“I would have killed her first,” Dillon said grimly.

“I told Duke Tullio. He was honestly shocked, and I believe him innocent in this plot. I suspect it is his sister and her daughter who are ambitious. Sapphira was quite bold. When I ordered her from your bed she refused, saying she meant to be your wife. I used magic to send her back to Beldane. And the first liquid to touch her lips this morning will cause a rather unpleasant rash that will affect the skin upon her face for several days with small blue bumps. It won’t kill her,” Lara said, “but the itching will be very discomfiting. I hope she doesn’t scratch those little blue bumps for if she does they will open, and another bump will form immediately atop the first. I trust Sapphira of Beldane has learned a lesson.”

“And what lesson would that be, Mother?” Dillon asked mischievously.

“Not to defy a faerie woman, my darling,” Lara told him with a grin. “Now, if you are quite finished with your breakfast you must go out to once again seek your queen. I know that Cinnia has not given up hope that you will find her.”

AND CINNIA HAD NOT. But as each day passed it grew harder and harder to believe that she would be found and rescued. She lived in a world of almost total silence. The other wives had taken her into the garden of the castle. It was an odd place with plantings such as she had never seen. Great leaves both broad and narrow in all shades of green, purple and red grew. They were neither trees nor bushes. She saw no beds of flowers or herbs. And the air was moist and warm. Strangest of all there were no birds or butterflies or insects of any kind. Above her the sky appeared to ripple with shades of blues, greens and grays. There was light, but she could see no sun or stars, nor could she see Belmair’s two moons except in reflection upon the sky. Finally she grew curious.

“Where are we?” she asked Arlais as they strolled the gardens one afternoon. “And do not, I beg you say, Yafirdom. Just where is Yafirdom?”

“Beneath the seas of Belmair,” Arlais answered, surprising Cinnia, for previously she had always offered only the most vague of replies. “The castle exists within a bubble as do the villages and great homes. The Yafir have lived here in safety for centuries. When they decided not to accept Napier IX’s ultimatum they looked about for a place where they believed no one could find them, and decided that the lands beneath the sea was their answer. Belmairans do not utilize their sea a great deal. They travel upon it, and they fish locally here and there. But they never venture out into the deep.”

“Then your sky is actually the sea above us,” Cinnia said slowly.

Arlais nodded. “Aye,” she said.

“What a perfectly clever solution,” Cinnia noted admiringly. And then she realized with a sinking heart that it was unlikely she would ever be found.

“There are, of course, entrances into our world from the surface. The sea caves on the northwest side of Belia are isolated and deserted. Our men come and go through them when they bring new females to us. They put them in a bubble, and then travel to wherever they wish to go.”

“I do not recall being in a bubble,” Cinnia remarked.

“Of course you do not,” Arlais laughed. “It would be much too frightening a trip for you. You were put to sleep for your travels. When you awoke you were here.”

“Why have you returned some women? And why were they old? And why could they recall nothing of where they had been?” Cinnia queried the woman she considered Ahura Mazda’s senior wife.

“Women who are taken from Belmair and do not conceive children for their Yafir husbands may be sent to the Mating Market where they are purchased by other men seeking to have children. Sometimes a woman’s secret garden will not accept the seed of one man, but will accept that of another. And we do not waste women here having taken them from their other lives. But now and again, no matter how many men mate a particular woman she simply does not conceive. Those women are returned to Belmair. Of course many, many years will pass before that is done, and when returned the women revert to their natural state and actual age. I have known a few women who have been mated for over twenty-five years before conceiving. But sometimes a man will keep an infertile woman because he has become fond of her.” Arlais smiled. “Our husband hopes for a daughter from you. You have been with us for four months now, but you show no signs of being with child. He is disappointed, but not discouraged.”

No, he was not discouraged. Ahura Mazda, while having returned to spending the night with each of his wives in turn, was nonetheless taking Cinnia aside at least once each day, mounting her and filling her with his seed. She bore his attentions, ashamed of herself for enjoying the pleasures she took with him, but in light of what Arlais had told her Cinnia was beginning to accept the fact that it was unlikely Dillon would find her. His magic was great, but it was obviously not great enough to learn where she was being hidden. Cinnia knew, too, that Belmair would never again accept her as their queen. She had seen and heard of the few women who had been returned. Some had been shunned and forced from their villages by their own families by those who had been their friends. The stronger of them survived, and the weak died alone.

“Has no woman ever escaped from Yafirdom?” Cinnia asked Arlais.

“A few have tried,” Arlais admitted. “But they have died in the sea. The bubble transports can only be powered by magic, and we mortals have no magic. Most never even reach the bubbles. They are caught, and thrust into the waters to drown as a warning to any other women foolish enough to attempt flight.”

“A cruel death,” Cinnia remarked.

“Indeed it is,” Arlais agreed in her soft voice. “Here in Yafirdom everything a woman could want is supplied for her, given to her. Why would you want to be anywhere else? Most Belmairan women understand that once taken by the Yafir there is no going back. And ours is a peaceful world. Eventually we will return to the land, and Belmair will be ours forever then. Ahura Mazda says it will not be long now.”

Ahura Mazda, Cinnia thought. A most complex and intense man. He was a strange combination of both love and danger. His other wives adored him with slavish devotion. He was oddly kind, yet Cinnia knew if she crossed him he would turn deadly. And she was not like his other wives. Arlais and Minau had come from noble families. Volupia was a merchant’s daughter from Beltran. Orea and Tyne were farmer’s daughters. All had been raised to accept without question the decisions made by their men. Cinnia knew she was not like that. Her father had been king of Belmair. The dragon, Nidhug, had raised the king’s daughter to think for herself and to use magic.

Cinnia found it difficult to accept that she would never again be Belmair’s queen. That she would never again lay in Dillon’s arms. But she was now imprisoned beneath Belmair’s sea in a world contained within a magical bubble. Arlais had told her that it took every bit of the Yafir’s magic to sustain their hidden world. And there was really no escape. If by some miracle she could learn where the bubble boats were kept, where would she go? She was beneath the sea. But where beneath the sea? Off some coast? Which coast? Or deep in the very middle of the sea? She didn’t know, but now she understood why no woman ever escaped from Yafirdom.

Cinnia knew that she had two choices. She could accept her plight and begin to make a new life for herself here beneath the sea. Or she could do the honorable Belmairan thing and kill herself having now been soiled by her captor. Cinnia looked about her new world. She socialized with other women outside of the castle when she went out with the others. She saw no misery. No unhappiness. Everywhere she looked Cinnia saw women leading normal lives, keeping their homes, raising their children. Women who obviously loved, or at least liked and respected their Yafir husbands. These women had made peace with themselves and the Yafir. But had they loved their Belmairan husbands and young men as she loved Dillon?

“What are you thinking?” Ahura Mazda came into her bedchamber where Cinnia had been deep in thought. He joined her on the bed, kissing her lips tenderly. “You look both pensive and perhaps a bit sad, my precious.”

Cinnia looked into his aquamarine-blue eyes, and then she spoke honestly to him of her thoughts. She concluded, saying, “If you took me back now I believe I would go.”

“You probably would,” he agreed, “but you would not be accepted ever again by Belmair, and surely have admitted that to yourself, I know. I will tell you now, Cinnia, for as you know I have access to your former world, that the king argues with the dukes that he will have none but you as his wife and his queen. But having accepted the responsibility of Belmair he cannot leave it now except in death,” Ahura Mazda reminded her. “King Dillon’s powers are greater than mine, it is true. But unless he can find Yafirdom, his powers are useless against us though he summons me and I must obey.

“In the end the dukes will gain their way. And even the dragon will finally agree that the king must remarry and take a new queen. If your king did not know what he knows, he would eschew his oath and depart Belmair with a broken heart. But Dillon of Shunnar knows that I but await the day when I may take Belmair for myself and my people. He will never give it to me, Cinnia. He will fight to the death before he releases his hold on Belmair. I but await that day, my precious.”

“I could end this by killing myself,” Cinnia told the Yafir lord.

“Oh, my beautiful love, do not, I beg you, take your own life!” Ahura Mazda said passionately to her. “Is this world into which I have brought you so terrible? Am I so displeasing as a lover then that you would sooner die than be here with me?”

Cinnia sighed. “You are handsome,” she admitted softly. “And you are kind.”

“How could I be unkind to the one chosen by me at her birth?” he asked her.

“You took me from all I loved!” Cinnia sobbed, tears beginning to come.

“Love me, my precious! I have loved you forever,” he declared. “I was not presented with you in order to become a king. I chose you at your birth, and marked you as my own. You never belonged to Dillon of Shunnar, now king of Belmair. You have always belonged to me, Cinnia. You always will.” Then Ahura Mazda surprised her by conjuring a small, sharp knife into his hand. He handed it to her. “Open your veins, and mine, Cinnia. If you would die then so will I, by your side, in your arms!”

She stared at the little knife with its well-honed silver blade that reflected the light from the flames in her hearth. When he turned his arm, and held it out to her, the blue veins visible, Cinnia shrank back. “I cannot!” she cried out, flinging the knife from her.

Ahura Mazda gathered her into his arms. “You are mine,” he said, “and once you declared it to me yourself. I do not think you meant it then, however. You but said it in the throes of your passion.” He kissed the top of her head. “I hope that one day soon you will say those words to me again, and mean them, my precious.”

“I don’t know if I can,” she admitted candidly as she listened to his heart beating beneath her ear. Cinnia sighed to herself. The problem with being an educated woman of magic was that you had great difficulty accepting your place in a man’s world. It was far easier for all those other stolen women to accept having been taken from their men. They were accepting of the fact that men were in charge. Those women were not used to, nor capable of making decisions. She was.

“What can I do to make you happy?” Ahura Mazda asked her.

“Bring me some earth and plants from Belmair,” Cinnia answered him. “I am a sorceress, my lord, but here I have no purpose. With earth and plants I can grow what I need to make my potions and salves. I have no children to care for, nor can I sit all day like the others beautifying myself for your delectation.”

“I do not know if I want you practicing your sorcery,” he told her.

“I am not like your wives,” Cinnia said.

“You are my wife,” he replied.

“One of six. The youngest. And assuredly the most bored,” Cinnia told him. “If you would have me happy then let me have a little apothecary. Bring me plants to grow.”

“Could you not weave?” he inquired.

“I could, but not all day. Besides, weaving does not require great concentration for me, and I will use the time to consider how I may outwit you,” Cinnia told him.

“You could make a tapestry for my hall,” he suggested.

“I could,” she agreed. “Another mindless task, my lord, that will cause me to resent you even further,” Cinnia told him. “Why are you afraid of my having a place where I may brew potions and make charms?”