Hahaha.
Elara regarded Vanessa for a long moment. She reminded him of the black-footed cat he had seen in southern Africa on a long trip to retrieve one of Roland’s artifacts. They’d had to search a wide area, and every night, once they came back to camp, he would take the midwatch, and the little black-footed cat would leave her burrow to hunt for food for her two kittens. She would sneak up on the birds and rodents, line her jump, wait, motionless, calculating distance and wind, and spring just at the right moment to break her prey’s neck. She was relentless, and she killed with a precision he had never seen in great cats. Now he saw the same calculation in Elara’s eyes. She was about to leap into a kill.
“I was going to give you time to correct yourself, but you leave me no choice,” Elara said. “First, the Preceptor isn’t going to help you. He’s here because he’s responsible for the welfare of his people, just as I’m responsible for the well-being of mine. We rose to our positions of power, because we have learned how to lead and compromise. We hate each other, but we are both cognizant of the fact that we have to work together for our mutual survival and we both sacrificed a great deal for the sake of this partnership. There is much more at stake here than sexual gratification. In an argument between you and me, the Preceptor will always side with me. I’m the bigger threat. All you can do is withhold sex, while I can divorce him and throw his soldiers out of the castle.”
Vanessa narrowed her eyes.
“Before you speak, remember that you are also one of my people. Your welfare is important to me,” Elara said. “It’s critical to your safety that you understand this: he isn’t besotted with you. He is a cold, calculating bastard. Love isn’t in his vocabulary. You don’t hold any power over him and if you annoy him enough, he will replace you with a different warm body. You must never gamble your safety on his attachment to you. There isn’t one.”
Vanessa turned to him.
“She’s right,” Hugh said. “I told you this when we started.”
Vanessa opened her mouth.
“I’m not done,” Elara said, her voice cold. “According to your performance evaluation and the testimony of your coworkers, you are laboring under the mistaken impression that having sex with the Preceptor excuses you from your duties. As of last night, you have a nine-day backlog. You speak down to your colleagues, you imply that you are better than them, and you argue with your supervisor. One of your colleagues described your behavior as toxic.”
“I do my work!”
“Should I ask Melissa to come up here and give you a detailed breakdown of the assignments you failed to complete?” Elara asked.
“She’s lying.”
Elara grimaced. “Please. Don’t waste time, Vanessa. You’ve decided that you are better than your current position and you’ve made everyone around you aware of it. In this community, your position is based on merit, not your choice of bed partners. Having a relationship with the Preceptor doesn’t entitle you to any additional benefits. You don’t get hazard pay.”
Hazard pay?
“You have one week to catch up on your assignments. You won’t be paid until your backlog is cleared.”
Vanessa opened her mouth.
“You will apologize to your colleagues and to Melissa for your conduct,” Elara continued.
“I won’t,” Vanessa snarled.
Elara’s face was merciless. “If you no longer want to be employed as a paralegal, you are free to look for a different job. You know our rule: if you don’t contribute to the best of your ability, you receive no support. If you don’t like it, you know where the gates are.”
An angry red flush heated Vanessa’s face. For a moment he thought Vanessa would charge her. Instead, she spun on her heels and tore out of the room. The door slammed closed behind her.
Elara glanced at him. “Any idea what brought this on?”
“She thinks the balance of power shifted in my favor,” he said. “Now, what the hell was so bloody important?”
“You found an abandoned palisade.”
He got up, poured a glass of water from the pitcher on the table, and drank. He missed the wine, not the alcohol, but the taste.
He realized she was waiting for him to answer. “Yes.”
“Were you planning on telling me?”
“No.”
“What do you mean, no?”
Something peeked out from inside her. Something cold and lethal, a power coursing through her. Her hair was down again, and it floated about her like a silver curtain. Her blue dress was cut wide, leaving her delicate neck exposed.
“It doesn’t concern you.”
“It does concern me.”
“It’s a matter of safety. There is no immediate threat. If there was one, I would tell you about it.”
“We have to report it.”
He frowned. “Report it to who?”
“The sheriffs. The county.”
“No.” The harpy was insane.
She turned, pacing back and forth. “You’re not listening to me. Something weird happened in the woods on the border of our land. If we don’t report it, we will be blamed.”
He crossed his arms. “Who will blame us?”
“The authorities.”
She was really wound up tight. It was kind of amusing. He decided to stab and see what happened.
“Is this paranoia recent or is this something you’ve had for a while?”
Elara stopped in midstep and spun toward him, the long skirt of her dress flaring.
“We are always blamed. I’m speaking from experience. Whenever anything weird happens, they come after us.”
“‘They’ won’t find out.”
Elara missed the sarcasm in his emphasis. “They will. They always do. We have to report it. You should’ve sent someone to report it the moment you found it.”
“Do you trust your people?”
“What?” She tilted her head, giving him a look at the fine line of her jaw all the way to her neck. He wondered what she looked like under the dress.
“Do your people report to the authorities on a regular basis, because I have to tell you, I wouldn’t tolerate that if I were you.”
“Hugh! You can’t possibly be this dense. No, my people don’t talk to outsiders.”
She’d used his name. Well, well. “Mine don’t either. So, who’s going to tell?”
“It will get out. It always does. Someone will come to check on them—"
“To check on three families of separatists living alone in the middle of the forest?”
Elara halted. “Separatists still trade, Hugh. They still need supplies.”
“Try to get it through your thick skull: they abandoned society, built a palisade in the middle of a dangerous forest, and got killed. It happens all the damn time and nobody ever makes any effort to investigate.”
“According to your own people, this time is different. You don’t even know what killed them.”
Hugh felt irritation rise. “I would know if I had access to a forensic mage. How is it that in all of your settlement there is not a single mage?”
Elara crossed her arms on her chest. “We have no need for mages. We have plenty of magic users who can do everything a mage can do but better.”
“So why don’t you take some of those fabled magic users and analyze the scene?”
“So when the forensic team does arrive from the sheriff’s office, they’ll find an empty settlement and our magic signature all over it? Brilliant. Why didn’t I think of that?”
“Leave this alone. If you stir that pot, your pal Skolnik will run back here with torches and pitchforks. Is that what you want?”
Elara narrowed her eyes. “You know what, never mind. I’ll take care of this.”
Hugh’s irritation boiled over into full-blown fury. His voice turned to ice. “You won’t.”
“Yes, I will.”
“I forbid it.”
“Good that I don’t need your permission.”
“Yes, you do.”
“Says who?”
“Says the contract we both signed. Or did you forget the part where I asked for autonomy on the safety-related decisions and you put in the provision that all of them have to be jointly approved by you and me? It cuts both ways, sweetheart.”