Oh. Well. That certainly made him feel better. And the tears in her eyes and defeated way she held herself ripped at him. He didn’t want her defeated. He didn’t want her afraid. But he’d be damned if he was going to let her hurt herself in order to do . . .

“What is this, Marian?” Lucivar waved his hand to indicate the cleared land. “Explain.”

She looked at the ground, a tear sliding down her face. “A kitchen garden,” she whispered. “Some herbs. A few flowers. I didn’t think you’d mind.”

His temper had eased back from true anger to just being pissed off again, but that comment came close to snapping the leash. He hauled her to her feet, certain her back and leg muscles were now tight enough that she couldn’t have gotten up by herself, and pulled her toward the eyrie.

Her emotions battered at him—fear that he was going to punish her for doing something without his permission, fear of what a man of his temper and power would do to her as punishment. The fact that she expected punishment told him more about the males who had been part of her life than he wanted to know.

“If you wanted a kitchen garden, you could have spent the past two days figuring out where you wanted it and what you wanted in it,” he said, keeping his voice as level as he could manage. “I could have cleared the ground for you when I got back. Did it even occur to you to ask me?”

“No,” Marian said in a small voice.

No. Well, that was a kick in the balls. Even the coven knew better than that. Blood males served. That was something so deeply ingrained in the males even the cruelty in Terreille couldn’t extinguish it completely. In Kaeleer, where the Blood still lived by the Old Ways, males considered it their right and privilege to serve—and got pretty testy when a witch they knew personally denied them an opportunity to be helpful.

If Marian didn’t know that yet, it was something she’d better figure out. Fast.

He pulled her into the eyrie, through the laundry room, and wound his way through curving corridors until he reached the pool Andulvar had built long ago as a place for a warrior to sit back in heated water and ease tired muscles.

She hadn’t openly fought him in an attempt to get away, but from the first step, she’d been silently resisting like some stubborn puppy tethered to a leash. That was fine since he had the rhythm of this little dance and knew how to use it.

Treat her like the coven, Saetan had said. Well, he knew exactly what he’d have done to Jaenelle or any of her friends if they’d upset him over something like this.