Slowly making his way to the door, Lucivar took a deep breath and then wished he hadn’t. The large room was overcrowded, and even with the windows open, the air stank of sweat and fatigue—and the fear and desperation that seemed to rise up from the hundreds of names on those lists.

As soon as he was outside the building, Lucivar spread his dark, membranous wings to their full span. He wasn’t sure if it was out of defiance for all the times that natural movement had earned him the cut of a lash or just that he wanted to feel the sun and wind on them for a moment after being inside for several hours—or if it was simply a way to remind himself that he was now the buyer, not the merchandise.

Folding his wings, he set off for the far corner of the fairground that was reserved for the Eyrien “camp.”

He’d noted several Eyrien names that were of interest to him, but not the one name—the Hayllian name—that was the main reason he’d spent the past several hours searching through those damn lists. But he’d been searching the lists for Daemon’s name for the past five years, ever since the idiots in the Dark Council had decided this twice-yearly “service fair” was the way to funnel the hundreds of people who were fleeing from Terreille and trying to find a fingerhold in Kaeleer. And he thought, as he did every time, about why Daemon’s name wasn’t there. And he rejected, as he did every time, all the reasons except one: he wasn’t looking for the right name.

But that wasn’t likely. No matter what name Daemon Sadi used to get to Kaeleer, once at the fair he would use his own name. There were too many people here who would recognize him, and since the penalty for lying about the Jewels one wore was immediate expulsion from the Realm—either back to Terreille or to the final death—changing his name while admitting that he wore the Black Jewels would only make him look like a fool because he was the only male besides the High Lord who had worn the Black in the entire history of the Blood. The Darkness knew Daemon was many things, but he wasn’t a fool.

Pushing aside his own stab of disappointment, Lucivar wondered how he was going to explain this to Ladvarian. The Sceltie Warlord had been so insistent about Lucivar checking the lists carefully this time, had seemed so certain. Most people would think it odd to feel apprehensive about disappointing a dog that just reached his knees, but when that dog’s best friend was eight hundred pounds of feline temper, a smart man didn’t dismiss canine feelings.