Disclaimer: See Chapter One
Author's Note: I am soooooo sorry for not updating sooner! Please forgive my horrible ineptness! Anyway, thanks for all the reviews! I hope you like this chapter:)
Chapter Two
The Keep
Daemon…she said, her voice a soft, loving caress.
His name sounded over and over in his head, and with each repetition he heard her voice die away into the darkness. No matter how he tried to block it from his mind, no matter how many times he told himself to forget, the voice came back and kept the wound fresh. It had been a week since the death of Kaeleer's Heart, and he felt sure that if time did not speed up, he would die of grief before the month was out.
"Daemon."
It took him a moment to realize that someone not in his imagination had called to him. He tore his eyes away from the portrait of Witch and glanced towards the entrance of the gallery. Tersa, his mother, stood in the doorway, her body clad in semi-clean clothes and her wild hair hanging down to her waist. In her eyes there lay the sadness that he himself felt, the sadness that threatened to drive him over the edge of sanity. During the past week he had felt himself sliding threateningly close to the edge of the Twisted Kingdom. When he had thought Jaenelle dead after she had cleansed the realms, he had only been a small step from loosing himself to the broken world. But there had been hope then. A small, barely discernable grain of hope that had saved him. Now, however, no such hope existed. He couldn't console himself with hints of her return. Jaenelle wasn't coming back. Not this time. Not ever.
"The flowers are blooming." Tersa said as she walked towards him. Taking his hand, she pulled him along behind her. "Come see."
Too lost in his own grief to argue, he reluctantly followed as she pulled him from the gallery containing the portrait of Jaenelle. The walk to her small cottage was long, but Daemon barely noticed. Not even the soothing sounds of the forest reached him. In the small, sane corner of his mind, he realized how ironic the situation was. The most dangerous man in all the realms couldn't even muster up enough interest in his own survival to take stock of his surroundings. A few months ago, he would have known, almost immediately, who and what was in the forest around him. And now…now he simply looked as his feet, concentrating fully on putting one in front of the other. After all, what did it matter, really? Nothing mattered anymore…Jaenelle was gone, and she was the only thing that he had lived for.
"Daemon."
He ignored her. Talking wasn't very high on his to-do list.
"Daemon!"
Annoyed, he looked up just in time to stop himself from running into her. Looking at him with eyes that understood too much, Tersa reached out placed her hand on the small of his back and gently nudged him forward as she would a child.
"We're here. You must see the flowers."
Irritated with himself and embarrassed that Tersa felt he needed coddling, Daemon stepped away from her and saw that they were, in fact, standing in front of her cottage. He made to enter, but stopped in surprise at Tersa's startled exclamation.
"Where are the flowers? I left the them here, and now they're gone!" Pulling nervously at her tangled hair, she turned a full circle, peering at the edges of the clearing in front of her house. Her search was fruitless, and when she turned back to Daemon, her expression was one of great sadness.
"They must have run away." Tears filled her golden eyes and threatened to spill down her cheeks. "You n…needed to see the fl…flowers." She sobbed.
Kara, the young, bouncy hearth witch who lived in the cottage with Tersa, ran out of the small house and immediately moved to put her arms around Tersa. Glaring at Daemon, she said between lips stuck in a disapproving frown, "What did you say to her?"
The leash on his temper, already frayed, came close to snapping. He snarled at her and felt a moment of satisfaction when she jumped and refused to meet his gaze. For a moment, he felt slightly ashamed of his hostile behavior. He had worked for years on burying the part of himself that demanded violence and pain. In fact, for the past few years, he had felt almost…peaceful. But no more. From the day Jaenelle had collapsed, he had felt the veneer of civility that had allowed him to live among others companionably slip slowly away and had felt himself become increasingly aggressive. Logically, he knew it was because the one person who could hold the leash, who could calm his temper, was gone. Logically, he knew that the people he felt animosity towards had done nothing to deserve his anger. But logic, when faced with his anger and pain, seemed no more than an annoyance.
Ignoring the woman who was rubbing Tersa's back soothingly, Daemon took his mother's hand in his and asked, "Are the flowers in the garden?" Slowly, Tersa's miserable expression gave way to one of innocent joy.
"Yes! They must have gone to the garden! They like it there." Brushing off Kara, she pulled Daemon towards the small garden that lay on the other side of the cottage. When they arrived, Tersa led him towards a patch of flowers shaded by an old willow tree. Beneath the tree a large assortment of pastel colored blossoms grew in a semi-circle. In the middle of the semi-circle grew three white roses, their petals still halfway closed. Why she wanted him to see flowers that had only bloomed halfway, he had no idea. Pointing at them, Tersa said, "Aren't they beautiful?" She paused then, looking up at him as if she expected some sort of comment.
"They're lovely Tersa, but they aren't finished blooming." He replied, quickly loosing interest. Roses were pretty, yes, but he wasn't in the mood to admire flowers.
Clicking her tongue at him, Tersa shook her head and admonished, "Some things are beautiful in all their phases." She paused again then added, "Jaenelle helped me plant these." At the mention of her name, Daemon's gut clenched as if he'd been hit. "She still lives, you know."
Shock, hope, denial, and fear all hit Daemon at once, tearing through his body and leaving him feeling hollow inside when they dissipated. "Tersa please, I can't…Jaenelle is dead." She silenced him by placing a finger on his mouth.
"No. She lives. As long as what she planted still grows, she lives." Taking his chin in her hand, she forced his head down so that her eyes met his. The look in her eyes was not that of a woman lost in the Twisted Kingdom, but of one who's wisdom far outdistanced his own, and Daemon knew they were no longer talking about flowers, but of something of much greater importance.
Letting him go, she turned and walked back towards the cottage, leaving him alone in the garden. Sinking to his knees, he simply stared at the three roses, tears of some emotion he could not name running down his face.
He stayed there for hours, simply gazing at the flowers, thinking. When he finally came out of his trance, the sun was sinking below the horizon and the air was beginning to cool as night came on. As he slowly got to his feet, he winced as his legs screamed in complaint. Sitting in one position for such a long time hadn't been the smartest thing he'd ever done, but he didn't care. For the first time in the past week, he felt some measure of peace. He knew that by the next day it would be gone, but for now, he wanted to savor the moment. He walked slowly towards the cottage, feeling suddenly weary, as if he'd spent the day running instead of sitting. When he entered, he found Tersa sitting at the kitchen table talking animatedly with Kara about something or another. Content just to watch, he leaned against the doorway and placed his hand in his trouser pockets, simply observing.
He didn't get to observe for long, however, because Tersa quickly noticed his arrival and herded him into a chair. Kara, uncomfortable with him in the room, quickly got up began bustling around the kitchen, polishing things that didn't need polishing and sweeping floors already cleaned earlier that day. Tersa stood next to the cold box, not opening it, just looking at the door as if contemplating something. After glancing toward the wine cabinet a few times, she seemed to make some sort of decision and opened the cold box and took out a glass bottle of milk. Getting a mug from the cupboard, she filled it with the milk and set it in front of him.
"Drink." She commanded, and glared at him until he took a small, tentative sip. He hadn't had milk in over a century, and he was unsurprised to find he still hated the taste. When he didn't move to take another drink, Tersa clucked and muttered until, rolling his eyes, he downed the whole glass in one gulp. Grimacing, he placed the empty mug on the table and gazed at her quizzically.
"Happy?" He asked, one eyebrow raised sarcastically.
Nodding, Tersa smiled at him and pulled him to his feet. After giving him a hug he didn't know he needed, Tersa ushered him out the door, muttering something about how he needed to get home before it got dark because he could get lost in the forest. Not bothering to comment on her lack of confidence in his directional abilities, Daemon kissed her cheek and said, "I'll come back in a few days."
"Good. And tell your brother what I told you. He needs to know." Nodding, Daemon started on the well-trod path back to the Keep, knowing that tomorrow, the peaceful feeling he had tonight would be gone, but that the sorrow would be no longer be crippling when it took hold of him once more.
