He’d have to find Talon and ask him. Hell’s fire, he had to ask someone. Being a pleasure slave didn’t qualify him for seeing a witch through her Virgin Night. He’d seen plenty of witches who’d been broken during that first intimacy. They all had a lost, slightly vacant look in their eyes. Any fire that had burned in their hearts had been snuffed out under a man’s body.

If something went wrong, he didn’t think he could bear seeing Lia’s eyes filled with that lost, vacant expression.

Oh, witches adjusted to the loss of their Jewels and their Craft. The ones from aristo families were sent into arranged marriages. He wasn’t sure what kind of life the others endured. They adjusted. But they were never again whole. Many of them just faded away until there was little more than a husk left going through the motions of living. Some of them slipped into madness. None of them could be seeded more than once after being broken, and more than half of those pregnancies ended with an early miscarriage.

When he was younger, he thought it was unfair that broken witches should be stripped of their ability to have children as well as being stripped of their Jewels. But after having lived in the Territories that stood in Hayll’s shadow, he doubted any of them regretted that barrenness. It was not in a witch’s nature to become a breeder for the gender she would consider as the enemy.

Jared pushed away from the wall. He and Talon had spent the early afternoon removing the seats in the two small Coaches so they could fit more people in, while Yarek oversaw packing the storage spaces—and finding a safe place for the six honey pear trees Lia insisted come with them.

Thank the Darkness, some of Talon’s men knew how to handle a Coach, so there was no problem now about finding drivers.

With luck, Talon would be checking on something else that had to be readied for their departure, and it would take some time to find him. Maybe by then, Lia would have reconsidered.

He shook his head. Not with Thera’s warning riding her.

Before he took two steps, Talon turned the corner.

Groaning, Jared sagged against the wall again.

“She still upset?” Talon asked, eyeing the bedroom door.

“Not exactly,” Jared muttered.

Talon’s eyes narrowed. “She feeling all right?”

“She’s doing fine.” Jared looked Talon in the eyes. “She wants her Virgin Night.”

Talon gaped at him. “Now?”

“Yes. Now. I was just coming to look for you.”

Watching Talon sag against the wall made Jared feel better.

Talon rubbed a hand over his chest. “She wants me to—”

“No,” Jared said too quickly.

A slow, wicked smile curved Talon’s mouth. “In that case, Warlord, since the woman and the bed are in there, why are you out here?”