“You will say nothing of this to anyone,” she told him, burning each word into his mind. “Because if you dare, you’ll never sleep again—for every time you shut your misbegotten eyes, this is what you’ll see—”

She tore the memory of his worst nightmare out of the bowels of recollection and flung it in his face, brutally invoking terror and forcing that on him as well. He whimpered and groveled at her feet until she threw him violently out of rapport.

“Get out of here,” she growled. “Get out, go back to your father’s holding, and don’t come back.”

He fled without a single backward glance.

She turned to face Elspeth, trying to control her anger by slowing her breathing. “I thought better of you than that,” she said, each word built of ice. “I thought you would have had better taste than to let a creature like that touch you.”

Elspeth was crying, but as much out of anger as unhappiness. “Fine words from the Herald Vestal,” she spat. “First Skif, then Kris—and now who? Why shouldn’t I have my lovers as well as you?”