"But I must tell you, Hardan, before you—before we—leave the mountains. I was going to Lake Gron to meet my lover. He is a Consar, Serid Jern."
"Serid Jern!" snapped out Hardan. "That beak-nosed gray-haired old wastrel! You mean you—he was your lover?"
"But let me explain. It's not what you think. There is nothing wrong. He is a Consar and my father...."
"Enough." Hardan jerked her along by the arm. "I wish to hear no more about it. You are young and knew no better. When we reach Aba I will carry you away in the lawful manner."
Ylda's slight body stiffened and she pulled away from Hardan angrily. "Don't touch me again, ever!" she cried.
Hardan shrugged and headed off up the lake toward the stream that fed it. If the obstinate little sarif girl wanted to follow him let her. He had almost forgotten that he was born into an impoverished Consar family, these last few years, but now he remembered the vast social gulf between them. Yet he would gladly have given up his rank had Ylda agreed to mate with him.
And now she scorned him. It was as though she were the Consar and he the sarif. The months she must have spent with the priests and priestesses of Ung Roth and Zo Aldan had given her a false conception of a woman's place on Osar.
Let her have her soft-bellied old lover in Gron Lake. She'd get her fill of battling the half-dozen other sarif girls he'd collected there already....
Hardan's knuckles whitened on the handles of his swords, and he cursed all the Serid Jerns of the Wetlands.