“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.

As they walked into the shop chatting like old friends, Jillian noticed the look on the beautiful girl’s face when she realized who Jillian’s companion was. Despite the flutter in her own belly that was caused by being close to him, Jillian suddenly felt protective because she was sure girls looked at him that way all the time—or tried to do more than look—because he was beautiful and sexual, like some kind of dream lover. But when a Warlord Prince married, he was never unfaithful to his wife, and he would kill anyone who tried to compromise his honor. Only foolish women would respond to the lure of that sexual beauty, because it wasn’t meant to be a lure. And with him still so close to the killing edge, she didn’t want anyone upsetting him.

“What should we order?” Sadi asked when the girl pranced up to their table, her blouse pulled lower than it had been when they’d walked in.

Did women do that when Prince Yaslana went into shops? Maybe a Warlord Prince’s sexual heat wasn’t as noticeable in an Eyrien, because Eyrien males were warriors, bred and trained, and quick to fight. So the sexual heat could be masked by temper.

“Jillian?”

She blinked, then realized Sadi had asked a question and had been waiting for an answer. “My apologies, Prince. I was distracted by another thought.”