“I am not angry with you,” she said. “You did what I would have done if our positions had been reversed. In fact, once upon a time, when I was a different person living a different life, I did things much worse to others than what you have done to me.”

He looked back at her once more.

“I don’t hate you,” she told him.

“You should.” His teeth clicked as his jaws snapped shut.

“My hate is reserved for others more deserving and less forthcoming about their efforts to see me dead and gone.” She gestured for him to come back. “Tell me the rest of what you know.”

He stayed where he was a moment longer, then sighed, rose, and came back to stand in front of her. “You don’t hate me? If you were free, you wouldn’t try to kill me?”

She shook her head. “I don’t hate you. Even if I had the chance to do so, I wouldn’t try to kill you. Now tell me the rest. Do you know the Straken Lord’s plans?”

The Ulk Bog nodded. “I was here at Kraal Reach when he was making them.” He looked closely at her. “You still don’t know what he intends? You haven’t seen the way he looks at you?”

She went cold all the way to her bones, the little man’s words conjuring up an image that froze her blood. “Tell me.”

“He has been testing you to see if you are a suitable vessel to bear his children. He wishes to mate with you.”

For the first time, she was really afraid. The demon was anathema to her. She could think of no worse fate than to be the mother of its children, the mother of demonkind, a bearer of monsters. She had never considered the possibility. She had never recognized that the Straken Lord had any interest in her beyond keeping her imprisoned and alive until its creature, the Moric, could do whatever it had been sent to do in her own world.

“This was the reason for bringing me here?” she managed to ask, working hard to keep her voice steady.

Weka Dart shook his head, his gimlet eyes glittering. “No. The idea must have occurred to him after you were his prisoner. His plans are much grander than that.”

“How much grander?”