Being half-Hayllian, I had the black hair and light-brown skin, but my eyes were gold-green and my ears came to delicate points-the legacy of my mother’s people. I was also a Gray-Jeweled witch, so my power was darker and deeper than his. That didn’t mean I could afford to be careless. Warlord Princes were natural predators and also very protective. That should have been a contradiction, but it wasn’t; it just made them extremely lethal.
“Why did they ask you to see this?” Rainier said as he looked behind the painted screen. He paled, and I didn’t imagine his breakfast was sitting well, but when he moved away from the screen, he studied the room with a hunter’s eyes.
“Maybe because I wear the Gray,” I replied, shrugging. Or maybe because the owners of this place had heard a few things about me and wanted my professional opinion. “And you?”
Grief tightened his face. “I had an appointment here after breakfast.”
Here. Not just in this establishment, but here. “You knew them.”
“If these are the same young men who reserved this room, then, yes, I knew them.”
“What were they doing?”
“A weekly lesson. I was hired as a secondary instructor.”
It was better not to ask about that while I was still in this room.
“They didn’t deserve this,” Rainier said quietly.
“Are you sure?”
“Yes, I’m sure.” His voice sharpened. Everything about him sharpened.
I nodded and looked around again. He knew these men; I didn’t. “So. Three men were killed for no apparent reason. If there wasn’t a reason, there wasn’t a payment. Which means no one hired a professional to get rid of them.”
“A professional? You mean an assassin? How do you know it wasn’t?”
“Because I am a professional. Was a professional.” I shrugged. “There’s not much call for assassins in Kaeleer.”
“I’d heard-” He fumbled, belatedly remembering that I was related to the most powerful Warlord Princes in the Realm of Kaeleer.
“That I was a whore? I was that, too. You could say one career led to the other.”
Wariness in his eyes now.
“I didn’t kill them,” I said. “If I had, I would have done a better job of it. Let’s go. There’s nothing more to do here.”
He was under no obligation to go with me, but he followed me out of the room, stayed with me while I talked to the owners, and made suggestions about who they should talk to in the Queen of Amdarh’s court to report this incident.
When I left the building, he went with me, walking on my left-a signal to everyone who saw us that I was the dominant party. As a Warlord Prince, he belonged to a higher caste than I, a mere witch, did. But my Gray Jewels outranked his Opal. In the knife-edged game of power the Blood play on a daily basis, which of us held the high card in terms of authority could change in the blink of an eye.
I turned a corner, heading away from the theater district with its playhouses and music halls. Those streets would be quiet at this time of day. I wanted the bustle of people and the distraction of shops.
Even this early in the morning, there were plenty of people in the shop district, plenty of faces…
“We didn’t find their heads.”
“They were behind the screen,” Rainier replied grimly.
“Damn. It might have helped to see what they’d looked like.” Might have given me a clue about why the murder had happened. Of course, I could have used a clue about why I was still chewing over this. I’d made a good living killing men. I should have been able to shrug these deaths off. I couldn’t-because something just wasn’t right about the kills.
“It wouldn’t have helped,” Rainier said. “Their faces were burned past recognition.” He paused, then added, “Witchfire.”
Knowing how fiercely witchfire can burn, I swallowed hard, glad I hadn’t managed to get breakfast. Did make me reassess my companion’s nerves, though. He’d looked at those faces and had kept his breakfast down.
“So, what kind of lessons were they getting?” Maybe knowing why the men had been in that room would help me figure out why they died.
“Sex,” Rainier replied.
I stopped walking. People flowed around us. “How many women?” I could feel my blood chilling, feel the old rage rising.
He looked puzzled. “One.”
Some of those messy rooms in my past had occurred when the males had thought the odds were in their favor for rough sex without the female’s consent. They learned how deep and pure female rage can be. Of course, they died learning it, so the lesson didn’t do them much good.
Rainier shook his head. “It’s instruction, Surreal. Frank discussion about what a woman wants from a lover. Some demonstration.”
“Demonstration.” Maybe the little bastards had gotten exactly what they deserved.
Rainier took my left hand in his right and lifted it, his eyes never leaving mine. His lips, warm and soft, surrounded one knuckle. The tip of his tongue stroked my skin.
A sweet, unexpected feeling flowed through me, banishing anger.
He released my hand, and said quietly, “Demonstration.”
Hell’s fire, Mother Night, and may the Darkness be merciful. He must have been a dedicated student when he’d been learning those lessons. I had to clear my throat in order to get my voice back. “So.” I couldn’t think of anything else to say.
His smile was pure male as he took my arm and started walking again.
“Understanding what pleases is just as important in a man’s personal life as it is if he serves in a court,” Rainier said.
Hard to argue, since that little demonstration made me feel deliciously female and desirable. But it also plucked at the edgy, uneasy feeling I’d had in the room, so I looked for something else to talk about-and stopped walking half a block from a corner.
“What’s he doing?” The boy was shepherding females from one side of the street to the other. That was obvious. Why he was doing it wasn’t.
“Who?” Rainier looked around, then grinned. “Oh. He’s training. Since there are two boys about the same age at the other corners, their instructor is probably sitting in that coffee shop across the street, keeping an eye on them.”
Things were different in Kaeleer, but… “You train males to be a pain in the ass?”
“We train them to serve.”
“That’s what I said.” My comment annoyed him. I didn’t care. If he spent one day on the receiving end of that kind of stubborn attention, he’d have a totally different opinion about a male’s right to serve.
Then my stomach growled.
Rainier studied me. “Would you like to go to the coffee shop? They don’t serve meals there, but they do have baked goods.”
“Fine.” I stepped away from him. “I’ll meet you there.”
“Surreal.”
I heard the warning in his voice, but I ignored it and walked to the corner. I’d noticed the boy stepped aside if a woman already had a male escort, and I was curious.
A cute puppy, all bright-eyed and eager. A little Yellow-Jeweled Warlord. A miniature man. His eyes widened when he saw my Gray Jewel, but he took a deep breath and smiled.
“May I be of service, Lady?” he asked.
Protocol. Specific phrases that had specific answers. Protocol balanced power, giving the weaker among the Blood a safe way to deal with the stronger.
“I’m going to the coffee shop across the street,” I replied.
“Then I will escort you, if it pleases you.”
I held out my left hand. He slipped his right hand beneath it, checked the street to make sure no horse-drawn carriages or Craft-driven coaches were approaching the crossing, then led me across the street.
“Thank you, Warlord,” I said when I had been safely delivered to the door of the coffee shop.
“It was my pleasure, Lady.”
And it was. I could see it in his eyes. There would be bitches who would bruise his ego, dim the pleasure in those eyes. There would be many, many more witches who would gently reinforce his training, confirming his place in the world as a man worthy of courtesy and consideration, a man valued for who and what he was.