Page 2 (1/2)

"Hush, now Hush It will help" Supporting the man’s head, Lucivar eased the cup between the swollen lips After ts, Lucivar put the cup aside and stroked the ertips "It will help," he crooned

"I’ain, the an to slur "You’re a Warlord Prince Why do they do this to us, Yasi?"

"Because they have no honor Because they don’t reh Priestess of Hayll’s influence is a plague that has been spreading across the Real every Territory it touches"

"Maybe the landens are right, then Maybe the Blood are evil"

Lucivar continued stroking the man’s forehead and te less There is good and evil a us who rule now"

"And where are the good a us?" the man asked sleepily

Lucivar kissed the top of the man’s head "They’ve been destroyed or enslaved" He offered the cup "Finish it, little Brother, and it will be finished"

After the man took the last s, Lucivar used Craft to vanish the cup

The hed "I feel very brave, Yasi"

"You are very brave"

"The ratsMy balls are gone"

"I know"

"I cried, Yasi Before all of them, I cried"

"It doesn’t matter"

"I’m a Warlord I shouldn’t have cried"

"You didn’t tell You had courage when you needed it"

"Zuultah killed the others anyway"

"She’ll pay for it, little Brother Someday she and the others like her will pay for it all" Lucivar gently ed the man’s neck

"Yasi, I--"

The movement was sudden, the sound sharp

Lucivar carefully let the lolling head fall backward and slowly rose to his feet He could have told the of Obedience could be fine-tuned sufficiently to alert its owner to an inner drawing of strength and purpose He could have told thenant tendrils that kept them enslaved had spread too far, and it would take a sweeter savagery than a man was capable of to free them He could have told the to keep a man obedient, that their concern for each other would destroy them, that the only way to escape, for even a little while, was to care for no one, to be alone

He could have told them

And yet, when they had approached hier to ask a ain over the centuries but was still enslaved, all he had said was, "Sacrifice everything" They had gone away, disappointed, unable to understand he hadAnd there was one thing he couldn’t--wouldn’t--sacrifice

How ain by that cruel ring of gold around his organ had Daee, calling hiive in?

Liar Silky, court-trained liar

Once, Dorothea SaDiablo had searched desperately for Daemon Sadi after he’d vanished from a court without a trace It had taken a hundred years to find hi to recapture hie Territory he had held and conquered half the Realible threat to Hayll’s encroachment and absorption of every people it touched Instead, he had read a letter Dorothea sent through a er Read it and surrendered

The letter had sione thereafter, I will take a piece of your brother’s body in payance"

Lucivar shook hihts In some ways, hts of Askavi, with itsto cut the sky and its valleys filled with towns, farms, and forests Not that Askavi was that fertile any been raped for tooback Still, it was ho for the smell of clean mountain air, the taste of a sweet, cold stream, the silence of the woods, and, most of all, the mountains where the Eyrien race soared

But he was in Pruul, that hot, scrubby desert wasteland, serving that bitch Zuultah because he couldn’t hide his disgust for Prythian, Askavi’s High Priestess, couldn’t leash his te the Blood, ed that, despite the number of witches he’d killed over the centuries He had killed them because it was an insult to serve theray Jewels and refused to believe that serving and grovelingBecause he was a half-breed bastard, he had no hope of attaining a position of authority within a court, despite the rank of his Jewels Because he was a trained Eyrien warrior and had a temper that was explosive even for a Warlord Prince, he had even less hope of being allowed to live outside the social chains of a court