Bloodchild. Anna Stephens

he demanded, focusing on her. ‘So you can gloat?’

      Tara lowered her gaze. ‘Forgive me. I thought it might help.’ She stood. ‘I will leave you to your thoughts, honoured.’

      ‘Fucking sit,’ he snarled, so close to violence that Tara was back in her seat before he’d finished speaking, heart yammering against her ribs.

       You’ve got one chance, Carter. Do not fuck this up. And please, Valan, don’t do anything stupid. Having to kill you now will ruin everything.

      ‘Neela wasn’t so highborn as you,’ he said after a long silence, surprising her again. The wine was warming her, but she couldn’t afford any more of it. ‘Born and raised in Crow Crag like me, but her father was a low warrior and a thief. Childhood toughened her, taught her guile and strength, enough to turn down consort offers from other low warriors. Lot of the women hated her for that, and one or two men tried to force her. She cut the first one on the face, second in the groin, and then they left her alone.’

      ‘I’m not surprised,’ Tara said with genuine respect. ‘She sounds formidable.’

      Valan smiled, sad and full of memory. ‘She was. She knew what she wanted, what she deserved, and that was a better life than the poorer warriors could give her. I thought I’d lose her to Corvus, you know,’ he said and met her eyes, gesturing that she drink.

      Tara complied, then spat it back into the cup when his gaze drifted away.

      ‘But she didn’t want a Rilporian, it seems, even one who’d converted and risen as high as war chief. But his second? She’d settle for that. For me.’

      ‘Maybe your gods had a hand in it,’ Tara said carefully. If he got much drunker and carried on talking about Neela, she’d a fair idea what he’d want from her next. ‘Sounds like you were a good match,’ she added. ‘Perhaps They wanted to reward you with a woman worthy of you.’