Twilight's Dawn

in the mountains around a valley this size isn’t a lot.”
    “How many Eyriens do you think usually lived in the land owned by the Keep?” Saetan asked, his voice laced with amused curiosity.
    Lucivar stopped pacing. Wherever this discussion was going, it was going to bite him in the ass. He just knew it. “Falonar indicated two hundred are a lot less Eyriens than there should be. If I wasn’t the one ruling here, more would settle in the valley. In Terreille there were courts and hunting camps and communities of Eyriens in the mountains. Hell’s fire. Marian used to live in the Black Valley before she came to Kaeleer. So I know Falonar is right about that—there were hundreds, even thousands, of Eyriens living in the mountains around this valley.”
    “Yes, there were. In Terreille ,” Saetan said, his voice now filled with an amusement that could, in a heartbeat, turn cuttingly sharp. “My darling, you and Falonar have both missed a step in your education.”
    Shit.
    “Eyriens are not native to Kaeleer. The Rihlanders are Askavi’s native race in the Shadow Realm. The only reason there have ever been Eyriens living in these mountains, the only reason you are now living in an eyrie Andulvar had built for himself, was that during the time when Andulvar served Cassandra, a winged race was attacking Rihlander villages in the northern parts of Askavi. He was assigned to take care of the problem, and he and the Eyrien warriors who served under him went out and fought the Jhinka and established the line between what was considered Jhinka territory and what belonged to the Rihlanders. In thanks, the Rihlander Queens in Ebon Rih invited him and his men to establish homes in the mountains around the Keep. Which Andulvar did because, even though he ended up being the Warlord Prince of Askavi in both Realms, he liked what he found in Askavi Kaeleer a lot more than what he’d left behind as a youth in Askavi Terreille. So no matter what Falonar may think, there has never been more than two or three communities of Eyriens living in Ebon Rih. Ever.”
    Lucivar shifted his weight from one foot to the other. It made sense. A hunting camp was usually paired with a court or a community. When he’d first made the decision to accept Eyriens into service, he’d scouted the mountains for other suitable eyries and found them in the mountains near the Rihlander villages. But now that he thought about those places being occupied, he realized there weren’t many of those old eyries that were still empty, and the ones that were tended to be isolated, more like overnight camps instead of homes.
    “The valley below us belongs to the Keep in all three Realms,” Saetan said. “It always has; it always will. You were given Ebon Rih to rule on behalf of the Queen of Ebon Askavi. You were given the responsibility to watch over the land and the people who live here, whether they were landens or Rihlanders or Eyriens. When you made the pledge to defend and protect, you not only made it to the living Queen you served; you made it to the Keep and those who serve the Keep. Which is why you still rule here even though Jaenelle is no longer a ruling Queen.” He pushed up from the chair and ran his fingers through his hair, the first sign of exasperation he’d shown. “What is actually going on here, Lucivar? Do you trust Falonar so much that you’ve missed something obvious?”
    Right now he didn’t trust Falonar at all, but that wouldn’t be a wise thing to say to his father—or his brother, for that matter. “Like what?”
    “A challenge?”
    Lucivar huffed out a laugh. “He’s arrogant, not stupid. He couldn’t survive me on a killing field.”
    “But he is an aristo Warlord Prince who served in a less-than-honorable court. Was he free to leave, or would he have been considered a rogue when he left Prythian’s court and slipped in with the other Eyriens to try his luck at the service fair?”
    “He said he couldn’t stomach what he was ordered to do,” Lucivar said. “I assumed he was rogue, but I didn’t care.”
    “A man who lived by traditional Eyrien honor would have cared,” Saetan said. “Or at least cared about why a man broke an oath of loyalty.”
    Snarling at the truth of that, Lucivar resumed pacing.
    “So Falonar appeals to your sense of honor and tries to get you to give up your claim to Ebon Rih for ‘the good of the other Eyriens.’ What do you think would happen if you did step