“But what if a warrior’s life-mate is taken? Must he wait months to get her back if Challen retaliates only twice a year?”

“He can go alone to retrieve her, or buy her back. Or he can wait, since there are others to take her place, there being no lack of available women in Sha-Ka-Ra.”

“I would have to ask,” Tedra said in disgust. “Now what was that about the dhaya juice?”

“It is taken for raiding so a warrior will not lose himself in the lust of the moment and do harm to a woman. It is what a warrior takes when he goes off for many rises to hunt, so he will not be distracted by thoughts of a woman. It is what a warrior will take if he journeys far from his own woman and wishes to be tempted by no other. And it is what a warrior will take if he must punish his own woman.”

“Just what is it supposed to do for these mighty warriors, particularly in the matter of punishment?” Tedra asked in a barely controlled tone, afraid she knew, but to be fair, she had to be sure.

“Think you a warrior could bring you to your need without it?” Jalla grinned, missing the signs of the explosion about to take place. “Warriors are too lusty for that. The juice removes all desire, no matter the stimulation or provocation. It gives a warrior the control he would lack did he try to punish a woman in that way without it.”

Control? Whammo! That farden liar! That farden braggart! A warrior’s control? A dose of impotency was more like it!

Tedra let loose with a screech of fury and a string of invectives a mile long. By the time she was done, she’d cursed the barbarian in seventy-nine languages, but felt not one bit better for it. And then she recalled the day she had met him, and how it had driven her nuts wondering when he would breach her, all the way up until she slept, unbreached. And the remark by that warrior about her capture being a waste while hunting. It had been a joke among them all, one she finally understood, and she cursed the barbarian some more.

When she finally noticed Jalla staring at her in wide-eyed alarm, she calmed down, but only long enough to ask, “Does dhaya juice work on women the same way?”

“I do not know, mistress. For what reason would a woman need to take it?”

“What reason, indeed.” Tedra smiled.

“What have you done to the shodan now, woman?”

Tedra turned around on the balcony, where she had been waiting unconsciously for a glimpse of Challen as he departed on his journey that morning. Tamiron stood in one of the arched doorways, doing nothing to conceal a strong vexation, and by the sound of it, his irritation was with her.

“Aren’t you supposed to knock or something before entering this chamber?”

“That was done, repeatedly.”

“Oh, well, I’ve got a lot on my mind, so I probably didn’t hear-or you just weren’t knocking loud enough. What was it you wanted to know?”

He did not like her nonchalance. In fact, his teeth likely lost their sharp edges, they were ground together so hard.

“I was just informed that my friend passed the darkness with a bottle of yavarna,” he gritted out. “If that was not strange enough, he has also called off his trip. He sits and stares at nothing, and will answer only when prodded. He-”

“I get the picture, warrior. It’s called depression.”

“I care not if it has a name. I wish to know its cause.”

“And naturally you think I’m the cause?”

He didn’t mince words, but came out with a resounding “Yes,” his expression daring her to deny it.

Tedra shrugged to show an indifference she wasn’t actually feeling. Her memories of last night were mostly vague around the edges, but those she did have weren’t pleasant. What she had wanted to happen had happened. But Challen’s expression, when he finally realized she had absolutely no desire for him, almost killed her. If that was supposed to be getting even, it had backfired in the worst way. And yet she was justified in what she’d done. So feeling bad about it was annoying, to say the least. It put her on the defensive as nothing else could.

“You want to know what I did?” She glared at the warrior. “Well, all I did was take some of your dhaya juice. Of course, I didn’t bother to tell Challen that, any more than he ever saw fit to inform me of the help he was getting to resist me. He, in fact, let me think the control it gave him was all his own. He lied to me!”

“Lied, when every woman knows the use of dhaya? He but teased you, assuming you would know he teased. It is a common joke that a warrior will claim dhaya control as his own. It tells a woman that he has not the power to resist her without it.”

“And she’s supposed to feel complimented, I suppose? Give me a break, warrior. There is no compliment that can make that kind of punishment easier to take.”

“For you, but you are not Kan-is-Tran.”

“No, I’m Kystrani, and I’d never heard of your farden dhaya juice. And I won’t apologize for what I did. If you men can make use of that stuff, you deserve to find out what it’s like being on the receiving end of it at least once.”

“So you thought to punish me?”

Tedra turned toward the new voice, to find that Challen had quietly come to stand in another archway. Her chin went up, her defenses rising even more, especially since he wasn’t trying to hide his displeasure with her any more than Tamiron had.

“Now how do you figure that?” she demanded, coming to stand in front of him. “All I did was give you a taste of indifference, the same kind you gave me the day we met. That can’t be construed as punishment no matter how you look at it, for the simple reason that there’s no comparison. Indifference for you turns off the whole farden machine, so nothing can be done. For me, it merely turns the motors down. But that doesn’t prevent you from still having fun, does it?”

“This I would not do to you.”

She knew it. Deep down, she’d known it all along, that he’d never make love to her unless she wanted him to. So in a way she had actually punished him, and he had every right to be angry about it, was angry about it. He’d also spent the night thinking she didn’t want him anymore, and that was what was choking her up inside.

“I will not feel guilty about this! I won’t! You let me think you were an emotionless, inhuman jerk, with the ability to turn off your feelings at the blink of an eye. So you got a little tit for tat, and the operative word is ‘little.’ You weren’t made to cry or plead like I was. I didn’t even try to turn you on. So what’s the farden big deal?”

“You feel no remorse at all?”

“I’m not apologizing, if that’s what you mean,” she maintained stubbornly.

“Then there is no more to say here.”

He turned away, leaving her with the guilt she’d denied, leaving her to suffer because she was too proud to admit she might have done wrong, especially if his control claiming had been only teasing, as Tamiron had suggested. He turned away, when he could have forced her to say she was sorry, forced the guilt out of her like he forced her to do everything else around here. But not this time. No, when she wanted him to force her, he played Kystrani and gave her rights and courtesies that she couldn’t care less about at the moment.

Tedra’s reaction to that was pure impulse. She attacked. The running leap put her in position, the neck hold was secure. With the momentum gained, the barbarian should have gone crashing to the floor, and she would have skillfully rolled out of the way. Of course, nothing was going right for her this morning, and this was no exception. Despite there being no warning, despite the perfect execution of the move, Challen wasn’t budged, and the momentum gained ended up carrying Tedra right over his shoulder.