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End of discussion,Saetan thought Except it wasn’t Not quite “He’s also concerned about how you’ll respond to hioes into rut—which will be fairly soon”

The look in her sapphire eyes sizzled along his nerves He was her adopted father, and he had never thought of her physically in any other way But he was also a man and a Warlord Prince, and there was always a sexual awareness between a Warlord Prince and his Queen, even when there was no desire to do anything with that awareness

When Daeht in the rut’s sexual madness, how much of his relief caed dance of being with Witch in the Misty Place deep in the abyss—of being with the living myth when she revealed the Self that lived within the human body? The Self that was not completely human

The sizzle faded He had to clear his throat before he could speak “I’ll tell Daemon not to worry about the rut”

I’ve never worried about the rut, she told hi a psychic thread

Now he understood why she didn’t

Jaenelle closed the distance between theht sets his Unka Daemon into trouble”

“I thought Daeiven up the baby talk”

“Oh, he has for the most part But he likes the sound of ‘unka,’ and his uncle doesn’t insist that he say the word correctly”

Saetan so, witch-child Try to keep them both out of the trees, will you?”

“I’ll do my best”

Later, when he was alone in his suite, preparing to sleep through the midday hours, he allowed himself to remember her in that moment when she showed him a side of Witch a father would never see

And he allowed himself one moment to envy his son—and to wish he could have been the lover instead of the father

CHAPTER 3

TERREILLE

Propped up on one elbow, Ranon watched Shira’s slow return to awareness after the cli of love

Before coether in Cassidy’s court, they’d had five years of fast, furtive coupling because his interest would have drawn the wrong kind of attention to the Black Widow Healer Five years when he’d tried to stay away fro with her Five years of love always being entwined with fear

Twice that five years, actually, if he counted the years before they beca to the Opal power that coursed through hi to the Darkness She had been sixteen—a young Black Widow, born to the Hourglass Covens, as just beginning the secret training that would hone the Craft she instinctively knew, as well as the open training required to be a Healer

They had both been visiting friends in a village that wasn’t home to either of them They hadhouse for thehad shaped their hopes and dreams for the next ten years

Now, thanks to Cassidy, he and Shira could spend tiin to build alife together That alone would have earned Cassidy his loyalty The fact that she was proving to be a far stronger ruler than any of them had expected from a Queen ore a Rose Jewel had earned his respect and a different kind of love Her as his life, and he would do everything he could to help her rule Dena Nehele—and by doing so he would do more than he’d dreamed possible for the Shalador people