Roxie stepped into her path again. “You’d better start looking for a new position. When I move into the eyrie, I’m not sharing Lucivar with the likes of you.” She gave Marian one scathing look from head to toe. “I suppose using you for relief was better than using his own hand, but not by much. Once I’m there, Lucivar won’t have any interest in you, and I’m not going to have a servant working for me who doesn’t know her place.”

A chill went through Marian. “What are you talking about?”

“Lucivar’s going to be my lover. I’ll be moving into the eyrie with him any day now.”

Marian shook her head. “He doesn’t want you. He’d never invite you to live with him.”

Something ugly glinted in Roxie’s eyes before she smiled. “He’s not going to have a choice. He’s going to have to do everything I want.”

“He’s the Warlord Prince of Ebon Rih,” Marian protested. “You can’t force him to do anything he doesn’t want to do. He doesn’t serve you.”

“He’s going to,” Roxie said smugly. Then she leaned close to Marian. “I’m going to tell everyone he tried to force himself on me but came to his senses before it became an actual rape. The Queens in Ebon Rih won’t demand an execution—they wouldn’t dare, considering who he’s related to. But I’ll insist that he be made to serve me for a year as the price for the trauma inflicted by his unbridled lust. And they’ll give him to me.”

Marian stared at Roxie, stunned. Accuse Lucivar of rape? The accusation alone would require going before a tribunal of Queens to determine the man’s innocence or guilt, and even if he was declared innocent, the taint of being accused could shadow him the rest of his life. It had happened to a friend of her father’s. Despite being falsely accused, the Warlord had been dismissed from the court—and had ended up leaving Askavi because even his closest friends had turned away from him, afraid their own reputations would be smeared if they were seen with him.

Even though it still chilled her to think about it, she understood why the Warlords who attacked her had planned to kill her. If she had survived the rape and accused them, at the very least, their standing in society would have been ruined. If a nobody hearth witch could ruin aristo Warlords in Terreille, what would an accusation made by an aristo witch do to a man in Kaeleer, where the laws and Protocols were upheld far more strictly?