“No, but—”

“They are sore afraid,” he said, cutting across her words. “There are few of them left—no doubt from persecution. Clearly it has softened their thinking and made them weak.”

“Fear is always the greatest enemy,” Alexeika said. “Or so my father always told me.”

“Your father,” Dain said grimly, “was wise.”

“Sire, you won’t—I mean, you really don’t intend to draw this lady’s poison into yourself, do you?”

He looked away, staring into the blackness of the forest with his heart still on fire. Never, since Thia’s death, could he remember feeling so bleak inside.  “No,” he said curtly.