .”
    Grinning, he wiped his hands on a towel. “Let’s see.”
    Using Craft, she called in a small wooden frame and set it at one end of the kitchen table. The carefully constructed web attached to the frame held the illusion spell. She triggered the illusion spell, and they watched as a small black beetle appeared and headed for the other end of the table. It grew and grew with every step. When it got as big as his palm, it burst open with enough gore and green goo to delight a small Eyrien boy.
    “You have the box?” Tersa asked.
    He called in the long wood-and-glass box he’d had made to hold the illusion web and keep the entire illusion contained. He valued his skin—and his marriage—enough to make sure the bug remained in the box.
    After she placed the illusion web into its part of the box, they watched the beetle once more. Lucivar grinned at the way the gore and goo splattered all over the inside of the glass before it all faded away. “Darling, this is perfect .”
    Tersa looked uneasy. “Maybe I should ask your father.”
    Not quite a statement, not quite a question. More a tentative testing of an idea.
    He shifted his weight from one foot to the other, not quite sure if he was troubled or intrigued by the words. “Why?”
    “I made little surprises for my boys before, and it caused