“Couldn’t you have saved him, Mother?” Zagiri asked Lara now, pulling away from her mother’s embrace. “You are faerie! What good are all your powers if you could not save the life of the man you love?” she asked angrily, irrationally.

“Aye, I am faerie, but sustaining mortal life is beyond my powers. His wounds were fatal. It was all I could do to help him live long enough to make his last wishes known, Zagiri,” Lara told her daughter. “I am sorry you had to learn of your father’s death in this fashion. It was not up to your grandmother to tell you, and I can see that she did it badly. But we will survive, my darlings. We are together, and your father would want us to honor his memory by living our lives as he would want us to do.”

Zagiri sniffed.

“You are so selfish,” Marzina told Zagiri. “All you think about is yourself. How do you think our mother feels having to have watched our father die, and not be able to help him? Is her grief nothing to you, Zagiri? He was her husband. Her mate.”

“Where is our mother’s grief?” Zagiri said bitterly. “I do not see it.”

“I have seen it,” Anoush told her younger sister. “Before you entered this chamber I held our mother while she wept for Magnus Hauk. And she will continue to grieve in private I know. But now she must take up the duties of the Dominus if Terah is to survive. When word of our father’s death reaches across the sea to Hetar do you think they will remain peaceful knowing my brother, the new Dominus, is yet a boy? Our mother has much to do if Terah is to remain strong. Her sorrow must be private, Zagiri. She needs her strength to save us all.”

Zagiri was suddenly remorseful. “Oh, Mother, I did not realize…” Then she gasped. “A woman ruling Terah? What will the people say?”