“Change is my true form. But the one who gave birth to me had an eru’s form when I was disgorged. So it is the form to which I return most naturally.”

“No wonder the eru called me Cousin,” I muttered.

When he opened his wings to their full span, they exhaled an icy mist. He was magnificent. “You must be what you are, little cat. That is why I sired you. Do you not wonder why you can kill without regret, escape certain death, and prowl like a tomcat among males who attract you?”

“I might be able to do those things even were you not my sire.” Waves of pain like hot knives still stabbed through my right shoulder. I wondered if I could bring myself to stab him again, even though my first attack had proven successful in forcing the Hunt to retreat.

His stance remained relaxed and confident. “Do you ever ask yourself how it is you can command the loyalty of others? Why they do your bidding at your word? It must be so, because my blood is your blood. Those I command are yours also to command.”

“There are better reasons for people to be loyal. People give back to you what you give to them. You may say it is blood or birth that binds servants to masters and plebeians to their patrician lords, but that is only another word for force. The Council in Expedition ruled because they had wealth enough to keep themselves in power. But I watched the people of Expedition speak out in protest. I watched them fight. They took the opportunity to govern themselves. They did not wait for it to be given them. They did not say that their demands for new laws and for justice must cede to the prerogatives of blood and birth.”

“Yet blood binds all.”

“Does it?” I demanded. “Do you command every creature in the spirit world?”

He said nothing, but he blinked.

I was breathing as hard as if I had been running, or maybe it was just my aching shoulder that made me dizzy. “I think you only command the Wild Hunt, not one creature more.”

A smile cut his face. Before I thought to retreat, he folded his wings forward to cage me in their web of ice. His clawed hands pulled me close, not in an amorous way but as if he had decided to dismember me and rip off my head. His voice had the shiver of a bell when a rod is drawn across it to make it vibrate.

“Hear my words, little cat. A prince among slaves is still a slave. The courts bind him with blood in the palace where those without blood cannot walk. You are bound because he is bound.”

“I don’t care what you say! I will free my husband!”