And he was nothing now.

Fenn could not tell him what his providence was.

At his end, Seph stood still and demanded, “Cease moving.”

The men did.

That was more like it.

Seph drew breath into his nose. “We shall return to the Dome City, after the assassination is carried forward on King Wilmer that I planned, an incident that will force Prince True to—”

“This attack has been abandoned,” Fenn told him. “The servant you commissioned to administer the poison has been persuaded to take it instead. In the jumble of the procession breaking up into four different parties, I assume his death will not be noted for some time.”

By the true gods.

“The procession breaking up?” Seph asked, and Fenn smiled.

“Ah, brother G’Seph,” he said jovially, as if someone told him something he found most amusing. “Your foolishness knows no bounds. You haven’t even noted how truly they all dislike you and how little they trust you. They’ve ridden in four separate directions. Liam and Jell know of this, and they rode with Wilmer to the castle.”

“I only don’t know this because you called upon me for this meeting,” Seph informed him.

“It was decided at breakfast, prior to me calling upon you, and it is now well past lunch. Even Liam and Jell did not inquire as to which party you would ride with. They simply rode without you.”

Seph clenched his teeth.

Liam and Jell, staunch Go’Doan, Liam worshiping at the altar of wisdom and healing, Jell simply being…Jell.

Both of them…

Useless.

Fenn’s gaze shifted momentarily to the priest at Seph’s back in a way that Seph did not like.

It then returned to him.

“And now for those extremes I was referring to,” he murmured.

Seph was about to walk away as he asked, “Extremes?”

“Those that require discipline,” Fenn explained.

The skin all over Seph’s body electrified and this meant he did not walk away.

He prepared to flee.

However, he did not get the chance to flee.

They set upon him, and although he fought, kicked and shouted, it took frighteningly little time to drag him to an old, weathered tree stump.

They forced him to his knees beside it.

By Bedi, they intended to whip him.

He felt his cock pulse as his skin again charged in a much different manner.

But when they pressed him to bend over the stump, it was not his chest held to the grayed wood.

It was his forearms.

With one man behind him shoving down with both hands in Seph’s shoulders, and two men to either side holding his forearms to the stump, Seph watched with mounting trepidation as Fenn moved off behind a tree that stood proud not too far from where he knelt.

Fenn returned with a long-handled ax.

Dearest Go’Chas.

No.

“Fenn,” he whispered.