“There was a misunderstanding last night,” the Warlord said, watching Dillon.

“Sir?” he replied politely.

“My daughter couldn’t have offered you a handfast. The man she’s chosen to be her husband and I have been negotiating the marriage contracts for the past two weeks, so she wouldn’t have offered you a handfast.”

“But . . .” Dillon looked painfully confused—an expression he’d practiced for an hour last night in anticipation of this meeting. “She asked me to have sex with her. Insisted that I oblige her.”

The Warlord’s face flushed. “Yes. Well. A young woman who has gone through her Virgin Night has . . . needs, and there is nothing wrong with her enjoying a lover.”

“You are, of course, correct, sir,” Dillon said. “But a young man doesn’t have the same freedom, and a young man who obliges before a formal contract is signed can be . . . misunderstood. That’s why, when Lady Carron insisted that I provide her with sex, I confirmed that she was asking me to enter into a formal contract, because I know she wouldn’t want a man to do anything dishonorable. After all, if she thought it was all right to use a man that way, then that would be like giving other girls permission to pressure her brother into providing them with sex. Wouldn’t it, sir?”

The older man’s face turned white and his eyes filled with fear at the mention of that potential danger to his son’s reputation.

Seeing that, Dillon thought that maybe, in time, he could forgive his father for caring more about his brothers’ reputations than about him.

“My daughter deeply regrets giving you the wrong impression.”

I’m sure of that, Dillon thought.

“I’m told you’ve recently come to town.”

“Yes, sir.”

The Warlord called in a thick envelope and held it out. “You’re a handsome young man, Lord Dillon, and temptation is easier to resist when a girl doesn’t see it every day. I’m hoping you will oblige me by . . . relocating. This should cover your expenses and be some compensation for the inconvenience my daughter caused.”

Dillon took the envelope, opened it, and riffled the notes inside. Three thousand gold marks. Three thousand. Even more than the compensation he’d received from Blyte’s father.

“Yes, sir.” His voice sounded brave, sad, and understanding. Sounded perfect. “I wish Lady Carron all the best.” He paused. “If you will excuse me, sir, I think the sooner I’m gone, the easier it will be for all of us.”

As soon as he left the man’s study, Dillon vanished the envelope. He walked a block before hailing a horse-drawn cab and returning to his hotel. Anticipating the need to get out of this city quickly—there was always the possibility that Carron’s intended husband would challenge him to a fight—he vanished his already-packed trunks, settled his bill, and went to the Coaching station to buy a seat on a Coach heading for a town he was sure his family hadn’t visited before. With any luck, no one in that town would have heard of Carron—or Blyte.

FOUR

Jillian stood outside the front door, taking another minute to breathe in fresh air before she entered the Yaslana eyrie. No school today, so she had planned her arrival for after breakfast—and hoped Prince Yaslana was already out and about.

After a week of discomfort, she was getting used to the feel of the sexual heat washing over her when she was near him, was getting used to the punch of it when she first walked into his home. It was like an odor permeating the eyrie’s stone walls, but more intense when he was physically present. No, the diaper pail was an odor. Yaslana’s sexual heat was a spicy, potent, alluring scent. Not all that different from his physical and psychic scents, actually, but sexual. Definitely sexual.

But not for her. He couldn’t help being who and what he was—and who and what he was had gotten her and Nurian out of the service fair and had made it possible for them to live in Ebon Rih, had made it possible for her to go to school and also receive training in the use of Eyrien weapons. If she thought of the sexual heat as being similar to a cologne some men wore to be more appealing to women, then it wasn’t any different from the scent Nurian sometimes wore when she wanted to feel more feminine. Wasn’t any different from a bowl of potpourri that Marian used to freshen rooms in the winter.

Jillian grinned. Sex potpourri. Something to be enjoyed for a moment and then forgotten as a background scent.

She walked in, hung her cape on the coat-tree, and went to the kitchen. The table had been cleared, but the dishes weren’t done.

٭Marian?٭ she called on a distaff thread.

٭I’m changing the baby. Again.٭

Poopy diapers. How fun.

٭The children are picking up their rooms,٭ Marian continued, ٭and Lucivar is in his study.٭

٭I’ll do the dishes.٭

٭There should be a couple of meat pastries in the cold box for you if the men in the house didn’t stuff them into their faces the moment I left the kitchen.٭

Daemonar might have grabbed for another one before they were put away—the boy had a staggering ability to eat—but Yaslana would have stopped him. And to be fair, if told the pastries had been saved for her, Daemonar probably would have left them alone, because taking care of the women in the family was a man’s privilege. Of course, not eating something that had been saved was seen as an insult and resulted in hurt feelings.

Boys could be so peculiar.

After filling one side of the double sink with soap and water, she washed the breakfast dishes and was rinsing the bowl that had been used to make the pastry when she heard the eyrie’s front door open. Curious, because the family was accounted for and anyone else should have knocked, she grabbed a dish towel to dry the bowl as she walked to the archway between the kitchen and the big front room—and then forgot what she was doing.

She’d seen him plenty of times before, but, Mother Night, he was beautiful! That almost painfully exquisite face and mouthwatering body. The thick black hair was a little long and artfully disheveled, and the gold eyes . . .

Those eyes looked at her, recognized something in her, and started to glaze as the room began to chill in warning.

“Witchling?” Yaslana’s voice, coming from the corridor that led to the rest of the eyrie. “Jillian?” Sharper now. Commanding.

She blinked and turned her head to look at Yaslana as he entered the front room. For a moment, for just long enough, the sexual heat that was becoming familiar created a barrier between her and Prince Sadi’s darkly seductive sexual heat.

“I . . . I have to do something.” Jillian hurried to the pantry, leaned against a shelf, and hugged the bowl she’d been drying. Prince Daemon Sadi was . . . Mother Night! She was pretty sure the bones in her legs had just melted from his heat curling around her.