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His head lowered even more. “No, my lord, I did not.”

“Choose,” the priest said.

The kneeling man drew a knife from his belt. The handle was turquoise in the shape of a jaguar. The blade was about six inches of black obsidian. The man held the blade up to the priest who took it as reverently as it had been offered. The man undid some hidden catch on the jaguar skin, and pushed the hood back so that his head was bare. His hair was thick and long, tied in a long club at the back of his head. He raised a dark face that was so square and chiseled, it looked like he could have poised for Aztec temple carvings. If you were into Meso-Americans, his profile was perfect.

He raised his face up to the priest. His face was empty of all expression, just a calm waiting.

There was a roar from the audience that made me glance at the actors, but I turned back to the priest and the man before I’d really seen anything. I had a glimpse of seminude bodies, and an impression of something large and phallic strapped around the man. Normally, that would have made me take a second glance, just to make sure I was seeing what I thought I’d seen, but no matter what was happening out there, the real show was here. It was in the serene, upturned face of the man, and the serious eyes of the priest, the dull gleam of the black blade. They could use all the props they wanted, no matter how big, but it wouldn’t come close to the two men and the quiet intensity stretching between them.

I didn’t know exactly what was about to happen, but I had an idea. He was being punished because he’d chosen a lycanthrope from the audience, instead of a human. But I was human, or at least not a lycanthrope. I couldn’t let him get sliced up, not even if it meant admitting who I was. Could I?

I touched the priest’s arm, lightly. “What are you going to do to him?”

The priest looked at me, and his eyes seemed like deep caves, a trick of shadows. “Punish him.”

My fingers tightened on his arm, trying to feel it through the slick softness of feathers. “I just want to make sure you’re not going to slit his throat or something really dramatic.”

“What I do with our men is my business, not yours.” The force of his disapproval was strong enough that I took my hand off his arm. But I was worried now what he was going to do. Damn Edward and his undercover idea. It never worked for me, pretending. Reality always screwed it up.

The priest laid the blade point against the man’s cheek. There was no fear in his face, nothing but an eerie serenity that made my throat tight and a thrill of fear slide down my spine. God, I hated zealots, and that’s what I was seeing.

“Wait,” I said.

“Do not interfere,” the priest said.

“I’m not a lycanthrope,” I said.

“Lies, to save a stranger,” nothing but contempt in his voice.

“I’m not lying.”

The priest called, “César.”

He appeared like a well-trained dog coming to his master’s call. Maybe the analogy was unfair, but I wasn’t feeling particularly charitable right now. If I blew our cover, had to say who I was, I didn’t know if I was going to be blowing something that Edward had planned. By saying who and what I was, I didn’t know if I was endangering us. Edward hadn’t shared enough of his plans, which I would take up with him when the evening was over, but my first concern was safety. Was saving a stranger from being sliced up worth our lives? No. Was keeping a stranger from being killed worth maybe risking our lives? Probably. I had so many unanswered questions and so little real information that I felt like I must be killing brain cells thinking around all the things I didn’t know.

César appeared beside me, on the far side of me away from the priest. I think he’d spotted the blade. “What has he done?”

“He picked her out of the audience and did not sense her beast,” the priest said.

“I don’t have a beast,” I said.

César laughed, and it was too loud. He covered his mouth with his hand for a moment, as if to remind himself we had to be quiet. “I saw the hunger in your face.” He said hunger like it should have been in capital letters.