Then they grew intense and he whispered back, “Kah rahna tunakanahsa Pahnsahnalla.”

I blinked.

This was new. He called me, my golden warrior goddess.

“What?” I asked then in Korwahk, “Tela?”

Instead of answering, he pulled out, rolled and sat up, taking me with him so I was straddling him. His hand cupping my head tipped mine down and his arm around my waist squeezed tight.

Then he said in Korwahk (most of which I caught, some of which I guessed), “I am sorry, my tigress, but you have a difficult choice this morning. Either you attend the pyre or you do not. It is your choice but I urge you to watch the ashes of Dortak’s bride drift to the heavens.”

All thoughts of what Lahn called me flew from my head.

Last night, I attended an execution slash suicide. This morning, a funeral.

Fantastic.

It must be said, sometimes this queen business sucked.

My eyes slid to his ear and I whispered in Korwahk, “I will go.”

“Lahnahsahna,” he called and I looked back at him. “This is not the easy choice,” he told me then gave me a squeeze. “But it is the right one.”

It was way cool he understood and even cooler that he seemed proud of me.

I didn’t tell him that. Instead, I sighed then I nodded.

Then I asked in Korwahk, “What was her name?”

Instantly, he answered, “I do not know.”

I blinked again then I stared. Then I asked, “You don’t know?”

He shook his head, “I do not.”

Was he crazy?

I pulled back an inch and felt my eyes narrow. “You ordered the death of a woman whose name you don’t know?”

His arm tightening brought me back and his brows knit as he studied me. “She is the wife of a warrior. Of course I do not know her name.”

Of course he didn’t know her name?

He was crazy.

Then it occurred to me that never, not once in all the times she interpreted for us, had he called Diandra by her name. If he referred to her at all, he called Diandra “wife of Seerim” or “Seerim’s woman”.

“You know,” I informed him, “women are wives of warriors but they are also a lot of other things. They are mothers. They are friends. They are healers. They are –”

“Circe,” he cut me off with a mini-squeeze, speaking patiently,

“they are also the most beautiful women in the land. For that reason, they do not exist to Suh Tunak as anything other than a warrior’s wife. They cannot. It is forbidden.”

I now stared in confusion and curiosity. “It’s forbidden?”

Lahn nodded. “I must tell you that with your beauty, which far exceeds any woman I have ever seen, there are times when I regret you are my Dahksahna. This means people know who you are, you

are on display, you sit at my side and men’s eyes can study you and they do. I see it, I see they take great pleasure in their study and it often lasts a long time.” Another squeeze. “This I do not like but this is my burden as Dax.”

Uh-oh. My belly was getting melty.

Lahn kept speaking. “It is a high crime for a warrior’s wife to share a bed with a warrior not her husband. If this were to happen, both would be punished severely. In olden times, it happened frequently. Warriors are men and wives are beautiful. To maintain necessary distance, to warriors, all wives are known only as the wife or bride of a warrior. Contact is minimal and personal relationships between warriors and other wives are very rare and only occur when permission is granted by the husband and usually is always supervised by the husband. Another burden I must carry as you form attachments to your personal guard and wander the Daxshee amongst your people.”

He knew about that?

“You know about that?”

“Bain and Zahnin report your activities to me daily, my queen.”

Oh. Well. That wasn’t entirely surprising. Intrusive, but not surprising.

The good news was, this wasn’t about possession or stripping women of their identities but about stopping infidelity.

And, for once, there really wasn’t any bad news except the

“punished severely” part which I did not want to know so I was not going to ask.

I looked into his eyes and saw he had braced for my response so when I said, “Okay,” his chin jerked back half an inch before he smiled and gave me another squeeze.

Then he repeated, “Okay.”

Why did I think it was so sweet when he said that word?

I needed to move on.

I started to push away, muttering, “I guess I should bathe…”

when I trailed off and fully took him in.

Last night, he had rivers of paint on his body. Right now, he didn’t but I did, the paint he transferred to me when he held me after the judgment.

Last night, his hair had been plaited (something I had done yesterday morning). Right now, his hair was flowing free.

And lastly, last night, he’d been painted.

My body froze.

He’d been painted! And it wasn’t me who painted him.