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"So your father's arranged for you and Ru to get married. That's fascinating," Burz rasped at Naaja.

He had waited until they were beyond Lyti's hearing, doing her a favor for reasons unfathomable. There was definitely a part of him that would have enjoyed calling attention to her lie and humiliating her in front of her stupid friend, but he hadn't done that. In hindsight he regretted his circumspection. She certainly didn't deserve it.

"When did you first find out? Like your friend, I am just dying to know everything." His inflection mimicked that of Naaja and her friends, but his rasping snarl of a voice turned the words sinister.

The commentary from Burz was not unexpected. Although he had not participated in her conversation, nor even stood close enough that she would have thought it possible to overhear, the fact that he had heard was no great surprise.

"Stop it," she said without any expectation that her words would have the slightest effect.

"You know perfectly well that I embellished the truth back there, but I'm going to make it right this very minute. By tomorrow morning the engagement will be official." She spoke with more confidence than she felt. Feigned cheerfulness and deliberate ignorance was the best way she had come up with to deal with Burz's venom.

Burz's sneer did not disappear in the face of Naaja's relentless cheerfulness. She had adapted to him, and he had adapted to her. It was a constant battle between them to find new ways to torment the other. He genuinely did not know why her father continued to subject her to him. Perhaps Njal didn't like his daughter as much as she thought he did.

"I'm certain your father will be delighted to broker an engagement between you and the lion who was nearly Aesir's son-in-law," he told her. "And that outlander blood will surely make him all the more appealing."

In fact, Burz was still undecided when it came to his feelings about Ru and his return. Nothing had really changed except that a thrall or two was made freeborn and the pride had a few new reavers, some of them female. He smirked. He'd forgotten to mention those.

"Oh, and he takes females viking. Your father will love how forward-thinking he is."

Inwardly Naaja cringed upon hearing Burz list all those reasons for her father to oppose the union. He couldn't have had that long to think of them, since she and Lyti had only discussed the matter a few short minutes ago. The ease with which he produced them was not encouraging, because her father would doubtless see all those reasons and more.

"Not that it's any of your business, but I'm not going to talk to my father. That wouldn't be at all proper. And you're right, he wouldn't see the benefits to the arrangement at first. I do appreciate all your helpful suggestions though.."

Helpful suggestions. That was how she would think of Burz's predictions. He was helpfully pointing out arguments that she would have to figure out how to counter when she proposed the match to Thorgrim.

"Let me offer you another one, then." His voice became as silky as it ever did, considering the damage he had deliberately inflicted on it in his youth. It was a clear warning that Naaja was not going to like what he said next. He paused to savor the moment, knowing it would undermine all of her future happiness in the unlikely event she did marry Ru.

"Ru was in love with Aesir's daughter Kazul. So in love that he undertook an impossible quest to be with her. With her gone, he may someday marry another, maybe even you, but he will always love her first and best, because their love never had a chance to grow sour and boring. You will always be competing with a ghost, and there is not a woman alive who could win that competition."

He couldn't wait to watch her response to that.

Burz was a thrall in name, but he carried himself as if he was the warlord. He did not respect her as his mistress or fear her father, no matter how often he was beaten, or how brutally. Always, there was an edge to his voice, nasty and hateful, when he spoke to her. Sometimes Naaja was a little afraid of him. She wasn't afraid of him now, but she didn't see how any of her friends could find him attractive, as several of them seemed to.

"How can you be so consistently hateful?" she asked, her facade crumpling when confronted with the scenario Burz presented. It was what he wanted her to do, and so she hated to do it, but he had found a soft spot she was previously unaware of. "My father could have killed you, you know. Exiles aren't of the pride, and when you were caught in the stronghold he could have killed you, but he spared you. You're lucky."

It was every bit as satisfying to watch Naaja's composure fail as Burz had hoped it would be. One of his nasty smiles curled his mouth. It was up for debate at this point whether the enthralled lion was capable of pleasure that didn't derive from someone else's suffering. Not that he had all that many opportunities to experience that sort of pleasure.

His pleasure immunized him against her attempt to make him feel...however she wanted him to feel about his life being spared in his youth. Grateful? Guilty? Whatever it was, she had tried that argument on him in the past to little effect. At this point her try only made him laugh. Or maybe he was laughing at her defeated question about why he was so consistently hateful.

"I'm as lucky to be alive as you would be to be betrothed to Ru," he said to her. "Imagine that: a lifetime bound to someone who doesn't love you. Only you'll dream that he'll change his mind or his feelings and somehow come to love you, which is far less likely to come true than my dream."

Don't ask about his dream, Naaja told herself firmly. Probably she could guess what it was anyway, without being told, and in that case there was no reason for her to ask. Hearing it would only hurt her more. It was pretty horrible to know that there was someone in the world who wanted to see her and her family die in horrible agony. Even if it was just one person, who was horrible himself. She knew she wasn't a detestable person, but that didn't change the way it felt to know Burz would happily kill her if he somehow figured out a way to do so that wouldn't put his family at risk.

"I think you underestimate how likable everyone else finds me," she said, forcing herself to be cheerful once more. Then she lied. "Besides, I would think you would be happy to see me married off to anyone at all. My father said he would release you of your bond to protect me when I wed, you know. You would just be a regular thrall in the pride, able to foment rebellion as much as you are able."

She was lying. Burz knew she was lying. He spent nearly every waking moment with her. If her father had ever said anything of the sort to her, Burz would have heard it. But nearly wasn't every. Perhaps in one of those few moments...no. She was lying, and trying to hurt him by offering her false hope.

"One day I will kill you," he reminded her. "And everyone you love. I will piss in your wounds while you live, and when I finally allow you to die I will defecate on your corpses and leave them to rot like carrion. You will know every kind of pain."

Suddenly he cut himself off, having realized where she was going. Thorgrim. Oh, that was almost clever of her. But he would have bet blood that he'd unsettled her pretty deeply with his last threat, so he merely offered her a grin and said, "Oh, look. We're here. Good luck."

While Burz spoke Naaja had turned her face away. It was a sign of weakness, but there was little point in hiding that from him. He saw her at her best and her worst, and he already knew that she could not bear to hear the things he dreamed of doing to her and her family. Just the same, she felt sick to her stomach hearing it, even though today's recitation lacked the gory detail he sometimes supplied. She thought she might actually be ill by the time he abruptly stopped speaking.

"Keep dreaming," she offered in weak rejoinder.

He was already melting into the background, however. Apparently he had determined that she would not need him as a guard while she was with Thorgrim. That was a blessing at least. That, and the fact that he kept his distance while she took a few moments to compose herself and do her best to dismiss the gorge that had risen in her throat. He had done this deliberately, the b*****d. Well, she wouldn't let him ruin her plans.