“I am going to live with you!” Roxie shouted as she continued to sob. “You want me. You know you do. When I was in your bed—”

“I told you I’d slit your throat if I ever found you there again,” Lucivar said.

A collective gasp. Then the room fell silent.

“You didn’t mean it,” Roxie sobbed. “You were bluffing to—”

“I don’t bluff.”

Roxie stared at him.

Disgusted, Lucivar turned back to Marian. “Was that the whole of it? What else did she say?”

He saw Marian’s eyes shift from side to side, taking in all the people waiting for her answer. He watched her temper fade and her usual quiet nature surface.

“Nothing,” she said.

There was more. He could tell by the way she wouldn’t meet his eyes that there was more. Well, he’d get it out of her after he got her back to the eyrie and checked her over to make sure the minor cuts and bruises he could see were the worst of her injuries.

“What else did she say?” asked a midnight voice from the doorway.

Hell’s fire, Mother Night, and may the Darkness be merciful. The last thing he needed right now was Jaenelle stepping into this.

Marian looked at the Black Jewel hanging from the chain around Jaenelle’s neck, then looked into those sapphire eyes—and swallowed hard.

“She said she was going to tell people Lucivar tried to force himself on her so that he would have to serve her,” Marian said, her voice barely above a whisper.

“He’s an Ebon-gray Warlord Prince,” Jaenelle said. “How would she control him?”

Marian licked her bloody lower lip. “With a Ring of Obedience.”

Lucivar swore quietly, viciously, the memory of the pain that a Ring of Obedience could inflict shuddering through him.

“She’s a lying bitch!” Roxie shouted.

“Is she?” Jaenelle asked, her eyes never leaving Marian’s face. “There’s a simple way to tell. Are you willing to open your mind to me, Marian? Will you let me read your thoughts, your feelings, your heart? Will you open yourself to me, knowing that if what you said here is a lie, I will take you down into the abyss so deep it will shatter you, destroy you? Are you willing?”

Jaenelle, don’t do this, Lucivar thought.

Marian sat up straight. “Yes,” she said. “I’ll open my mind to you.”

Everyone in the tavern waited, hardly daring to breathe.

“And you, Roxie?” Jaenelle asked, turning toward the other witch. “Will you open your mind to me, knowing a lie will destroy you?”

Wailing, Roxie shook her head.

Lucivar suppressed a shudder when Jaenelle’s eyes pierced him. Her rage was a living thing, and it would take so little right now to set it free—with devastating results.

*I will deal with this, Lady,* he said.