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looked, walked, spoke, and felt like the Emperor. Galan had become a pleasantly elusive dream made of sensations and distortions.
    The Emperor escorted her down to a picnic where her favorite foods and drinks waited. Sitting in the grass beside her, he smiled at her. Again, he was unfailingly pleasant but sat apart from her and called her Empress. He did not hesitate to look at her but no warmth lit his eyes. She still felt the sparks emanating from him but even they had been subdued. He had invited her here yet she felt as if he only tolerated her presence. The Spirit of Distance stretched between them.
    Fury bubbled up within her. No audience watched them in this place; he had no need to pretend he cared or regarded her as more than a burden. She ground her teeth, fisted her hands and rolled her eyes.
    The Emperor started a conversation about his last visit to the East. Raeche had not accompanied him. She had sworn she would not go East again until her mother was committed to the Spirit. He spoke of her land, perhaps hoping to elicit nostalgia and calm her. He should have known this was mistake. That place had never been home. She had always been destined for the palace in the North and no one, not even her mother, treated her as one of their own. So Raeche did as she was wont to do. She stopped listening. She closed her ears and gave the appearance of paying attention. This was pure folly as it left her nothing to do but watch his lips. They were full like hers, as if someone from the East had given them to the Emperor’s ancestors generations ago. He had said he wished they had played together when they were children. And he had slipped much closer to her, and his eyes had started to warm while the sparks grew, and he seemed to want…
    Spirit help her, but she believed he would kiss her! Spirit take her, but she wanted him to. Raeche shuddered from the intense pull at her breasts and the place between her thighs–a reminder of something she had known only briefly but needed to know again.
    He did not kiss her.
    “Play for me.” Raeche made her request with a low voice and still body.
    “Empress?”
    She turned to her husband, her eyes on his. “My Spirit does not sing. Play timra for me.”
    The Emperor watched her for a moment before saying, “Yes, little dark one.”
    Whenever he called her that, his pale green eyes seemed darker and she was once again showered with little sparks of lightning. In those moments, Raeche believed the Emperor wanted her the way Galan had. Raeche had always wanted to be wanted. Her weakness gave the Emperor power and the Emperor always craved power.
    Sitting beside her, he crossed his long legs then raised one hand high in the air. When he drew it down, the timra appeared as if he had drawn an arrow. The delicate instrument was made from the long, round, headless body of the timra–a poisonous serpent found at the south border. Dried and hardened with black sap, the tail was snipped then replaced with a small wooden pipe suited to fit between the lips, and the other end covered by a slotted disk. Tiny, meticulous holes had been bored in the skin on all sides. Fine fibers weighted with bells made from blax tree seeds hung inside the instrument. A player blew into the top, causing the bells to provide a constant soothing timbre beneath the sounds achieved through breath and the dexterous placement of fingers on the holes.
    The Emperor brought the instrument to his lips and played. The bells’ deep and subtle ring, coupled with the softest, most fragile notes, caused Raeche to cry and ask her husband to stop playing. But he would not and his eyes commanded her presence as he finished a song too beautiful for her. Her blood-mark throbbed beneath her skin.
    When he was done, these words escaped her lips: “I would never betray you.”
    What stupidity! Raeche had betrayed Lanus in one of the most fundamental ways a woman could betray a man. Though she would never willfully bring harm to