closer. To the right a broad arch showed a comfortable living space. The floor was covered with glowing rugs, thick and soft. Chairs covered in spider-silk formed two groups around small marble tables; other chairs flanked a beautifully carved lounge, also upholstered in dark red spider-silk, which faced a handsome white marble fireplace.
The witch-lights in the chamber were all glowing, but they would have lit as soon as Denoriel passed the door. The give-away that his apartment was not empty was the small but brilliant fire leaping behind a silver screen in the hearth.
For one heart-stopping moment Denoriel could not remember whether he had forgotten to seal his doorway against one of his past mistresses, and then he saw the little, lithe orange-red creature cavorting and dancing in the flames. His breath whooshed out.
"Mwynwen," he said, walking forward as a tall, slender woman rose from the lounge that faced the fireplace.
He was pleased, flattered even. Mwynwen was no easy-come, easy-go light of love. She favored few males. He had been honored when she asked him into her apartment, delighted that she seemed to find his conversation engaging, and so surprised—and awed—when she invited him into her bed that he had been almost unable to perform.
Only almost. He suspected Mwynwen could, if she desired, stimulate a corpse. He had staggered home in the dawn and eagerly given her image to his door, the scent of her, the look of her, the essence of her magic, although he had never expected that she would come. And she never had come to him before, although they continued to be lovers.
"You were so angry," she said, holding out a hand.
He took her hand, his feelings split in two. He was thrilled that Mwynwen was so attuned to him that she had felt his anger across the Elfhame, for Mwynwen, a Healer, unlike most of the inhabitants of Llachar Lle, lived in a separate manor in the silver woods beyond the palace. At the same time her mention of his anger renewed it. Irritation, pique over the task set him, but more than that, a smoldering rage that he should be accounted of so little worth as to be set to be a puling infant's nursery-guard leapt up in him again, but he could not bear to be petty in Mwynwen's eyes and held his tongue.
"You are angry again," she said, great eyes growing greater with anxiety, "with