“Please give me a reason,” she said, aching to cause him pain.

“Don’t hurt me,” he whispered.

“Why not? You hurt her.”

“I didn’t! That was Will!”

Kett shook her head. “And now you’re ratting out your friends. Seriously, kid, you’re a waste of space.” A movement to her left caught her attention, and the gleam of amber eyes flashed in the darkness. A lion, nearly five feet tall at the withers. Dark’s Nasc twin.

Kett smiled. “Relax, kid. I ain’t gonna hurt you,” she said.

The kid relaxed.

“But he might,” Kett added, and Dark stepped into vision.

Willifus peed his pants.

“Excellent,” Kett said. “Let her go.”

The kid did as he was told, and the girl ran to hide behind Kett as Dark swatted the boy with one huge paw, knocking him to the ground and holding him there as footsteps sounded on the terrace.

“Kett, Kett, Kett,” Bael said, surveying the scene as he sauntered down the nearest set of steps toward her. “You really know how to make a party go off.”

“Yes, and thanks for your backup,” she snapped, as guests crowded onto the terrace, all of them looking down at her and whispering.

“What do you call that?” Bael gestured to the wolf, who was sprawled across the apparently unconscious body of the swordsman. He gave her a doggy grin.

“That’s you?”

“That’s Var. My twin. You didn’t think I was going to rush off for help and leave you without backup, did you?”

Baelvar. Man and wolf. Somehow, that didn’t seem quite right.

On the terrace stood Kett’s father, shaking his head at her, and then Tane was pushing his way through. When he caught sight of the shivering girl trying to hold her dress together, he cried, “Giselle!” and leapt to the grass.

Of course she has a name like Giselle, Kett thought sourly as the girl moved out from behind her, into Tane’s arms. Beautiful, lissome girls like her were never called Agnes or Doris.

She even cried prettily, clinging to Tane as he draped his jacket around her and stroked her glossy hair.

“Are you all right?” he asked tenderly, looking down at her, and she nodded tearfully. Kett bit her lip, because her brother had clearly seen the scratches on Giselle’s exposed breast and now appeared to be trying to work out whether mentioning it would be helpful, or if he was going to get a slap for noticing her bare breast in the first place.

“Go and take her to Nuala,” Kett said, because her unflappable stepmother was, in addition to being a princess, a qualified doctor, and Tane nodded and steered the fragile Giselle away.

“Thank you,” he called back to Kett, who nodded, surprised to be on the receiving end of anyone’s gratitude, and Giselle stopped, ran back to Kett and threw her arms around her.

“Thank you,” she sobbed. “You saved my life.”

Kett, who still had hold of the whimpering Willifus, looked down at the girl with slight distaste, which made Bael and her father laugh.

“Yeah, well, get Tane to teach you some self-defense, yeah?”

Giselle nodded and went back to Tane, who received her as if she was something precious, and Kett felt a pang because no one had ever looked at her like that, and nor were they likely to if she was the one standing there holding a youth who’d just pissed himself.

“Ain’t ever dull with you around,” Tyrnan called down, and she scowled at him as Willifus looked up and recognized his host.

“Sir!” he cried, and Kett rolled her eyes. Was it inbreeding, she wondered, or was the kid just destined to be thick? “My lord, this…harpy assaulted me!”

“No she didn’t,” Bael said. “She kicked your ass.”

“And that harpy,” Tyrnan said, hands in his pockets, “happens to be my daughter.”

This time Kett swore the wolf laughed.

“Where the hell is Tanner?” Tyrnan said, looking around. “I swear to gods, why the hell do I bother to invite the captain of the guard?”

“He got called back to the ngardaí,” said a young man with a garda badge, muscling his way through the crowd. Kett figured he was Eithne’s boyfriend Verrick. “I’ll take them.”

Tyrnan wavered. On the one hand, he didn’t approve of Eithne having a boyfriend, even if he was a garda. On the other, he clearly didn’t approve of Willifus being present at his party.

He pulled a set of handcuffs from his pocket and handed them to the young garda, who took them wordlessly and leapt down to cuff Willifus’ wrists, ignoring his protests that it was inhumane to cuff an injured man.

“Should have thought about that before you ripped her dress,” Kett said. “Your mate with the sword, he got a permit for it?”

“He doesn’t need one,” Willifus said. “His father is Lord-”

“Don’t give a fuck who his father is,” Kett said. “He still needs a permit.”

“I’m going to need a coach or a cart, and some rope, unless anyone has any more handcuffs on them,” said Verrick.

“Sure,” Bael said, taking a set out of his pocket, and Kett tried not to stare. “I guess we’ll have to improvise later, sweetheart.”

Kett was glad it was dark, because she didn’t think she’d ever live it down if she blushed.

She pinched the bridge of her nose, her headache back again, and thought wistfully about the screaming hot sex she should have been having. Catching Bael’s eye, she wished, just for a split second, that she could fold herself into his arms and be held, like Tane had held Giselle, but that was stupid because no one had ever held Kett like that in her life. And anyway, it was pathetic, needing to be rescued like that. She could take care of herself.

And besides. She didn’t want Bael to hold her. She was supposed to be distancing herself from him.

“Oh now, this just isn’t fair,” came Chance’s voice from the terrace. She appeared with the light behind her, lending her lovely features an angelic glow, and withdrew from her bag a set of handcuffs. “Nobody told me the real party was out here.”

Kett caught the handcuffs and stared at them. “Am I the only person here who doesn’t carry these around with me?”

Wisely, no one responded. Kett cuffed the last of the boys and handed him into the carriage that had been brought ’round as Verrick climbed up into the driver’s seat.

Chance, her pretty nose wrinkling as she regarded the boys who’d attacked Giselle, glided to Kett’s side and murmured, “Can I have a word, darling? In the house. Private business.”

Kett nodded wearily and started toward the house, then stopped, swore and turned back to Bael. “Private business” was probably going to involve talking about Koskwim, and she couldn’t let him in on that. There were heads of state who didn’t know about the Order-she couldn’t tell one feckless Nasc about it.

“Bael,” she said, and he turned to her, handsome in the darkness. “Will you go with Verrick to the Free Hospital and keep an eye on these three until he gets someone else in to chaperone them?”

Bael narrowed his eyes and she was sure he was going to protest, but then he surprised her by nodding easily. “Sure, sweetheart. I’ll see you later. Are you okay?”

“Five by five,” she said automatically.

He kissed her cheek, which stunned her into silence, and hopped up onto the seat beside Verrick. Var leapt into the coach, Bael reached back and shut the door, and a whimper came from inside.

“Don’t, you know, kill anyone,” Kett said, and he just laughed.

Feeling suddenly very tired, Kett trekked back up to the terrace, cutting ’round past the ballroom and entering one of the salons flanking it. Chance caught up to her, Dark padding along beside her with his tail swishing.

“Tane’s girlfriend’s very pretty,” she said, and Kett tried to remind herself that this was no reason to hate the girl. “Pity she doesn’t seem to have a clue about defending herself. Perhaps you and I can give her a few lessons?”

Kett shrugged and led them into what Nuala was probably calling the Slightly Purple Drawing Room. As she was closing the door behind herself, it swung open again and she spun to see Striker, striding into the room and sneering at everyone.