٭Cake? Scelties like cake.٭
No matter what Khary said, Jillian suspected that Sceltie tummies didn’t react well to cake, and she didn’t want to clean up the result. “This cake is for Nurian and Rothvar. It’s a present.”
٭Presents are good. We will go find cake for Nurian. Then we will go to the library, which is where we are supposed to be.٭ That settled, Khary fell a half step behind, and Jillian could feel him eyeing her calf, ready to give her an encouraging nip to pick up the pace.
As they approached the Sweet Tooth, Jillian looked in the window and saw an older, elegantly dressed woman kiss her male companion’s cheek before turning to leave. Jillian stopped so fast Khary ran into her leg. Without conscious choice, she put a sight shield around both of them.
٭Jillian . . . ٭
٭Hush.٭ She stepped closer to the big windows and felt something squeeze her heart. Dillon, there in the shop eating cakes with another woman. An older woman.
Too old, surely, to be a . . . lover? Maybe a woman from the family where he was staying? That made sense. He would want to do something to repay their hospitality.
She could drop the sight shield and go into the shop. After all, it wasn’t like she was spying on Dillon. She had a reason to be there. Maybe, after she bought the cakes for Nurian, Dillon would walk with her to the library. Khary was with her; he’d be enough of a chaperon. More than enough. Too much. Still, she and Dillon would be able to talk and spend a little time together. Now that they could meet openly, as long as there was a chaperon present, he seemed less eager to be with her, and that didn’t make sense.
She’d almost dropped the sight shield when she saw him pick up the plate with the four remaining cakes and bring it to the counter. He said something to the girl behind the counter—the beautiful girl who made Jillian feel like a grubby child. They both laughed when the girl licked her thumb and pressed it against the side of one cake, marring the frosting. Then the girl boxed up the four small cakes, hiding the damage on the one cake by placing that side in the center. She put the box in the glass case where new cakes were sold.
Disturbed by what she’d seen, Jillian hurried away, remembering to drop the sight shield after Khary got his teeth in her trousers to stop her from running into a Warlord who couldn’t see her.
٭You are upset! Why are you upset?٭ Khary asked.
“I need to think. I need to sit down and think.”
٭There is sitting for humans over there.٭
Khary led her to a simple bench located on a little island of green between a couple of shops. Flowers bloomed in a square stone planter. On the other side of the planter, there were a small metal table and chairs that would accommodate wings better than the bench.
Jillian collapsed into one of the chairs. There was an explanation. There had to be. Dillon wouldn’t do something so unkind.
“Lady Jillian?”
She looked up. “Prince Sadi.” She hadn’t heard him approach the table, and Khary had given no warning. Had Sadi noticed her, or had the Sceltie alerted the Prince that something was wrong that required another human?
She felt Khary against her leg, trembling. ٭Khary?٭
٭The Prince smells sick. Be careful.٭
Gold eyes that looked sleepy—a danger sign in a Warlord Prince—but those eyes also held a feverish glitter.
“Darling, what’s wrong?”
The look in Prince Sadi’s eyes, for one thing. The odd note in his voice for another. Brittle. Pained. Chilling.
He’s riding the killing edge . . . and something more. Which meant anything could snap Sadi’s control and start a slaughter.
But there were ways to help a Warlord Prince step back from the killing edge. She remembered Lady Angelline stopping by Yaslana’s eyrie one afternoon when Lucivar was with the other Eyrien men and Marian had been at the market. Daemonar had been down for his nap, so Jillian had been out in the garden, weeding the herb beds. And there was Lady Angelline, her gold hair heavily silvered, kneeling next to her, chatting about nothing and everything.
Not nothing. It was never nothing, but Jillian hadn’t appreciated that at the time, although she remembered those chats, those quiet lessons. Knowledge passed on from one witch to another. About Warlord Princes.
“Sometimes a Warlord Prince needs assistance to step away from the killing edge,” the Lady had said. “Ask for his help. Give him something to do, some safe way to channel all that power and temper.”
“Won’t he realize you’re trying to distract him?”
“Of course, but it’s part of the give-and-take between the distaff gender and the spear. Don’t make up something ludicrous. That will insult him and do you no good. The task can be small as long as the need is genuine.”
What she saw in Sadi’s eyes as he waited for a response terrified her. Did she have the courage to do this? “I . . . I need to talk, but . . .”
Sadi settled into the other chair with a grace that suddenly seemed predatory. “You need to talk through something, but it’s not something you want to explain to Yaslana because he’ll react and you just want someone to listen.”
“Yes.”
“Then I’ll listen.”
Was listening enough of a task? “You won’t tell him?”
He hesitated. “If you’re at risk, I can’t promise that. If that’s not the case, I can tell him as much or as little as you want him to know.”
She wanted to ask for a promise that he wouldn’t hurt anyone, but she suspected that request might snap his control and start something no one could stop.
Slowly, measuring each word as if she were walking down a steep, treacherous mountain path and the next step could start a rockslide, Jillian told Sadi what she had seen through the shopwindow.
“I don’t know why Dillon laughed,” she said when she finished. “It wasn’t funny to do something mean. And it was wrong for the girl to put the damaged cake into a box and sell it as fresh cake—especially since it had been on someone’s table already.”
“That upsets you.” A quiet statement spoken in a voice closer to his normal tone.
“I know how I would feel if I had bought that box of cakes and brought it home, thinking it would be a wonderful treat for Nurian. And then to open the box and see that one of the cakes had someone’s thumbprint in it, as if someone was saying that the people who buy the boxes with the four small cakes don’t deserve to have the best the shop can offer because they aren’t important enough to deserve the best . . .”
“It would have hurt your heart to give someone who matters to you the best you could offer and then realize you failed,” he said.
She nodded—and then wondered who had thought that the best he could offer wasn’t good enough.
“We can’t know why Dillon laughed. He could have been embarrassed by what the girl had done but didn’t feel it was his place to say anything. However, we can confirm if cakes are being sold as new that shouldn’t be.”
“How are we going to do that?”
He smiled. “I’m going to treat a young friend to a plate of cakes.”
As they walked the short distance to the Sweet Tooth, she mentioned stopping at the library and he asked her about the books she intended to pick up.
Now that Prince Sadi had started backing away from the killing edge, Jillian couldn’t help comparing Dillon and Sadi. That wasn’t fair. Prince Sadi was older and a Warlord Prince, but hadn’t she been comparing them all along? She’d thought they were similar, but she wasn’t so sure anymore. Dillon would have made fun of her book selections, and then said . . . Well, it didn’t matter what he would have said. But Sadi asked questions, expressed interest in why she chose a book, even if she was sure it wasn’t anything he would want to read.