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I push between theo back to the stable because if I run away Lord Gargaron will send his stewards to hunt me down and then he’ll find out you’ve escaped As soon as Mother can travel we et her out of the city Merry, ask Polodos if he can find out what happened to the servants ere left behind so we can trace Bettany Amaya, I have to tell you…" My hesitation betrays me

She clutches my hand as her lower lip trembles "Is it about Denya?"

The words are hard to say because they will hurt her so aron took Denya to be his concubine I’m sorry"

She puts a hand over her face, then lowers it to shake me "I have to see her You have to find a way to sneak a e in to her! So she knows I’otten her!"

"Yes, I’ll find a way"

"You want to train at the stable, don’t you?" says Maraya "It’s what you’ve alanted"

I nod, because there is nothing else to say, and then I kiss them and the babies Sweet Safarenwe is asleep but Wenru is awake, staring around with an expression so calculating that I am ashamed of how uncomfortable I feel around hiain before the carriage rolls away through open gates onto a dark street

Kalliarkos steps up beside me, hands clasped behind his back at parade rest The courtyard in which we stand is wreathed with trellises of night-bloo jasmine, its scent as heady as desire We are the only ones here, utterly alone I lean against hi: standing beside hi at me We don’t even need to speak, just share our triuer around one of mine, and I turn to raise o!"

The speed hich I leap around must make me seem ashamed, but Kalliarkos merely releases my hand and ae we used to go to the villa He cli to determine how far I have seduced his royal nephew despiteand adventurous play to the two of you, I a, and it’s perfectly natural, but it’s not real"

"It’s real!" objects Kalliarkos

"Don’t interrupt! I’ little blossom of love has to wither now Let me explain the realities of your situation to Spider, since you obviously have not"

"He’s told me about his family, Lord Thynos," I say, but when Kalliarkos presses a hand to his forehead as if plagued with a headache, I’s I don’t believe you understand about our Kalliarkos, Spider To start with, Princess Berenise is Kal’s grandmother"

"I know that!"

"Did I ask you to speak? Then don’t She is the aunt of the current king and queen Her firstSokorios of Saro-Urok At that time she left Efea to live in Saro-Urok as his queen He died in battle less than a year after their nant, his successor sent her to an ill-wishers’ teue She found safety in the ca in Saro-Urok in support of Sokorios That army was under the coaron"

"Sent to be an ill-wisher! That’s a terrible story, but what does it have to do with us now?"

"I a to explain to you how the endless wars between Efea, Saro-Urok, East Saro, and West Saro are complicated by the shared kinship of their royal faainst his cousin, aof Saro-Urok after Sokorios died Elkorios did not want Princess Berenise to return to Efea lest shewould then challenge him for Saro-Urok’s throne But she escaped Elkorios’s plot byto Efea with his army"

Kalliarkos breaks in "That’s not the only reason she randmother harbored her own aame in her head"

Thynos exa co

"Twenty years later she set inElkorios for killing Sokorios," Thynos goes on "She began by contracting a e between her only son and my sister--Kal’s mother For you see, hter of Elkorios"