be? We have the best weapons. Only our fae can manipulate rock and metal. And the women do not know how to make metal blades.”
“Oh, really?” she replied. “I believe a young lady by the name of Muriel creates beautiful hilts and handholds for your swords as well as pours the metal liquid into molds.”
“Oh, that is right. She does. She cannot communicate, so Fath—the king put her down there where she did not need to talk with anyone.”
Lilah bit down on her lip. “You understand why that pisses me off to no end, right?” He didn’t respond. She’d make it clear for him. “She doesn’t want to be there. At least full time. You are making her do what she doesn’t want and shouldn’t have to do without breaks and others to take over occasionally.”
“But no one else wants to have that job. It is very hot and strenuous. If we do not make someone do it, it will not get done. Then what?”
“Then you give an incentive, a reward, for doing it. A little good balances out the little bad. If the good is good enough, then someone will do the job.”
His brow raised. “Never thought of it that way.” He paused. “How does that explain how the female’s knives are better than our swords.”
She let out a deep breath. “Ferrus, do the king or the prince ever listen to what a female has to say?”
“Females are not allowed to speak to the king unless given permission.”
“Exactly my point. The women have discovered many things that would make your home so much better, but no one will listen to them. So, they help themselves, and you men can do whatever you want. Which is training for battle, not thinking how to advance technology to make your home a better place.”
He lifted her hand and rubbed his fingers over the back. “Where are humans from?”
Her mouth opened, then she closed it. Before leaving for the standing stones, she and her cousins had decided not to tell anyone but the Gnoleon about themselves or where they were going. Safety-wise, it was better that no one knew. But she didn’t want to lie to Ferrus. She trusted him. Which was sort of dumb since she didn’t know him well enough.
“Humans are from a planet called Earth in a different dimension. They are a non-magical species. They can’t mold rock or make plants grow faster.”
“How do they survive then? They must be very primitive.”
She snorted. “You’d think that. The only thing primitive is how they can treat each other.”
Lilah glanced up through the high canopy, seeing the sun had moved a distance from where it was when they started walking. Funny how some things didn’t change from species to species or planet to planet. The sun here warmed the ground and helped to grow plants. The beings needed water to drink to stay alive and food to fuel the body.
So why humans treated each other differently made no sense. They all shared the same resources, had the same emotions, the same ideas. Why some thought they were above others, she didn’t get. Money might get them more things they would never use. More stuff to hang on the wall. More crap to shove into a closet and forget about. But that didn’t make them better. It made their homes more cluttered with shit.
Money didn’t make one happy. It was the relationship with others that doomed or gifted you. In this case, she had struck it rich.
Chapter Nineteen
Lilah and Ferrus were deep in the woods where the ground cover was thicker, and the trees had changed from black trunks to cream. Strange looking. They’d been talking and sharing for hours though it didn’t seem that long. She liked listening to him, just being with him.
Ferrus sat on a fallen log and pulled her down beside him. Close enough that she might as well have been in his lap, which wouldn’t be bad. She’d sit on him any time he wanted. Especially when he was naked and on his back.
She couldn’t control the shudder that went through her with the thought. Her lower belly twinged, knowing that was a possibility she wanted so badly.
She was about to answer his question of how humans treated each other when he asked another question. “How were you treated by others?”
“Me?” She put a hand on her chest. “Why would you want to know that?”
He smiled and looked at his feet. “I want to know everything about you,