“What?” I whispered.
“Did you hear what I said?”
“Yeah.” I was still whispering.
“You have no response?”
“No, uh… you’re right. Showered with riches, army at her service, adulation, consort to a leader. That all sounds good. Pop would dig all that.”
“Dig?” Diandra asked and I turned distracted eyes to her.
“Like. He’d like that,” I explained, Diandra nodded and translated.
I looked forward.
“She jokes,” Lahn muttered (but Diandra still interpreted).
“No,” I said softly and shook my head once. “No, I’m not joking. But, the truth is, Pop wouldn’t like that. What he would like is that a man would wish to give his daughter that and that that man would want the same for his daughters.”
Diandra hadn’t finished translating when Lahn’s hand came up making his arm slant at an angle across my chest so his fingers could curve around my neck and he could pull me so my full back was tight against his chest.
“We will make warriors,” he told me quietly, his voice deeper than normal.
Oh God.
“Right,” I whispered.
“But we will make daughters too so I can find them kings who wish to hand them kingdoms.”
Oh fucking God.
“Right,” I repeated on another whisper.
“You have rare beauty the like I have never seen but you will be more beautiful heavy with my seed,” he stated softly.
At his words, my breasts swelled and my head got light both at the same time. The combination was an unusual sensation and one that I did not like.
Oh man, if he didn’t shut up, I was going to pass out.
“I really need to learn the Korwahk language so Diandra doesn’t have to translate conversations like this,” I grumbled, Lahn chuckled then his lips went to my ear.
There, he murmured in my language, “Yes, my Circe, you do.”
I blinked.
Jeez, was he some kind of language savant or what? He was picking up English way faster than I was picking up Korwahk and he only had me and Diandra to listen to.
“You’re freaking me out,” I whispered.
“Sorry, my dear, I didn’t catch that,” Diandra said and I didn’t even have to look at her to know she was fighting back laughter. And losing.
“He’s freaking me out, um… shocking me, surprising me but in a not so good way. He’s learning our language very fast and it’s not natural.”
“It isn’t surprising that he would pick things up quickly. He meets often with ambassadors, dignitaries and foreigners from many lands. It is important for him to hear and understand them therefore it is known widely our Dax speaks seven languages fluently, my dear,” Diandra told me, I whipped around so fast Lahn had to jerk his head back and I stared up at him.
“You speak seven languages?” I breathed, Diandra translated and he nodded so I leaned in and kept breathing, “Seven?”
His eyes roamed my face and one side of his lips twitched before he replied in English, “Yes, Circe, seven.”
“Then why don’t you know English?” I shouted. “I mean, Valearian or whatever!”
He waited for the translation and then Diandra translated his response. “Because it is spoken in Hawkvale and Lunwyn, which are peaceful nations that do not cross the Green Sea to make war or find trouble. And it is spoken in Middleland, which is ruled by a tyrant who I would not honor by learning his language.”
Shit, that made sense. Still, it was annoying.
“Well, unlucky for you that your wife speaks the one language probably in this world that you don’t speak.”
“No,” he replied, “there are many lands too far away to wage war on Korwahk whose languages I do not know. None of them speak Valearian, which brings me to the question of what small kingdom you are from.”
Uh-oh.
I turned forward, mostly to buy time.
“Circe,” he called then Diandra translated the rest, “look at me.”
I bit my lip and turned back to him.
His eyebrows went up with his question, “What kingdom are you from?”
“Um…” Shit. Well, here goes. “Seattle.”
His brows descended but only to knit over narrowed eyes. “Seattle?”
“Yes, it’s a very small kingdom,” I told him.
“Like Bellebryn?” he asked.
Hell, I didn’t even know what Bellebryn was.
Well, I had a fifty-fifty chance of getting it right.
“Yes.”
He nodded.
Shoo.
“Where is it?” he went on.
Shit.
“Uh… over the Green Sea?” I made another guess.
“Are you asking me where it is, my tigress, or telling me?” he asked.
God, why was he so cunning and clever and kingly and never missed a trick? The jerk.
“Telling you,” I answered. “But, uh… I can’t really say exactly where it is because I’m not very good at geography. I never was.”
At least that was true.
His eyes narrowed again. “Tigress Circe, you were on a ship that was overcome and looted by pirates and when they docked you were taken by Korwahk scouts as they were moving you to shore. How could you travel from a faraway land and not know where you’d travelled to get where you landed?”
Uh… what?
“What?” I whispered.
“Do you not remember how you came into the possession of a Korwahk scout?”
No, actually, I didn’t. And actually, I never thought about it.
Shit.
“Circe,” Lahn warned, I focused on him and thought fast.
“Well, uh, when we were, you know… travelling and uh… sailing, um… most of the time I was sea sick and the rest of the time I was reading a book so I didn’t pay a lot of attention and the, uh… pirates weren’t very chatty.”
He stared down at me. Then he looked over my head.
Then he muttered, “I have never heard of this Seattle.”
“It’s tiny,” I told him and his eyes came back to me so I lifted a thumb and forefinger with about a half an inch of space, squinted through it to look in his eyes and emphasized, “Teeny tiny.” I dropped my hand. “It isn’t even like a kingdom, as such, more like a… city.”
He stared at me. Then he again looked over my head and murmured, “Bellebryn.”
Whatever.
I needed to move us on.
“My mother looked like me,” I told him in an effort to change the subject, his eyes came back to me so I kept going. “It’s weird, um… strange. My Pop was dark, uh… like you. He even had olive skin. But she was fair,
