Inaya’s laugh was soft, rueful. She wanted to sink into the stones at his feet and slowly suffocate him in molten rock. Her body fairly vibrated with anticipation. She took a deep breath. It had been easier to control herself when she believed she had no choices, when life was something that simply happened to her. She had done all the correct things. Married sensible men, raised children, kept a good house. She was dutiful and obedient and pious. She was all of those things because she believed there was no other way to be. Knowing there was something different was a blessing and curse. And it hurt her now. It made her… less predictable.

She knew better than to use Isabet’s name out loud, not here. “She was our best piece,” Inaya said carefully.

“She was a diplomatic solution to a situation for which the time for diplomacy has expired.”

“Your actions were unwise.”

“It was her decision. Our people have lived as slaves for too long. I would not force her to do anything against her will. She wanted to stay with that boy. Let her stay. I’m sure they will be back in a week or two when they have… tired.”

Inaya felt the heat in her face. She flexed her toes, an invisible gesture of frustration that she had perfected during her first marriage. When you had to smile and bow your head and stare at the ground every time someone disrespected you, you found ways to channel frustration. She hadn’t even noticed she did it until she came back to Ras Tieg.

“That was irresponsible of you,” she said.

“We should look ahead.”

“To what? War?”

“A show of force. That is all.” He moved a step closer—too close for decency. She felt the heat of him behind her. “We are powerful. And you are the most powerful of all, bound by no set form. If we show them our true power, they cannot help but take us seriously.”

Inaya had watched God’s Angels put black bags over the heads of her fellow shifters—old women and children, young men and teenaged girls—most of her life. It had only gotten worse now as the people they took away were her own operatives. She had made the same mistake with each of them, in the beginning, as she had made with Eshe—treating them like her own family, her own children. Every one of them had disappeared into some smoked-glass bakkie. No one saw them alive again.

“I believe they take us seriously enough already,” Inaya said. “It is not their minds we must change. It is the people’s minds. So long as they hate and fear us, we will not earn our place as human beings. And if we attack what they hold most dear, we simply affirm what our enemies say about us.”

“It sounds cowardly to me.”