Crucible of Fate

doesn’t say, you say. You’re the semel, he’s the mate.”
    But, again, I had seen Logan and Jin wage the same war over and over: Logan holding tight, Jin pushing the limits. I didn’t want to have those same confrontations with Yuri, especially because I wanted the man to be my friend too, not just my mate.
    “Just think about what I said. I would never want you to have regrets.”
    “I will,” I promised.
    “Domin,” Koren chimed in from where he stood, still close to the door. “You’re not actually worried about Yuri, are you? How far away is this Ipis?”
    “Ten hours,” I said, not taking my eyes off Ebere, repeating what my mate had explained to me.
    “You can always have Jamal send members of the Shu after him, now that they are yours to command,” she suggested.
    “Yes,” I agreed.
    “You control the Shu?” Koren sounded surprised.
    I glanced over at him, interrupting my glaring contest with Ebere. “I do. So I don’t ever have to ask the priest to dispatch them, like other semel-atens have had to. I can do it all by myself.”
    “How?” he queried, closing in on me.
     “When Asdiel Kovo disbanded the council of Ennead, the Shu became mine.”
    “You lost me.”
    “The phocal announced to all that the Shu would no longer guard the temple of Satis, but would instead protect me.”
    “Why?” Koren wanted to know.
    “I just put it to Jamal to decide who he thought more valuable, me or the new priest.”
    Ebere sighed. “I remember thinking at the time that that was very clever.”
    “The second in command of the Shu, Shahid Alon, was having none of it.”
    “Oh yes,” she said, nodding. “I remember that. He said it was wrong for the Shu to abandon their sacred duty to guard the priest and to instead guard you.”
    “It was quite the speech.” I said sarcastically. “Who knew he was so devout?”
    “Oh, he was not devout,” she said, laughing, the tension from a few moments ago broken. “Or he would have never been in your bed.”
    “Who was in your bed?” Koren wanted to know.
    “That was ages ago,” I teased my mastaba.
    “And yet he found the priest more deserving than you.”
    “He thought the priest sacred and me profane.”
    “Who did you sleep with?” Koren was getting louder.
    “Which is funny, considering you became semel-aten in a sepat which was mandated by the old priest,” she mused. “And Kovo became the new priest right after he disbanded the council of Ennead, the very council that voted him in.”
    “I would never have disbanded them.”
    “But they didn’t know that. They thought you were the very devil.”
    “Even though the old priest, Hamid Shamon, trusted and liked me.”
    “Which just goes to show you that people really do fear what they don’t know. I mean, the council trusted Asdiel instead of you, and he removed them from the temple and left them outside, stripped naked, to rot. He said they were useless old men.”
    “You don’t know what he said.” I scoffed.
    “I do too. I’ve talked with each of the nine at length, and they all said the same thing. Asdiel thought they should have been placed in the tomb along with Hamid Shamon when he died. He decreed that they would never be counsel to another priest.”
    “And they won’t,” I agreed. “Now they counsel my sylvan.”
    “Yes, quite the coup, that.”
    “Whatever do you mean?”
    “When you took the council of Ennead into your home, the very men who had called you a defiler, and gave them shelter, that was when Jamal started to have doubts about guarding the new priest.”
    “Perhaps.”
    “No perhaps—that was your plan.”
    “You give me far too much credit.”
    “I think not,” she whispered. “You are very clever, my lord. I heard that you met with Asdiel Kovo and swore that as long as the council was still with him at Satis, he would never hold true power alone and you would never truly fear him.”
    “I said that? Me?”
    She giggled. “Yes, you, my lord.”
    “Huh.”
    “And when Kovo betrayed his own council like the jackal he is, you were there to take those old men in.”
    “Well, that was kind of me, wasn’t it?”
    “Yes, it was. And now they teach in the forum, work in the great library, and counsel your sylvan in all matters of the law. He has those men with all those years of knowledge at his disposal and now calls each by their first name, and they address him as master.”
    “So I’ve heard.”
    “You gave them each a home and