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“Fine, I’ve been avoiding you for my previous asserted reasons.”

“Why do I unsettle you?” I asked, voice hardly there, a fading whisper.

“I expected the Blood Sacrifice to be a mage with a great many demands and desires for glittering things as offerings for her glorious act. I expected a woman who would demand a bit of power in this land.”

I did not want power, I never had. All I’d wanted for as long as I could recall was a place to land softly, a place to call my own. “I’m not a cockroach.”

“I do not know what a cockroach is.” Kage’s grin widened. He dipped his head, a silent nudge for me to meet his gaze. “The Blood Sacrifice is revered, unknown, a powerful mystery, yet she thieves as well as the rest of us.”

I lifted my chin and forced my voice to steady. “If you are planning on telling everyone I took your knife, I’ll remind you, I returned it and you did much worse.”

“Does that unsettle you?” Kage hesitated. “I hope so, for I’m convinced you and I are now locked in some unspoken competition.”

“What sort of competition?”

“I think we are competing to unravel the other first.”

He was teasing me, and the carefree way he said it drew a cautious smile over my lips. I fiddled with a bit of torn leather on the corner of my book. “Honestly, you’re not exactly how I imagined a prince either.”

“By the stars, I hope not.”

I shook my head, grinning. “Books and movies back home?—”

“Mooovies,” Kage said slowly. “It sounds like a noise our cattle would make. What are these things?”

I could not hold back the smile. “A movie is like a story told through moving images.”

“Moving . . . images?” Kage arched a brow. “In the mind, like a dream?”

“No.” I laughed. “On something we call a screen.”

“Like thephonna?”

The accent from mortal to mage was entertaining. “Sort of like a big phone, yes. Do you have plays or productions here? Theater?”

“We have court performers.”

“All right, like their performances, only you watch it on this . . . box.” To explain technology to someone who’d never even seen a light switch was a new feat I never thought I’d experience.

Kage looked at me as though I’d lost my mind. “Images on a larger box. A larger phonna. How do you carry it?”

“We don’t, they’re usually inside homes. It’s hard to explain, I guess. It’s a form of human entertainment. I think it’s strange you don’t know anything about humans?—”

“I know a great deal about humans.” Kage rubbed a hand over the stubble on his jaw. “They are arrogant creatures who have little clue about how vast worlds live beyond their understanding.”

I snorted. “Okay. Tell me you don’t care for humans without telling me.”

“Why would I do that?”

“Never mind.” I let out a sigh. “But I think you’re the one who sounds arrogant.”

Kage huffed, a frown curved over his lips. “Am I wrong that humans think they are the masters of the universe? The lone beings? That alone is arrogant.”

I considered it for a moment. “I think some do, but there a lot of people who don’t believe they’re alone. Honestly, the creatures here, mages included, though we call them wizards or sorcerers?—”

“Insulting,” Kage grumbled.

“You are all part of mortal fairy tales, and I’m convinced it’sbecause we all were once together, right? It’s like the myths of the mortal world are actually pieces of history.”