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He couldn’t recall what it was better than, but he felt good, invigorated, ready to do what his queen asked of him. “I shall find a way to be invited inside the fastness of the sorceress Oneira, but I don’t know how to find where she lives.”

“We know,” Yelena said with satisfaction. “I will give you a map.”

“And I’ll go there.” Leskai didn’t like it, but he truly wanted to please his queen. “As a traveling poet?”

“Yes, exactly as you came to me,” Queen Zarja answered with a contented smile. “You will become her friend. She will disguise her power and you must never reveal that you know who she truly is. Then, when I send for her to take up her duty to defend the Southern Lands against invasion, you will convince her to accept.”

“I beg your pardon, my queen,” he said, some older, canny part of his mind kicking into motion. Once upon a time, he’d been good at political machinations. “May I know why Your Majesty hasn’t simply asked to hire her?”

The queen pursed her lips in irritation, not at him, however. “She refuses all correspondence. No one can get to her. She declared that she was retiring and would no longer accept any more jobs, from anyone, ever again.” She made a decidedly unroyal sound of utter disgust.

“Her academy set Oneira’s price too low,” Yelena observed, “or she’d never have paid off her debt so soon.”

“Yes, or we paid her too well, along with all those side jobs she took,” the queen replied with weary resignation. “And now I am left with no one to guard my shores while the king of the Northern Lands points the Stormbreaker at my throat.”

“I wouldn’t say you have no one, Your Majesty,” Yelena said, moving away from Leskai, sounding cold and annoyed.

The queen speared the woman with a long, dark glare. “Is that so, Yelena? It seems your hubris has grown considerably if you think yourself capable of facing the great Stearanos in battle. Be careful, or I shall pit you against him just to see what happens. It might prove instructive to my other tame magic-workers who might begin to think too highly of themselves and their influence in my court.”

Yelena visibly blanched, lines bracketing her thin mouth, lending an expression of stark pain to her thin face. “Your Majesty…” She trailed off, apparently searching for words, and Leskai experienced a surge of pleasure as the woman struggled.

“You have something to say to me, Yelena?” the queen crooned. “An admission of your self-acknowledged limitations wouldn’t be amiss here.”

Yelena bowed her head in defeat. “I could not stand against the Stormbreaker, Your Majesty, I admit. Not alone. But if many of us worked together, perhaps—”

“It’s been tried,” the queen snapped. “Have you forgotten Dridma and what the Stormbreaker did to their coalition of mages?”

“No, but they didn’t—” Yelena broke off and bit her lip. “I apologize. Your Majesty is wise and I am foolish.”

“Indeed.” The queen examined her nails, then fixed Leskai with a cruel smile that made him tremble anew with desire and terror. She could do that to him, with a single glance. “I have possessed the wisdom to spend the time since Oneira abandoned me preparing for this moment, knowing this day would arrive. Uhtric is nothing if not predictable. But I have not been idle and Leskai will not fail me. Will you, pet?”

“Never, my queen,” he averred, wanting to drop to his knees again but remaining obedient to her most recent command to stand and be dignified. “I will charm Oneira, become her friend, and convince her to accept your invitation when the time comes.”

“The time will come sooner rather than later,” the queen warned him. “You will not have the luxury of dallying.”

“I understand.”

“You must not disappoint me. Think back to the last time you disappointed me.”

He swallowed hard. Enduring her disappointment had nearly broken him.Hadbroken him, in truth, until she deigned to build him up again with her mercy and terrible attention. “I will die before I disappoint you again, my queen.”

“You willsucceed,” she specified, pointedly.

“Yes. Yes, I will succeed,” he promised with fervent desperation.

“Good,” she purred, then held out a hand. He took it, helping her down from the high throne. “Come with me, darling pet, and I shall give you a reward to remember me by.” She drew a sharp nail down the skin bared by his parted shirt, making him tremble, though he dared not emit the slightest sound. “And in the morning, you shall set out, an itinerant poet, carefree, seeking a wealthy patroness like the last one, who gave you such a pretty outfit. Only you and I will know who holds your leash.” Timing the action with her words, she clipped a leash to his collar. “Hands and knees, sweetling.”

He dropped to the floor with a whimper, his body an ache of desire, kissing the hand that held his leash. He would do exactly as she bade, and then he would return to her, the only woman he truly craved, the only one who could make him happy.

Somewhere deep inside, that part of him that curled in shame wailed in despair, pounding his fists against the will of she who had imprisoned him.

Yelena watched him crawl at his mistress’s heels, and smiled. The much-touted Oneira, with all her fabulous power, disdained the smaller, subtler techniques of psychic magic. Mentally derived phenomena didn’t operate in the same way as other magic, and it was the careless sorcerer who failed to account for that possibility. Yelena had observed Oneira for a long time and, for all of the senior sorceress’s caution, she was also overconfident, as the powerfully talented always were. In this small way, Oneira was careless.

The queen wasn’t the only one to play the long game.

11

Oneira spent hours digging the new bed for her roses. Bunny tried to help, but his “assistance” tended toward wildly scrabbling with his taloned paws, sending great gobs of dirt flying willy-nilly. Besides which, as Bunny was a magical creature, Oneira didn’t want to skirt the boundaries of what the ancient gardener had instructed by allowing him near. She firmly banished Bunny, making him stay a good distance away, where he lay with his head morosely on his filthy paws, watching her with reproach.