It was known by all he greatly loved his deceased wife, and although she’d died some years earlier, I’d brought that loss to the fore in a manner that was innocent, but nevertheless thoughtless.

That said, it was he who ordered my ward, Theodora, to be sent home with my mother by making an arrangement to do just that with my mother prior to the Nadirii warriors commencing their return to The Enchantments.

He did this without discussing it with me.

Mother then took Dora without discussing it with me.

And I had lost my mind.

Rightly.

She was my ward.

I made the decisions of where she went and with whom.

I would admit, he might be right about where Dora would be safest. The attack at Catrame Palace. The strength of Beast’s last quake. Sofia and Catedrais perishing in two separate assaults that came on the same night.

Every sister in The Enchantments was a witch. Even the new ones who arrived started their initiations into the ways of the craft shortly after they were settled. The very earth there was permeated by magic after the Fire King, Sky King and Green King spent their magic there millennia ago and then the Nadirii brought their magic there centuries later. Even if the Beast had risen, I would reckon the safest place on Triton would be in our charmed forest.

Indeed, Cassius had also changed the course of his daughter’s journey, making another deal with my mother that Aelia, who he had sent the order to have brought directly to him, would go to my mother in The Enchantments.

He still did not discuss any of this with me.

Mother was gone. On her way home. She knew better then to take Dora without my knowledge (or consent). And probably for this reason and the fact she was ill and weak and needed to be home in order to rest and perhaps gather some strength, she did not approach me to discuss it for she knew that conversation would be contentious.

Though in the end, she was Queen of the Nadirii. What she said went.

In other words, I’d have to do what she wished regardless.

But my mother was my mother and my queen.

Cassius was my future husband.

He didn’t get to take these decisions without discussion.

Something I had shared with him.

All right, perhaps it was something I had shouted at him.