The aura wavered. It was difficult to stay focused when her heart was fluttering in her chest. “It’s illegal to declare someone incompetent when they’re not too. What happened to your wife?”
He shrugged, as if it were of no consequence. “I wanted what was best for her, but she didn’t listen.”
True. “And what happened?”
“She tried to run from me, despite all I had given to her, despite all I wanted for her. She was not in her right mind.”
“You killed her.”
He didn’t answer.
But that was answer enough. He wasn’t even trying to hide how warped he was, how badly he wanted to own her, how he wanted to control her. With the papers he had, he must have felt it was his right.
“Raia, I swear I will never hurt you. Just let me take care of you. I will see to your happiness in every way imaginable. You will want for nothing.”
Except her freedom. He and her parents had conspired against her, declaring her incompetent, binding her to him without her consent. Condemning her. All the while, thinking they were doing what was right. Like she was certain Celin had believed when he killed his last wife. He’ll hurt me, if I let him.
Then she heard in her head, as clearly as her own thoughts, a gravelly male voice she’d never heard before: I will not let him.
The black lion lunged forward. In the loosened chains, he could reach the stall door. He swiped with his massive paw, and his claws tore Celin’s throat.
Celin’s eyes widened, as if he were surprised that anyone would dare hurt him. He was a man who hurt others; no one had ever dared touch him.
He was dead before his body hit the ground.
Chapter 14
When Raia screamed, Tamra slammed open the stable door and rushed inside. She scanned the stable: body, kehoks, Raia. . . . Raia was huddled against the wall, far from any kehok and far from the body. A quiet part of her mind whispered: Body?
But a louder part shouted: Raia is safe!
Tamra pivoted to face her kehok. He was still chained, shackled inside his stall, but his muzzle was spattered with blood. It looked like wet blackness on his metal face. Lunging forward, she swung the stall door shut and locked it.
The lion did not move. He only stared at her with his beautiful eyes.
And then, only then, did she look down at the body.
Tamra had seen blood before. And death. But that didn’t make it any easier. She didn’t recognize him, which helped. She hadn’t bothered to learn the names of all the students who worked with Osir and Zora, but she knew by sight who belonged in the kehok stables and who didn’t. He wasn’t anyone who should have been in here with Raia.
He could have been handsome, if he wasn’t dead. But his empty open eyes and gaping mouth—as if he continued to be surprised he’d died—robbed him of any beauty he’d once had. His clothes were expensive layered silks, hemmed with gold embroidery.
A dead rich man in the stable.
And her kehok had killed him.
His throat had been torn. It was a clump of red, and the stain was spreading down his silk tunic and pooling on the sand-strewn stable floor. Beside Tamra, Raia’s parents were wailing.
It didn’t take much to figure out who he was. The fiancé, the one Raia had run from because of his dead wife. He must have come with the parents and snuck into the stables to corner Raia while Tamra was distracted. While the parents keened over the dead fiancé, Tamra knelt next to Raia. “Are you all right?”
Raia shook her head hard.
Tamra clarified. “Are you hurt?”
Another shake of the head.
Good. In fact, that was the only good thing about any of this.
Across the stable, Raia’s mother had dropped to her knees, carefully beyond the edge of the pool of blood, and was wailing loudly enough to match the kehoks. Raia’s father was shouting, “How could this have happened? Who is responsible? Someone must pay for this . . . this . . . abomination!” And the augur was witnessing it all, silently.
“Shit,” Tamra muttered.
She felt old as she pushed on her knees to stand. All her muscles still ached from the ride, and even her bones felt tired. The shrieks of the other kehoks mingled with the screaming of Raia’s parents until they all bounced around inside of Tamra’s skull.
“Quiet,” she ordered, and projected her will like a blanket,