Fritz emerged from under the bed and rubbed along her leg, wrapping his tail around her. He glared at the elder, hissed and spit before slipping out into the night. Rachael caught a glimpse of Franz waiting in the shadows of the canopy.

“Yes I did know him,” Delgrotto admitted.

She could hear the sounds of him dumping vegetables into the broth, but she didn’t turn around, disgusted that she was in the same house with him. “Power is a strange thing. It seems so innocent on the surface, yet it twists and corrupts until the user is no longer anything but a weapon.” There was a lash of contempt in her voice.

“It does seem so when viewed from a distance,” Delgrotto said mildly. “Yet just as you observed, turn the view slightly and you see something else. Rio stood before the entire village. Not just the council. He was young and strong and filled with power. He was covered in the blood of the man whose life he took.”

“He was covered in his mother’s blood.” Rachael whipped around to face him, her dark eyes flashing.

Delgrotto nodded, conceding her point. “That is true also. Rio had skills far beyond his years. He was an expert marksman even as a young boy. Few of our strongest men could defeat him in the mock battles we have. He was popular with the young crowd, everyone looked up to him. And he violated our most sacred law. We work at teaching our children that hunters did not come into our forests, our home, with the intention of committing murder. We eat meat, and we kill animals to eat it. They hunted for fur. This man did not stalk and kill Violet Santana in cold blood. He had no idea she had a human side. He would have been appalled at the idea of killing a woman.”

“And because he didn’t know, that lessens his crime?”

“How could it be a crime if he didn’t know what he’d done?”

“He was poaching. The leopards are protected.”

“It was still an animal to him, not a human. How can we teach our children otherwise, Rachael? We are a lethal species, with cunning and intelligence and gifts beyond the ordinary, but we also have the mood swings and temperaments of our animal cousins and that makes us far too dangerous without laws to guide us. What would you have us do? He was a hero to the young men. Where he went, they would follow.”

“He didn’t obey you, that was his crime. He stood before you with his head unbowed and his shoulders straight ready to accept responsibility for his actions.”

“Without remorse.”

“The man killed his mother.”