Chapter 52

Haggoz watched the play of emotions on his prince’s face go quickly from shock to outrage. His mate’s reactions were more subtle, but she was just as startled as Nikolai.

Haggoz suspected he was trying hard not to show it. He had noticed this tendency in humans before—a striving not to say something rude or bad-mannered to another person’s face in an attempt not to insult them, though humans thought nothing of saying the same things behind that person’s back. So different from his own people, who ranked honesty and outspokenness above everything else.

Haggoz had been searching for some time now for something to help the prisoner, some way to break him free from what Haggoz thought of as a downward spiral. Perhaps this would be a way for him to provide a useful service to the man Keanna had wronged and still give Keanna some diversion. Perhaps it would be the key to restoring the fire that used to burn so brightly inside her.

“That’s out of the question,” Nikolai said, angrily, turn