stumbled, and fell over one another and their chairs while trying to get away from the animal. A dice table overturned. Two men in vestments rushed forward to help patrons, all the while keeping their attention on Magiere and Chap. At the commotion, the blond-haired woman looked back, shifting in the man's lap and exposing him to view.

Leesil? Magiere mouthed, but no sound came out.

He sat alone, except for the woman he held, with a stack of coins on the table next to a large pewter goblet.

Chap's attention was fixed directly on Leesil's companion.

Magiere snatched the edge of a table in her way and jerked it over and aside. Leesil looked at the woman atop him with a strangely baffled and annoyed expression, and then he caught sight of Magiere.

He took a deep breath, amber eyes widening, and his tan complexion appeared to pale.

As Sapphire nestled onto his lap, Leesil had no idea how to respond. The rustling silk and the plump mounds of her breasts filling his view put him at a momentary loss. Blinking, he looked up at her with what he hoped was adequate annoyance. He grabbed her upper arms and was about to hoist her off when he noticed her eyes. He hadn't looked at them closely before.

They were bright blue, her pale face framed by long curls of dark-blond hair. There was something familiar about her, as if he'd seen her once before. Then came a strange, unnatural howl more familiar than the woman's face, and people began shouting.

Patrons clamored and shoved their way toward the room's back. Tables, chairs, and bodies toppled one over the other. Two house guards waded in, trying to disentangle bodies from furniture. But everyone's attention was fixed toward the bestial sounds coming from the archway. His uninvited companion turned in his lap as well, opening his view.

There stood an enraged Chap.

And Magiere.

He was in a gaming room. He was drinking. He had a silk-clad blond in his lap with her chest in his face. Magiere's infuriated expression sent a numbing chill through Leesil that sank through to the seat of his breeches.

There wasn't anything that could save him from Magiere long enough to explain all of this.

Chap snarled, inching into the room, and Leesil tensed in alarm. The reasons for Magiere's ire were plain enough, but what had gotten into Chap?

Magiere looked at Sapphire, and Leesil had a moment's concern over what Magiere might do to the woman. Grabbing a table in her way, Magiere slung it aside, and Leesil winced, trying to figure out how to get both himself and Sapphire out of harm's way until Magiere calmed down. Then he saw the topaz amulet in the room's softer lamplight.

It glowed. His eyes rolled up to Sapphire once again.

Dark-blond ringlets. Bright blue eyes—like gemstones. Pretty and eager. With smooth, pallid skin. Like Magiere's.

Leesil stiffened, a coin's toss between mortified and horrified, and choked back a curse before it could escape. The slim chance of explaining anything to Magiere faded. He'd be lucky if she ever spoke to him again, if he lived through this.

His right hand dropped slowly to his side, and he flicked the sheath strap to slip a stiletto into his hand.

Sapphire's hand clamped around his throat, nails biting into his skin.

"Try that and you're dead," she hissed without looking at him. Her attention was on Magiere, confusion in her voice as she spoke. "Hold that dog off, or this one dies!"

Magiere stopped. "Let him go, or you won't reach the door."

The two guards in the room stood still and uncertain. Leesil spotted a third poised in the entryway behind Magiere, eyes shifting, as if wondering whom to deal with first. Such a disturbance was probably rare in a place like the Rowanwood, and they clearly had no wish for a patron to be killed inside the establishment. But they also appeared more anxious over Chap than the sight of Sapphire's fingers on his throat.

In one movement, Sapphire slipped out of his lap and spun around, pulling Leesil to his feet with his back toward Magiere and Chap. She retreated toward a side exit used by the staff.

Leesil still believed he could remove her fingers with little damage to himself, but there were too many people inside the game room. She might simply grab someone else. He decided to let her to pull him outside.

Chap raged somewhere behind him, and he wondered what Magiere might do next.

Sapphire pulled him through the side door into a narrow,