“You set your boundaries,” Titian replied as they reached the corridor near Surreal’s room. “You decide what you’re willing to let them do for you and what you have to do for yourself. Then you tell them—gently. This is Kaeleer, Surreal. You have to handle the males—” Titian froze. Her nostrils flared.

“Titian?” Surreal asked, startled by the awful expression on her mother’s face. “What’s wrong?”

“Where’s the High Lord?” Titian snarled. Not waiting for an answer, she ran for the nearest staircase.

Surreal raced after her, catching up to her when Titian jerked to a halt in front of a door.

Titian banged the door once with her fist, then flung it open. “High Lord!”

A muffled sound came from the adjoining room.

Titian flung that door open and rushed into the room. Surreal rushed in behind her, then stopped abruptly.

Saetan froze in the act of reaching for the dressing robe that was on his bed. He slowly straightened up and turned to face them.

Surreal couldn’t stop herself from giving him one quick, professional—and approving—glance.

Titian didn’t seem to notice that she had walked in on a naked, and now irritated, man.

“There’s a tainted male in the Hall,” Titian said abruptly.

Saetan stared at her for a moment. Then he grabbed the robe, said tersely, “Where?” and was out the door, with Titian at his heels, before Surreal could gather her wits.

By the time she caught up to them, Titian was questing back and forth in the corridor like a hound searching for a scent while Saetan prowled more slowly. Neither of them paid any attention to her arrival.

“It was here,” Titian said as she searched. “It was here.”

“Can you still sense it?” Saetan asked too quietly.

Titian’s shoulders tensed. “No. But it was here.”

“I’m not doubting you, Lady.”

“But you sense nothing.”

“No. Which only means that whoever created the spells designed to hide him knew exactly who and what to hide him from.”

“Hekatah did this,” Titian said.

Saetan nodded. “Or Dorothea. Or both. Whoever he is, they made sure he would blend in so there would be no reason to give him a closer look. The only thing they couldn’t anticipate was a Harpy catching a trace of his true psychic scent. But why was he lingering here?” He turned to study the doors. “Surreal’s room. And Wilhelmina’s room.”

Surprised by her own discomfort, Surreal cleared her throat. “It could just be a man who hasn’t heard that I retired from the Red Moon houses.”

Saetan gave her a long, assessing look, then turned to Titian, who shook her head. “I agree,” he said cryptically. He knocked sharply on Wilhelmina’s door. When he got no answer, he went in. He came out a minute later. “She’s in the garden with Dejaal. He’ll stay with her.”