“Yes, it did.” Yarek drained the mug and handed it back to Jared. “Now it’s as bitter as a woman’s tears.”

Jared hesitated, finally dipped the mug into the bucket and drank.

As bitter as a woman’s tears. Or was it the land’s tears he was tasting now? For the Blood, was there really any difference?

Because he was thirsty, he drank another mug of water before settling on the bench next to his uncle.

“What happened here, Uncle Yarek?”

Yarek looked at the sparse garden and sighed. “War’s what happened, Jared. War between the tribes.”

“But we’ve been united since the time of Shal.”

“If everyone had remembered Shal’s warnings about the long-lived races, we might have stayed united and strong. But that slut who controls Hayll has a way about her. It’s like finding a weed in the garden. You know it doesn’t belong there, but it looks small and pretty so you let it stay, not realizing that, although it looks small and pretty above the ground, underneath it’s sinking a taproot so deep you can never cut out all of it, and it sends out all these other runners that choke out everything but other weeds.

“That’s what happened to Shalador. One by one, place by place, we lost our strong Queens, our good Queens. Some to age. Some to ‘accidents.’ One by one, until all that was left were the weeds.”

Jared rubbed his forehead. “And even a good man will eventually yield to a bad Queen if the hunger for the bond gnaws at him long enough and hard enough.”

Yarek nodded. “A strong love bond eases that hunger, too. A Blood male needs one or the other. I guess that’s why the warriors who came to demand we yield to the new Queen did what they did.”

Unable to look at Yarek, Jared focused on the cracked, barren ground in front of him. “Did what?”

Yarek shuddered. “They slaughtered the witches. They butchered our hearts. They didn’t give a call to battle and wait for the ones who chose to fight to come to the killing field. When every family in Wolf’s Creek refused to yield and every male told them what they could do with their damned Rings of Obedience, the delegation left. Thirteen men. That’s all we saw until the next day when hundreds of them surrounded the village and attacked. They weren’t after the men. Our wounds and deaths happened because we were in the way. It was the witches those bastards wanted. Little girls, old women, Ladies in their prime, the darker-Jeweled girls on the verge of womanhood . . .