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"Ah" Titian settled back, content"Our ent"
"I’m sure they’re relieved you think so," Saetan said dryly "So, upon discovering that soical powers and skills"
"The best young warriors would offer themselves as mates and protectors," Titian said promptly
Saetan raised an eyebrow Since landens, the non-Blood of each race, tended to be so wary of the Blood and their Craft, that wasn’t quite the way he’d always pictured it, but he found it interesting that a Dea al Mon witch would make
that assumption He’d have to ask Chaosti and Gabrielle at soirls, because of gender, received the full gift"
"But the boys were half-Blood with little or no Craft" Titian held out her glass Saetan refilled it
"Witches don’t bear lass "Depending on the ratio of sons to daughters, it could have taken several h all that tieneration learning froer The first Queens probably appeared long before the first Warlord, let alone a er than that By then, the idea that rained In the end, what you have is the Blood society where Warlords are equal in status to witches, Princes are equal to Priestesses and Healers, and Black Widows only have to defer to Warlord Princes and Queens And Warlord Princes, who are considered a law unto the step--beneath the Queens"
"When caste is added to each individual’s social rank and Jewel rank, it lass on the table "An interesting theory, High Lord"
"An interesting diversion, Lady Titian Why did you do it? Why did you offer reen tunic "You are kin of ht since Jaenelle could not Good night, High Lord"
Long after she’d gone, Saetan sat quietly, watching the logs in the fireplace break and settle He roused hilass of yarbarah, content noith the solitude and silence
He didn’t dispute her theory of why males caic that had drawn the males It was the inner radiance housed within those female bodies, a luht have craved a light they could see glowing in a hen they were standing out in the cold They had craved that light assheathed in the sweet darkness of a woman’s body, if not more
Males had become Blood because they’d been drawn to both
And, as he knew all too well, they still were
7 / Kaeleer
Lucivar lay on his back in the young grass, his hands behind his head, his wings spread to dry after the quick dip in the spring-fed pool Jaenelle was still splashing around in the cold water, washing the sweat and dirt out of her long hair
He closed his eyes and groaned contentedly as the sun sloarht muscles
Yesterday, he’d awakened just before dawn to find Jaenelle busily rued a hasty s forced her todrive of the previous days, and as the day wore on, physical tension gave way to eer would flood her suddenly, then turn to tears He gave her space while she raged and swore He held her while she cried When the storm passed, she’d be fine for a little while They would walk at an easy pace, stopping to pick wild berries or rest near a stream Then the cycle would start over, each ti, he and Sh ht with him and had sent Smoke back to the Keep with the rest If Saetan wasn’t at the Keep, Sh Lord know that the worst had passed and they would spend a fewhome
Home He’d lived in Kaeleer for a year now, and the itches treated males in the Shadow Realm still bewildered him sometimes
One day he’d walked in on a discussion Chaosti, Aaron, and Khardeen were having about how the Ring of Honor worn by males in a Queen’s First Circle differed fro Terreillean males were required to wear until they proved the of Obedience that was used in Terreille
They didn’t believe him Oh, intellectually they understood what he said, but they had never known the saturating, day-to-day fear Terreillean males lived with, so they didn’t,couldn’t, believe hih to have firsthand experience in the ways a witch kept her males leashed, he had asked Sylvia, Halaway’s Queen, how a Queen controlled a aped at hi out, "Who’d want one?"