It took effort, but he managed not to grin. If he’d done this to Jaenelle, she’d be hissing and spitting at him right about now. Obviously, it would take a little more effort to get Marian to the hissing and spitting stage.

“Your sister wouldn’t have to compromise.”

Now he did grin. “Yes, she would.”

That threw her off enough to lose the glint of temper. “But . . . she’s the Queen.”

“She’s also a smart woman who recognizes a losing battle when she sees one.”

He watched her think it through. If Jaenelle couldn’t butt heads with him over something like this and win, she didn’t have a chance of winning, either.

“Why don’t I heat up something to eat?” he said.

“I can—”

“Compromise.”

She frowned at him.

“I’ll heat up something to eat, and you can check the tools in the shed to make sure you have everything you need.”

Her eyes lit up as she spun around to look at the shed the men had built between two of the border beds. She hesitated a moment, then looked back at him. “We’ll compromise.”

The happiness that flowed from her as she hurried down the path to the shed made his heart stumble. He wanted this. He wanted her. He wasn’t going to think about anything else for the next day or two, giving himself the pleasure of working with her to build a home for both of them, even if she didn’t realize it yet.

And he would let his father deal with the obstacle standing in his way.

TWELVE

TWELVE

Saetan watched the students hurry out the front door of Luthvian’s three-story stone house. They didn’t notice him standing just beyond the low wall that enclosed her land. The shields he’d wrapped around himself guaranteed no one would sense him until he wanted his presence known. So he had time to study the house he’d had built for Lucivar’s mother, had time to tighten the chains that held his temper under control.

The anger that shimmered through him was a sly thing that had twined around memories he’d pushed aside so long ago he’d felt only the echo of them as he’d watched Marian over the past two days. But the echo had been enough to prick at him, warning him that something wasn’t right—that something might happen again that had happened before. When he finally recognized what it was about a quiet, gentle hearth witch that made him edgy . . .

He watched his younger son pace the study, a storm waiting to break.

“Peyton . . . what’s wrong?”

It wasn’t hatred in the young Warlord Prince’s eyes. Not quite. But what he saw twisted a knot in his belly.

“I asked Shira to marry me,” Peyton snarled.