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however. For one, her status would be sensed by the others, especially males, who were particularly attuned to that sort of thing.
    And two, after a while, she would begin to show.
    Except if she felt this bad, how ever could the young survive?
    As a vague sensation of tightness settled into her lower belly, like her pelvis was being compressed by an invisible vise, she tried to train her mind on something, anything other than her physical sensations.
    Eyes the color of the night sky came to her.
    Penetrating eyes, eyes that stared up from a face that was bloodied and distorted…and beautiful even in its ugliness.
    Okay. This was
not
an improvement.
    Xcor, leader of the Band of Bastards. A traitor against the king, a hunted male who was enemy to the Brotherhood and lawful vampires everywhere. The fierce warrior who had been born of a noble mother who did not want him because of his visage, and an unknown father who had never claimed parentage. An unwanted burden shuffled from home to orphanage until he’d entered the Bloodletter’s training camp back in the Old Country. A remorseless fighter trained therein to great effect; then, in his maturity, a master of death who toured the land with a band of elite fighters first aligned to the Bloodletter himself, and thereafter, to Xcor—and no one else.
    The information trail at the Sanctuary’s library ended there because none of the Chosen were updating anything anymore. The rest, however, she could fill in herself: The Brotherhood believed the attempt on Wrath’s life back in the fall had been made by Xcor, and she had further heard there were insurrectionists within the
glymera
working with the fighter.
    Xcor. A traitorous, brutal male with no conscience, no loyalty, no principle save to serve himself.
    Yet when she had looked into his eyes, when she had been in his presence, when she had unknowingly fed this new enemy…she had felt like a full female for the first time in her life.
    Because he had looked upon her not with aggression, but with—
    “Arrest that,” she said aloud. “Stop that
right
now.”
    As if she were a young getting into a cupboard or some such thing.
    Forcing herself to her feet, she drew her robe around her and resolved to leave her room and make her way down to the kitchen. A change of scenery was needed, and so was food—if only to give her churning stomach something to expel.
    On her way out, she did not check her hair or her face in the mirror. Did not fuss over the way her robe fell. Didn’t waste even a moment worrying which of her identical sandals to wear.
    So much time she had wasted in the past over the minute details of her appearance.
    She would have been much better served studying or training herself for a vocation. But that had not been permitted within the allowed prescription of activity for a Chosen.
    As she stepped into the corridor, she took a deep breath, steadied herself, and started to walk in the direction of the king’s study—
    Up ahead, Blaylock, son of Rocke, burst out into the hall of statues, his brows down tight, his body clad in leather from the tops of his shoulders to the soles of his tremendous boots. As he strode forward, he was checking his weapons one by one, taking them out of holsters, replacing them, buckling them in.
    Layla stopped dead.
    And when the male finally looked upon her, he did the same, his eyes growing remote.
    Deep red of hair, and lovely sapphire blue of eye, the fully blooded aristocrat was a fighter for the Brotherhood, but he was not a brute. No matter how he spent his nights out in the field, he remained at the compound a mannered, intelligent gentlemale of fine comportment and schooling.
    So it was not a surprise that even in his rush, he bent slightly at the waist in formal greeting before resuming his hurry to the grand staircase.
    In his descent down to the foyer, Qhuinn’s voice came to her.
    I’m in love with someone….
    Layla exercised her new habit of cursing under her