“Why don’t you go in and look for a book?” Daemonar suggested quietly. “This won’t take long.”
Jaenelle Saetien nodded to Orian and the handful of Rihlander girls who were with her and went inside the shop.
“Daemonar.” Orian’s smile seemed genuine, but there was a look of expectation in her eyes that he didn’t like—as if she wanted confirmation that her words to Titian had hit their mark.
“Orian,” he replied. He nodded to the other girls. “Ladies.”
“It’s Lady Orian.” She tapped a finger next to her Birthright Summer-sky Jewel. “A Queen is not addressed so informally in public, even by a friend.”
“If we’re playing that game, you should address me as Prince Daemonar—or Prince Yaslana, since I outrank you.”
“It’s not a game,” she snapped. When she spotted Lord Tamnar and her brother, Alanar, across the street, she reined in her temper. “You shouldn’t be disrespectful to a Queen.”
“Respect goes both ways,” he replied, well aware of the two Eyrien Warlords who were watching them. They weren’t moving toward him to intervene. Not yet.
Orian gave him a sharp smile. “How is Titian? I hope she took my advice to heart.”
Bitch. All right, then. Like to like. “You mean the advice that a true Eyrien wouldn’t draw flowers?” He bared his teeth in a smile as he gave her hair, with its natural curl, a pointed look. “Well, I guess you would know about not being true Eyrien.”
The other girls gasped at the insult. Orian looked like he’d stuck a knife in her and twisted the blade.
Good.
He stepped closer to Orian, aware that Tamnar and Alanar were crossing the street and he had only moments left to deliver his message. “I don’t care if you’re a girl. I don’t care if you’re a Queen. If you jab at my sister again, I will bloody you.”
He took a step back and looked at the two Eyrien Warlords, who were his friends. “Tamnar. Alanar.”
“Daemonar,” Tamnar said. He eyed the girls. “Ladies.” Then he focused on Daemonar and asked on a psychic spear thread, *Problem?*
*No, no problem,* he replied. *I think the message was understood.*
He swung around the girls, who scrambled to get out of his way, and walked into the shop. He wasn’t surprised to find Jaenelle Saetien hovering near the door instead of looking at books, but he wondered if she’d intended to try to help him or pull him off Orian if it had ended up a physical fight.
“The books are that way,” he said, pointing to the corner of the shop that held the shelves.
“What you said to Orian about not being true Eyrien,” she said quietly. “That was mean.”
“She deserved it.”
Jaenelle Saetien hesitated. “Uncle Lucivar wouldn’t have said it.”
“True.” But Uncle Daemon would have.
He wasn’t going to get away with this clean, not with Tamnar and Alanar having witnessed his collision with Orian. Alanar wasn’t that much older than him, but Tamnar had made the Blood Run, the first important rite of passage for an Eyrien male, and was on the cusp of making the Offering to the Darkness. Since he was considered an adult and would be held accountable if he said nothing, he would report the incident to Rothvar and let Lucivar’s second-in-command decide if the Warlord Prince of Ebon Rih needed to be informed.
So be it.
Despite the limited selection, Jaenelle Saetien found two books of interest, and he found one for himself. By the time they walked out of the shop, Orian and her “court” weren’t in sight. Neither were Tamnar and Alanar. He suspected the Warlords were now escorting the girls to wherever they wanted to go.
He hoped it wasn’t the bakery.
“I think we should split a piece of fudge cake,” Jaenelle Saetien said as they walked into the bakery.
“Why?”
“And I think we should pool our money and buy a full cake and a jar of the chocolate sauce and take it home for the sweet.”
Even if she’d already made something for the after-meal sweet, his mother would appreciate the gesture. “All right.”
He would have let Jaenelle Saetien have more than her share as thanks for her help, but she carefully cut the piece of cake in half—and she was just as careful to pay for half the treat they were bringing home to Marian.
Arriving home a few minutes before the midday meal, Lucivar looked at the fudge cake and jar of sauce on the kitchen counter and said, “Well, everything has a price.”
“What trouble are those two trying to buy their way out of with that?” Marian asked, tipping her head toward the cake and sauce.
He wasn’t sure how to answer that. “I’ll deal with it.”
“Lucivar?” She laid a hand on his arm and studied his face. “You don’t disapprove of whatever Daemonar and Jaenelle Saetien did.”
“What he did.” He hesitated. “I’m not sure. I can’t say I wouldn’t have done the same.” But not in the same way, and it was his firstborn’s method of retaliation that gave him an uneasy twitch.
At Daemonar’s age, he’d been fighting to survive in the Eyrien hunting camps, but he wouldn’t have slapped at a Queen in any way, regardless of what she’d said or done. After he’d gotten the first taste of pain that the Queens in Askavi Terreille inflicted on men just because they could hurt anyone under their control? He would have savaged the bitch as lesson and warning.
He had savaged the bitches, and the stories of that savagery were one reason why he had been so feared. Was still so feared.
“He didn’t come home bloody,” Marian said with a sigh. “I guess that’s something.”
“I’m going to wash up.” Lucivar gave her a light kiss. “Don’t worry about it. Nothing but feelings were hurt.”
As he reached the archway that separated the kitchen from the large front room, Marian said, “Sometimes those are the hurts that take the longest to heal.”
He looked back at her. “Yeah, I know.”
Nothing was said during the midday meal. Maybe that meant no one had told his father about the chat he’d had with Orian.
That kernel of hope was crushed as soon as the meal ended and Lucivar looked him in the eyes and said, “My study. Now.”
Wondering what had been said, and if he’d be dealing with his father as his father or as the Warlord Prince of Ebon Rih, Daemonar followed Lucivar into the study—and wasn’t sure what to think when Lucivar took one of the seats in front of the large blackwood desk instead of sitting behind it.
He settled in the other seat and tried to look curious and attentive, as if he had no idea why he’d been called into the study. No idea at all. “Sir?”
Lucivar said nothing for a piece of forever. Then, “Endar and Dorian came to Kaeleer with their children during the last service fair, same as Jillian and Nurian. Same as many of the Eyriens who live around Ebon Rih. Everyone who came to those fairs was hoping for a chance at a new life, a better life. In Endar’s case, it was also to protect a daughter who was a Queen—and whose hair made it obvious that there was another race besides Eyrien somewhere in her bloodline.
“You’ve known Orian since you were both toddlers. You’ve played together, gone to school together. From what I could tell, you’ve always gotten along. And yet, today, you gave her a verbal punch in front of her friends. Why?”
Daemonar stared at the floor between his feet and clamped his hands over his knees to keep from fidgeting. He couldn’t lie, and he couldn’t slide around a direct question. “Orian said something mean to Titian, so I said something mean to her so she would know how much it hurt.”