The Shadow Queen

might have been, she could see herself being a regular guest here.
    As forTheran . . . Well, the steak was waging war on the pastries, and judging by the color of his skin now, the steak was winning. So was the way a man who wore a Green Jewel burned food.
    She waited until he’d eaten three-quarters of his steak. Then she reached over and snagged the rest with her fork.
    “Hey,” Theran protested. “I wasn’t finished eating that.”
    “Yes, you were,” Cassidy replied, setting that piece and the one she’d kept from her own meal on her bread plate.
    “What . . . ?” Theran stared at her as she put the bread plate on the ground beside her.
    “There you go,Vae,” Cassidy said.
    Theran’s eyes widened and his jaw dropped as the Sceltie dropped the sight shield and gave him a tail-tip wag. She sniffed the steak and wagged her tail with more enthusiasm.
    “When did she get here?” Theran asked.
    “She caught up to us when we left the carriage park,” Cassidy said, giving him a wide smile.
    “How’d she avoid being stepped on when no one could see her?”
    “Grf.”
    Guess Vae is still sulking, Cassidy thought. At least where Theran is concerned.
    “She can air walk,” Cassidy said. “She was trotting above us.” She fiddled with her spoon and wondered how to ask a question she knew wouldn’t sit well with a warrior. Especially a Warlord Prince. “You weren’t aware of her, were you?”
    “No, I wasn’t. Were you?”
    “Yes. But kindred have a different feel from the human Blood, and it takes practice—and awareness—to detect their presence.”
    “If they’re sight shielded and not yapping, they’d be hard to find,” Theran said.
    “Grf,” Vae said, finishing the last bit of steak.
    “They don’t have to sight shield to go undetected,” Cassidy said. “If there were twenty Scelties in a yard, could you pick out the one who was kindred? Especially if you weren’t aware of the existence of kindred? Kindred Scelties and horses lived around humans for a lot of years with no one realizing they were Blood. They don’t reveal their presence unless they choose to, Theran.”
    She watched him absorb her words. Someone who wore a darker Jewel could have gone undetected and followed him, but he should have sensed a Purple Dusk witch who had been trailing him for hours.
    A witch is a witch,Theran. Don’t dismiss one because she looks different from you.
    A lesson the Blood in Kaeleer were still learning when it came to the kindred.
    “Coffee?” he asked.
    “Yes, please.”
    She wanted to linger a little longer, since it was a lovely summer day. And now that Vae’s presence was acknowledged, she thought the two of them could persuade Theran to show her a particular part of town.

    How did I get talked into this? Theran asked himself. He knew how. Sure he did. Two females yapping at him. One of them even growled at him when he’d refused to do this, and it wasn’t Vae.
    So here he was, driving the pony cart into the landen part of the town.
    “Landens usually have their own villages,” Cassidy said.
    Theran nodded to the guards who patrolled this part of Grayhaven. Two nodded back and mounted their horses to provide an escort.
    “Most still do,” Theran replied, “but some landens were resettled as part of Blood villages after their own villages burned during the uprisings.” And making them live so close to the Blood kept them on a very short leash.
    That didn’t mean the Blood liked having a landen slum attached to their town.
    Bitterness laced his voice as he looked at the shops they passed and the people who watched them. “Damn landens are nothing but a boil on the town’s backside.”
    “They’re people,” Cassidy said. “They belong to this land, same as you.”
    “They would have driven us out if they could. Took us two years to crush the uprisings.”
    “How many died in those two years?” Cassidy asked.
    “More Blood than we could afford to lose.”
    “And how many landens?”
    “Not enough.”
    She sighed. “All the more reason for me to see this part of the town.”
    Exactly the reason she shouldn’t be there. But it was pointless to argue now that they’d crossed that boundary, and there were other Blood wandering these streets.
    Market day, Theran realized. When power—and the unspoken threat of its being unleashed—was another marker on the table, a few coins could buy a Blood family provisions for a week at the landen markets.
    “What’s that?” Cassidy asked, sitting up straighter.
    “A craftmen’s courtyard,” Theran replied,