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Dorian groaned softly, and shifted his hips, grinding hied in answer, and he ran a hand down her side

"Shutsouthward to cup her backside as she nipped at his neck, his jaw No hint of those iron teeth, but the proered, an exquisite sword over his head

Only with her did he not need to explain Only with her did he not need to be a king, or anything but what he was Only with her would there be no judght still have to do

Just this--pleasure and utter oblivion

Manon’s hand found his belt buckle, and Dorian reached for hers, and neither spoke for soht--twice--couldn’t entirely dull the edge when ray and bleak, and Manon approached Glennis’s larger tent

She’d left the king sleeping, bundled in the blankets they’d shared, though she hadn’t allowed hi her back to him, and closed her eyes He hadn’t seemed to care, sated and drowsy after she’d ridden him until they’d both found their pleasure, and had been quickly asleep Had stayed asleep, while Manon had conte

Perhaps she should have brought Dorian He certainly kne to play these ga

He’d killed that spider like a blue-blooded witch, though Not an ounce of mercy

It shouldn’t have thrilled her the way it did

But Manon knew her pride would never recover, and she’d never again be able to call herself a witch, if she let hih Glennis’s tent flaps without announcing herself "I need to speak to you"

She found Glennis buckling on her glamoured cloak before a tiny bronze ency fro intoh to eat"

Manon discarded the kernel of information Ironteeth didn’t have fathers Only their mothers and mothers’ mothers It had always been that way Even if it was an effort to keep her questions about him at bay How he’d met Lothian Blackbeak, what had prompted them to set aside their ancient hatred

"What would it take--to win the Crochans over? To join us in war?"

Glennis adjusted her cape in the nite the Flame of War, to summon every witch from her hearth"

Manon blinked at the frank answer "The Flame of War?"

Glennis jerked her chin toward the tent flaps, to the fire pit beyond "Every Crochan family has a hearth that moves with theuish The flame in my hearth dates back to the Crochan city itself, when Brannon Galathynius gave Rhiannon a spark of eternally burning fire My lobe, hidden in her cloak, when she sled out your ancestor, and it has continued to burn at every royal Crochan hearth since then"

"What about when ic disappeared for ten years?"

"Our seers had a vision that it would vanish, and the flanited several ordinary fires froic disappeared, the fla, the flaht in the hearth where we had last seen it" Her great-grandmother turned toward her "When a Crochan Queen summons her people to war, a flame is taken from the royal hearth, and passed to each hearth, one cae to the other The arrival of the flame is a summons that only a true Crochan Queen may make"

"So I only need to use the flame in that pit out there and the arhter "No You round her teeth "And how ure out, is it?"

It took all her self-restraint to keep froh the tent "Why are you here--why this camp?"

Glennis’s brows rose "Didn’t I tell you yesterday?"

Manon tapped a foot on the ground