She carefully spread her wings as far as she could until she felt her back muscles pull. Gritting her teeth, she counted to five, then slowly closed her wings and waited a few seconds before beginning the exercise again.
She would find other work—paying work—and she would work hard and save and one day have that place of her own. And she would soar again, riding thermals over land that was more beautiful than anything she’d ever seen back home. She would—
“Did you hem that dress?” Luthvian’s voice stabbed out of the dark.
Marian winced, wondering how long the Black Widow Healer had been watching her. Reminding herself that she had nowhere else to go—yet—she turned. “As I explained, Lady Luthvian, I can’t hem the dress until you have the time for a fitting so that I can make sure the length is correct.”
“I told you how much to take it up.”
Her younger sisters had said the same thing to her in the same sneering voice—and complained bitterly to their mother when the hem fell too long or too short because they insisted she should be able to hem something without wasting their time.
“Nevertheless,” Marian said, fighting to keep her voice respectful, “I would feel more confident about the length if I pin the dress while you’re wearing it.”
The silence that followed made Marian uneasy. A Black Widow was too dangerous a witch to antagonize, and Luthvian could do far more than hurt her body.
“They don’t work. You know that, don’t you?” Luthvian said.
“I don’t understand.” A ball of fear settled in her belly.
“The wings. They were damaged too severely. You’ll never fly again.”
The fear sharpened into pain. “No. Lady Angelline said—”
“Jaenelle is a decent Healer, but she has little knowledge or experience when it comes to Eyriens. I have both. And I’m telling you those are only for display now. You’ll never fly again. If you try, you’ll only end up damaging your back so badly you won’t be able to work enough to earn your keep, and then where will you be?” Luthvian’s voice softened. “You’d be better off having them removed. If they’re gone, you won’t be tempted to do something that would cripple you.”
No, Marian thought as tears filled her eyes. No!
“I can do it for you.” Luthvian’s voice was quiet and persuasive. “In a month, you won’t remember what it felt like to have them.”
“No!”
Luthvian’s voice turned cold. “Please yourself. But if you do something that makes you useless, don’t expect to remain here.”
She didn’t hear Luthvian walk away, but she heard the kitchen door close. She stayed outside for a long time, hunched over to try to ease the pain that twisted her up inside.
She’d hoped being in Kaeleer meant a promise at a new life, a better life. But nothing had changed for the better. If anything, the life ahead of her was worse than the one she’d left behind.
FIVE
Lucivar glided toward the courtyard in front of his eyrie, glad to be home. He’d spent the past week visiting the villages in Ebon Rih, meeting with the Queens who ruled the Rihlander Blood villages of Doun and Agio, and talking to the council members who ran the larger landen villages. The non-Blood Rihlanders were afraid of him—with good reason. The Blood might be a minority among any race, but the power that lived within them made them the rulers and guardians of the Realms. For the most part, the Blood ignored the landens and the landens kept away from the Blood. Reminding village council members that they were now answerable to an Ebon-gray Warlord Prince wasn’t going to make them sleep easy for a while.
Hell’s fire. It didn’t make him sleep easy. He’d spent most of his life ignoring or defying anyone’s claim of authority over him. Now he was the authority who was going to draw the line and stand against anyone in his territory who dared step over it.
He wasn’t sure he liked being on that side of the line, but he’d adjust to the formality directed at him from the Queens’ courts in Doun and Agio. At least in Riada, which was the closest village to Ebon Askavi and was also his “home” village, the informal respect the villagers had shown him since he’d arrived in Kaeleer hadn’t changed. Not much, anyway. There was a proprietary interest in him now. What he did affected all of them.
Which made him wonder why Merry had looked so uneasy when he’d stopped by The Tavern to see what she was serving that night that he could take home with him.
“A dinner for two, Prince Yaslana?” Merry had asked.
“Or one hungry man,” he’d replied, grinning.
Why hadn’t she smiled back when she’d prepared the basket of food for him?
As he landed lightly on the flagstone courtyard, he sent a thought out on a psychic spear thread. *Tassle?*
*Yas.*
The wolf sounded sulky, almost edgy.
*What’s wrong?*
A pause. Then, *I don’t like that female. I don’t want to be friends.*
Lucivar felt his temper unsheath as he studied the front door of his home. An Ebon-gray shield formed a finger-length above his skin, an instinctive response to walking into a situation where it was safer to guard against a potential attack. The fact that he was reacting that way before entering his home honed his temper until the slightest push would have him riding the killing edge.
He pushed the door open and stepped inside. The female psychic scent hit him the moment he crossed the threshold. He knew that scent. Loathed the young witch it belonged to.
Roxie.
She’d been one of Luthvian’s students when he’d first come to Kaeleer—a Rihlander witch from Doun whose family was aristo enough that she thought she could do anything she pleased. She used lovers the way other women used handkerchiefs. She soiled them, then tossed them aside. But from the first day she’d met him, her goal had been to corner him and force him into bedding her. The bitch had never understood that if she had managed to corner him, bedding her would have been the last thing on his mind.
And now she was here. In his home.
He moved silently until he reached his bedroom door. The wide corridor reeked of her.
As he pushed the door open and walked into the bedroom, Roxie raised her bare arms over her head and smiled at him, her body clearly defined under the sheet that covered her.
He usually had a hot, explosive temper. As he approached the bed, he felt chillingly calm.
“Get out of my bed,” he said softly.
She shifted a little, the movement uncovering more of her breasts. “Why don’t you join me? You want to. You know you do.”
The revulsion that washed through him almost sheared his self-control.
A triumphant look filled her face when he stepped up to the bed. A moment later, the look changed to terror.
He hadn’t consciously made the decision to call in his Eyrien war blade. But the edge of that blade, honed so sharp it could make air bleed, suddenly hovered just above Roxie’s neck. If he relaxed his hand, the blade would slide through skin and muscle until it gently came to rest against bone. He wouldn’t have to do anything, wouldn’t have to exert any force. Just relax his hand.
“If I ever find you in my bed again, I’ll slit your throat,” he said, his voice still calm and soft.
Roxie swallowed. The movement was enough to push her skin against the blade.
Lucivar watched the blood trickle from the shallow wound, becoming seduced by the heat of it, the smell of it. He stepped back before the temptation to let the war blade sing became too great. As he stepped back, the cold inside him broke and hot temper flared.
Vanishing the war blade, he scooped up her clothes in one hand, hauled her out of bed with the other, and dragged her through the eyrie, ignoring her squeals and protests. He flung her and her clothes out the door and slammed it shut, not knowing or caring if she got hurt when she landed.
Then he stood with his teeth clenched and his hands curled into fists, fighting the urge to open that door and purge the memories of all the witches he’d known in Terreille who were just like her. He wanted to pound those memories into her flesh, exorcising them from his own.
Minutes passed, but the feelings didn’t. He still rode the killing edge. Violence still sang in his blood. He had to purge that violence—or have it purged out of him. There was only one person who could do that for him.
Roxie was gone when he left the eyrie. That spared him the inconvenience of killing her and taking the bitch’s mangled body back to her family. He would have killed her if she’d still been there. He couldn’t have stopped himself. A Warlord Prince was a born predator, a natural killer, and the “training” he’d received under the hands of the witches in Terreille had honed that killing instinct instead of providing a sheath for it. Right now, he was a danger to everyone.
With one exception.
He opened his psychic senses, searching until he brushed against the dark power that eclipsed his own.
Launching himself skyward, he flew to the cottage beyond the outskirts of Riada. He landed close enough to the porch that two steps and a leap had him standing in front of the door of the neat little cottage Saetan had built for Jaenelle as a place where she could spend solitary time when she needed it. Not that she was ever really alone. There was always a kindred male with her, but a wolf or dog was content to nap for hours while she got lost in a book or would walk with her for miles without wanting conversation.
He hesitated a moment, then opened the door and entered the cottage’s main room. Jaenelle stood near the hearth as if she’d been expecting him. She probably had. She would have felt that flash of temper, would have sensed him coming toward her.
He stood close to the door, wanting to go to her, needing to go to her. He couldn’t do that. Not yet. Not until he’d smoothed some of the jagged edges off his temper.