Sarafina spied an abandoned sword on the floor and scooped it up, holding it between her and Bai. Uneasily, she inched around the table to put more distance between them.

Bai held out a huge hand. “This doesn’t have to be unpleasant, vae Sarafina.”

She raised her sword and gave a grim laugh. “Oh, I intend to make it pretty damn unpleasant, Bai.”

“You could learn to accept your circumstances, accept me. It’s my hope that one day you will.”

“You mean actually learn to like having sex with a monster, carrying and raising little daaeman bratlings? Serving up raw meat for dinner every night? I think not.”

“You have seen only Atrikan battle behavior, not our everyday life.”

“I’ve imagined it, and it makes me shudder with revulsion. How do Atrikan children play, anyway? By dismembering small animals?”

His eyes glowed red and his lips pulled back a little, revealing sharpened teeth. Man, she really needed to learn to keep her thoughts to herself.

He turned his face to the side and closed his eyes. When he turned back his eyes were no longer red. Apparently, he’d mastered his sudden flash of temper. That was good news for her.

He held out a hand. “Come with me, vae Sarafina. You are so beautiful, like the human image of an angel. Your mother named you well.”

She clenched her hands around the sword handle. “Why haven’t you taken me back to Eudae yet?”

“I cannot until Stefan gives us what he has promised.”

“The elium.”

Bai nodded. “He is not stupid, this warlock. He has managed to manipulate us well, but we will have the better of him in the end.”

Sarafina had no doubts on that score. Stefan was stupid—or desperate—to have tried to control this daaeman breed. He deserved anything he got, in the end.

“Stefan somehow gained control of the one thing the entire Atrikan breed never could. How did he do it?” she asked.

Bai smiled. It was a terrifying sight. “Love.”

“What?”

He motioned at the sword. “Put the sword down and I’ll tell you how he managed it.”

She hesitated, staring at him.

“I will not hurt you, vae Sarafina. I want you to mother my children, after all. At the Coven when Stefan released the magick, I was afraid for you. I searched until I located you with the intention of protecting you.”

That made sense in a horrifying, stomach-lurching, bile-in-the-back-of-her-throat kind of way. Sarafina set the sword down on the floor at her feet, then rose and waited expectantly.

“When your head mage, Thomas Monahan, and his woman were pushed into Eudae, preceding them went an Atrika named Ashe. The humans and the aeamon knew him as Erasmus Boyle.”

Sarafina nodded. “He was some kind of military leader, wasn’t he?”