Keilor looked at her with a knowing expression. He turned to Jayems and made a few signs with his hands. “The girl is planning to bring back help.”Jayems sent her a dark glance and signed back. “I see it.” This was not how they’d planned this. The girl was supposed to be scared out of her mind, begging to go. That’s how Rihlia had behaved, and she was a Haunt. Keilor was supposed to have terrified the girl. Hadn’t he tried?“I could take care of her,” Keilor offered. His face was carefully blank. He’d never harmed a woman before, but both of them knew the stakes.“I swore not to harm her.”

An image jumped to mind at Keilor’s words, but Jayems swiftly thrust it aside. A spike of possessiveness stabbed him instead. He didn’t want any man speculating about his woman. “Be careful how you speak of her.”“Noted. You do need to marry, however. You will marry. I’d just like to see you hurry it up.”Jayems snorted. Keilor was a practical man, as long as they weren’t discussing his marriage. Keilor was happy as a bachelor and had his share of ambitious huntresses trying to catch him. Any mention of them usually sent him running to the practice fields to grind out his frustrations.He was right, though. The political situation

“It’s your father, Crewel Sotra,” he said softly.Wiley looked at it, feeling numb. She didn’t remember his face, had forgotten long ago what he looked like, except for the dark hair. Dressed in the black uniform of the Haunt, he had an indigo shirt under the leather vest, and a red Celtic knot, a symbol of rank, on his shoulder.“He loved your spirit. He would have been proud of you for surviving the way you did. He was a good man,” Jayems said quietly.An ache started behind her eyes and spread to her throat. She looked down to hide her expression, but her eyes kept returning to her father’s face. Afraid to cry in front of Jayems, she laid the picture

Still, Nilla didn’t look weak, only strained. She didn’t flinch when Wiley met her eyes, either. Hm. For a girl with a sweet name, she didn’t seem like too much of a cream puff. Score one for Jayems.“I don’t want him,” Wiley told her firmly. “I don’t want to be here. Knowing that, if there’s anything you can do…I heard your father has a lot of influence with the council.” Her approach was blunt, but sometimes blunt worked. It all depended on how motivated Nilla was.Nilla looked shocked. She glanced at Wiley’s guard in bewilderment. “You want to discuss this here? Now?”Wiley couldn’t blame her.

They walked past the gardens on their way back to the Citadel, and Wiley noticed a woman using a hand pump to fill a bucket. Since they were in the area of the family garden plots, she asked, “Why don’t you have hoses or something? I know you guys have electricity, and some of your technology is ahead of Earth’s.”Jayems smiled at her. “Would you like to spend your life in a factory, assembling electronic pumps? We only use technology for certain things, like pumping the water into our rooms and running our lights, or communication. Some of us still use candles and oil lamps, as well as pack our own water. The exercise is good for us, conserves resources and promotes a simpler, more relaxed way of life. You’ll notice that woman is using a wheeled cart to haul her bucket around? It has a spigot on the end, a