“To whom was it addressed?” Lara wanted to know.

“To me,” the boy told her.

“Excellent!” his mother approved. “Trust the Lord High Ruler to follow proper protocol. Jonah is taking no chances at offending us, and because he does not know who the regent is he is being careful.” Lara smiled.

“But he knows who my mother is,” Taj replied ingenuously.

Lara laughed lightly. “Aye, he knows,” she responded. Then she gave him another quick kiss, ruffling his dark gold hair. “I must go and have my breakfast, my lord Dominus. Come to me when you have had yours, and we will see what Hetar wants.”

Her energy was high, and Lara could not believe how well she felt. Scarcely more than a week had passed since Magnus Hauk had been killed. While there was an underlying sadness within her, that sorrow no longer absorbed her. She wondered if death affected everyone this way, or was it just her cold faerie heart that allowed her to put the past behind her, and move on? Whatever the answer she was glad, for weighed down with grief over Magnus Hauk, she could not have managed to do what she must do, and her husband had entrusted her with the fate of their son, and of Terah. She would not fail him, but then she never had failed him.

She ate her meal, and shortly afterward her son joined her carrying the message from Hetar. Taj handed the rolled parchment to his mother. “You open it,” he said.

“Nay,” she told him. “You are the Dominus. You will open it, and you will read it first. Then you will hand it to me for my perusal.”

He was still a boy. He knew he was much too young for the responsibility that had been thrust upon him, and he was afraid. But his natural-born Terahn male pride appreciated the fact that his mother would defer to him in this manner. Women in general might be inferior, but not his mother. His father had told him that. Taj knew Lara was seeking to teach him, and so he opened the message from Hetar, his eyes swiftly scanning its contents. Then he handed it to her.