“No. If you’re caught in a lie, it’s an automatic death sentence. And if you help conceal an indiscretion, it’s a death sentence. Andarions are very serious about their lineages and oaths. Which is why they’re notoriously monogamous and why they think long and hard before pledging themselves to another. They either marry very early or extremely late in life.”

“Why is that?”

Thia fell back to whisper to her so that Darice wouldn’t hear her. “Well, you know about that need to be…” she cleared her throat, “drained. Aside from that, it’s said that once an Andarion tastes the flesh of another, they’re insatiable. Male and female. So if they don’t marry early, they marry older.”

“How much older?”

“Eighty to ninety, at least.”

Sumi was aghast at the age. “What?”

Thia laughed. “Don’t be so shocked. They live a lot longer than humans, as a rule. It’s why my yaya is seventy and looks almost as young as my stepmother. And she’s still well within Andarion childbearing years. They can have children until they’re over one hundred and fifty.”

“No minsid way.”

Thia nodded. “It’s also why they seldom mate outside their species. There’s an old legend that claims the rocky belt surrounding Andaria isn’t from a moon that was hit by an asteroid and broke apart, but rather it’s the remnants of the heart of the first Andarion who married a human. He was one of the greatest Andarion warriors ever born and she was a young human who tempted him with her fragility. He defied his lineage to bring her into his world and when she died birthing their firstborn, because she was a mere, weak human, his heart shattered into the pieces that will forever orbit our homeworld as a reminder that Andarions should remain with their own kind. Forever.”

Sumi grimaced at a story that wrung her heart. “That is awful and beautiful.”

“Andarions have their moments,” Thia said with a smile. “Good and bad.”

Groaning at all their talk and mumbling about human women, Darice ran ahead of them again with Illyse chasing after him.

Sumi was still trying not to hear the sounds of Dancer fighting on his own. She walked beside Thia while they kept their eyes on Darice.

“So is it true about Andarion passions? Are they really that hard to control?”

Thia shrugged. “I wouldn’t know, as I’ve never been there.”

Sumi arched a brow. Given that Thia was easily in her twenties, she was stunned by that revelation. She would have assumed a girl so beautiful would have been pursued heavily by any man who saw her. “Really?”