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“Ah . . . yes.” She went over quickly, as if she wanted to shelter whatever it was.

“What is it?”

“It’s what is in my head.” She turned to him. Turned away. “It’s just something I’ve started doing.”

Phury walked across the room and knelt down next to her. With care, he ran his finger down a couple of the links. “It’s fantastic. It looks like the frame of a house.”

“You like it?” She knelt down. “I really just made it up.”

“I love architecture and art. And this . . . the lines are great.”

Her head tilted as she considered the structure, and he smiled, thinking he did the same thing with his drawings.

On impulse, he said, “Would you like to go down to the hall of statues? I was just going to go for a wander. It’s past the top of the stairs.”

As her eyes lifted to his, there was a knowledge in them that took him aback.

Maybe it wasn’t that she looked any different, he realized. It was that she was looking at him differently.

Shit, maybe she’d really liked John. As in liked John. What a wrench that would put into the mix.

“I would like to go with you,” she said. “I should like to see the art.”

“Good. That’s . . . good. Let’s go.” He rose to his feet and extended his hand for no apparent reason.

After a moment, she slid her palm into his. As they tightened their grips on each other, he realized that the last time they’d had any physical contact had been that trippy morning in his bed . . . when he’d had that erotic dream and woke up with his hard body all over her.

“Shall we,” he murmured. And led her to the door.

When they stepped out into the hall, Cormia couldn’t believe her hand was in the Primale’s. After she’d wanted some private time with him for so long, it was surreal that she finally had not only that, but actual physical contact.

As they headed for where she had already been, he dropped her hand but stayed close. His limp was barely noticeable, just a slight shadow in his elegant gait, and as usual he was lovelier to her than any piece of art she could possibly behold.

She worried for him, though, and not just because of what she’d overheard.

The clothes he had on were not the ones he wore to meals. The leathers and the black button-down were what he’d been fighting in, and they were marked with stains.

Blood, she thought. His and the race’s enemies.

That wasn’t the worst of it. There was a fading streak around his neck, as if some damage had been done to the skin there, and he had bruises, too, on the backs of his hands and the side of his face.

She thought of what his king had said about him. Danger to himself and others.

“My brother Darius was an art collector,” the Primale said as they went by Wrath’s study. “Like everything else in this house, these were all his. Now they’re Beth and John’s.”

“John is the son of Darius, son of Marklon?”

“Yes.”

“I read of Darius.” And of Beth, the queen, being his daughter. But there had been nothing on John Matthew. Odd . . . as son of the warrior, he should have been listed on the front page with the Brother’s other progeny.

“You read D’s biography?”

“Yes.” She’d gone looking for information on Vishous, the Brother she’d been originally promised to. Had she known who the Primale would turn out to be, however, she would have checked the rows of red leather volumes for the ones on Phury, son of Ahgony.

The Primale paused at the head of the hall of statues. “What do you do when a Brother dies?” he asked. “With his books?”

“One of the scribes marks any vacant pages with a black chrih symbol, and the date is noted on the front page of the first volume. There are ceremonies, as well. We performed them for Darius and we wait . . . with regard to Tohrment, son of Hharm.”

He nodded once and walked forward, as if they had discussed nothing of particular import.

“Why for do you ask?” she said.

There was a pause. “These statues are all from the Greco-Roman period.”

Cormia drew the lapels of her robing more closely to her neck. “Are they.”

The Primale bypassed the first