Miguel beckoned to someone standing beyond the panel. "My daughter," he said to Kesley. "The Lady Narella."

No one appeared. Miguel scowled and reached through the open panel. He yanked—and The Lady Narella appeared.

"Oh," Kesley said.

Narella was quite a woman.

She stood with her hands on her hips, smoky, violet-hued eyes blazing in defiance of Kesley and even of Miguel. She was making it clear that she was no one's pawn, not to be bandied about.

Narella wore an ermine wrap, and a low-cut tunic that clung tightly to her high breasts and lean form. She was a tall girl with wide hips and shoulders. Dark hair fell loosely about her face; she wore the diamond-encrusted tiara of a Ducal Princess, and her full lips were bright with a fluorescing cosmetic of some sort. Here and there—on her forehead above the left eyebrow, on her right cheek, on the creamy flesh where the base of her throat swelled into rising breasts—she wore a scintillating dab of brightness, a dot of some chemical that glittered radiantly from its own inner light.

Kesley had never seen a royal woman before. Strangely, or not so strangely, he felt all the reverence for her that he had failed to feel in the presence of the Immortal alone. Had Miguel not been there, he probably would have knelt despite himself and begged to kiss the tip of her cloak.

"Is this the man, sire?" she asked. Her voice was a fit complement to her body, deep and warm, throbbing and throaty.

"It is," Miguel said. "Dale Kesley—the Lady Narella."

"Hello," she said coldly.

A muscle quivered in Kesley's cheek. He nodded curtly to the girl. "Hello."

She ignored him and turned to Miguel. "Is this the man to whom you're selling me, sire?"

Miguel grimaced. "You wound me, girl. I'll leave the two of you together to talk."

"No!" she said imperiously, but it was too late. Miguel, with an enigmatic smile, had bowed and stepped backward into the waiting elevator. The panel slid shut. The wall was once again unbroken.

Slowly, she turned to face Kesley. "I won't have any part of this! I don't belong to Miguel! He can't give me away like this—to a commoner!"

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