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You bow too low, Vae said That is rude Sniffing feood set smacked on the nose Or nipped

Janos’s face turned dusky red as he snapped upright,it clear that the insult had been unintentional Ranon’s coloring wasn’t much better

And Gray looked a bit too curious about female smells

Thank the Darkness,Cassidy thought when the back door opened and a young woman walked out Sixteen years old Maybe seventeen And beautiful in a way that reen eyes And a Purple Dusk Jewel

“What are you doing here, Reyhana?” Ranon growled

Surprised by his aniirl, but she was a Queen and should be shown soer

“I asked the elder Queens if I could work here as a service to the new Queen,” Reyhana replied, her voice a shade too defiant

“You’re a Queen You shouldn’t be doing servants’ work,” Ranon snapped

“Why not?” Cassidy asked

The silence wasthan a thunderclap would have been at that moment

“Why not?” Ranon said “She’s a Queen!”

“A Queen who doesn’t knoork is of no use to her people,” Reyhana said

“Well put, Sister,” Cassidy said Ranon looked like he’d been clobbered with a fence post, and she was sorry for what she was about to do to hiirl was her priority now “My family is not aristo, Prince Ranon We never had servants And even though by caste I ahter So whenday, I dusted and polished furniture, andwith her And when it was hts about ht in the eyes “Why is it that a man can hit the center of a bull’s eye at one hundred paces and yet can’t et all of his streaht over it?”

Janos and Gray stood there with theiropen Ranon, poor man, looked ready to slink away

But it was the suppressed snort frooal She’d talk to the girl later about the proper way to address a Warlord Prince when his Jeere dominant

She smiled at all of theetable garden” As she walked away, she added on a distaff thread, Vae, keep an eye on the

One, two, three

Ranon? Ranon! Are you breathing?

There, Cassidy thought By the tiled the the older woood reason

When she reached the vegetable garden, she stopped

It should have been good soil, but it was parched, alroouldn’t yield the bounty needed to feed these people Not parched for water; the ground was still soft, a sure sign that there had been a long, soaking rain sometime in the past day or two No, it was parched for the connection with a Queen, for that necessary give-and-take that kept the land healthy