“Is that wrong? That I’d like to be a king?” He cocked his head at her and smiled his tight-lipped smile. “A king might need a queen.”

She sounded scornful of him as she told him sternly, “You will never be a king.” But her deprecation of him was a lie, her hands said. Thymara watched in amazement as Jerd caught Greft’s shoulders in both her hands, twisted onto her back, and then drew him down on top of her. “Enough talk,” she announced. One of her hands moved to the back of Greft’s neck. She pulled his face down to hers.

Thymara watched.

She didn’t mean to. There was no moment when she decided to stay. Instead, her claws dug deep into bark and held her there. Her brow furrowed and she stared, heedless of the biting insects that found her and hummed around her.

She had seen animals mate, a male bird mounting a female. With a flutter and a shudder, it was soon done and sometimes the female scarcely seemed to notice it. Her parents had never spoken to her of mating, for it was forbidden to her and to those like her. Any curiosity about it had been firmly discouraged. Even her beloved father had warned her, “You may encounter men who will try to take advantage of you, well knowing that what they seek is forbidden. Trust no man who tries to do more than touch your hand in greeting. Leave his company at once, and tell me of it.”

And she had believed him. He was her father, with her best interests at heart. No one would make a marriage offer for her. Everyone knew that if those the Rain Wilds touched heavily had children, the children were born either completely monstrous or not viable at all. It made no sense for such as her to mate. The food she would eat during a pregnancy while she was unable to hunt or gather, the difficulty her body would endure in bringing forth a child that would most likely die…no. Resources in the Rain Wilds were always scarce;life was always difficult. No one had a right to consume and not produce. It was not the Trader way.

Except that her father had broken that rule. He’d taken a chance on her, taken a chance that she would pull her own weight. And she had. So perhaps the rules were not always right…Was Greft right? Could it be that any rules that men made, other men could change? Were the rules not so absolute as she has always believed them?