A/N:  I apologise for writing so slowly.  This is like drawing blood, and I don't even really know why.  So I do what I can.  But I am working on it, even if it just means opening Word every other day and staring blankly at the screen.  I've rewritten three times and still hate everything I've produced.  It's just been a Really Fun Month.

So I will be shameless.  Commentsplz.

A/N: This is my first and probably my favourite completed Black Jewels story. I love Mephis because he's so little looked into. I mean, the guy's lived longer than anyone else but Andulvar and Saetan, and he fathered the SaDiablo bloodline, and he spends all of books two and three playing second fiddle to Lucivar. So I'm spreading about some Mephis-love.

( Mephis gives his sister a lesson in formal attire and the rich and varied history of the SaDiablo family. Set during Heir to the Shadows. 1143 words. )

A/N Not much to say.

( A memory recorded in the Glacian Queen's tangled webs: Karla gets her hair cut again and ponders Morton's new girlfriend, Jaenelle's old flame, and her own ambivalence about romance. 1110 words. )

A/N: I really can't seem to get enough of Jaenelle fluff, which is kinda weird since Jaenelle is my least-favourite character. There's just something about teenage!Jaenelle that's a bit universal to all girls; she's capable of amazing things, but seriously lacks the belief in herself to do it. I find that pretty interesting.

I know some people find her a bit too passive in this story, but it makes sense to me because she's only just risen out of the healing webs, she can't remember what happened and has no contact with the coven, and is trying in this piece to be normal and follow the social rules she was raised with.

About the end-- I'm more a fan of nostalgia than unrequited love, but you can read it whatever way you like. The title comes from Jaenelle admitting to Surreal that she had been kissed by men other than Daemon, but that they amounted to "teeth, tongues, and drool". If you liked this, I also recommend that you check out Flesh and Stone from Foxfire1.

( Silvia's son Beron, acting on a crush, asks Jaenelle to a party in her school days. Set during Heir to the Shadows. 1315 words. )

A/N: I wrote this in June of 2005, then left it in a notebook and forgot about it for ages. Definite tribute has to go to Foxfire1, whose excellent Wilhelmina series, Dusk Dawning, inspired this piece a lot.

( After Wilhelmina runs away from home, Philip sets out to track her down and bring her home. Will he finally accept the truth about Briarwood and his halfbrother, or will his ties to Chaillot prove stronger? 1403 words. )

A/N: Thanks to Skye and Foxfire for the beta.

( Morton tenders his resignation. 638 words )

My best-kept secret is that I've been writing a novel-length fanfic set in the Black Jewels world since April, 2004. My problem is that it's just so big; I have fragments of several thousand words, but they're still so far apart. It's about Ellinor, a White-Jewelled Hayllian Queen born a hundred years before Jaenelle was.

This is not that fanfic.

However, this is set in the same universe as that fanfic. It's not an AU, but it is based on a fragile set of suppositions about Daemon and about Hayll based on mentions in the book. The Ellinor fic is the bit that's about Hayll; this fic is the bit that's about Daemon.

Specifically, this part of him:

Once, Dorothea SaDiablo had searched desperately for Daemon Sadi after he'd vanished from a court without a trace. It had taken a hundred years to find him, and two thousand Warlords had died trying to recapture him. He could have used that small, savage Territory he held and conquered half the Realm of Terreille, could have become a tangible threat to Hayll's encroachment and absorption of every people it touched. Instead, he had read a letter Dorothea sent through a messenger. Read it and surrendered.

The letter had simply said: "Surrender by the new moon. Every day you are gone thereafter, I will take a piece of your brother's body for your arrogance."

That's what this story is about. I hope you can forgive me for telling you how it ends.

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