In her suite, Aetha stared at her bed. There Eiri’el slept, drenched in sweat and blood, shifting in fits as thinly gray servants fussed over her. Aetha watched every twitch of Eiri’els body, listened carefully to how the woman groaned as she writhed. To the man standing beside her, Aetha said, “Observation done, then?”

The man responded in the slow accent of Revan. “Done for now, yes.”

Aetha stood and commanded the servants, “Eiri’el is to be bathed, changed, and made comfortable. Bring the blood of our best omnivates so she can drink if she awakens.” The servants gasped and looked up, helpless creatures in yellow silks, their pale eyes remembering the carnage they’d witness in the pre-dawn morning as Eiri’el had torn hungrily through the palace. Aetha grumbled at them, “Do not hesitate out of fear of Eiri’el. Her hunger has subsided, but I’ve yet to drink today.”

Turning her back on the bed as the servants began their work, Aetha snapped at the man from Revan, “We will speak in the hall.” There, the sun was high. Time had moved with disorienting swiftness once Eiri’el had finally collapsed, while the royal physicians had debated with the phlebotomists about the nature of the blood Eiri’el had ingested, about the nature of her illness. Aetha despised the helplessness of her own kingdom’s experts. It had taken too long for Quil to arrive with a different suggestion: this foreign physician, a man from Revan, one of their golems.

The glass man, a termins, followed Aetha into the hallway. He was made of a green-hued glass, transparent as a sculpture and clicking when he walked. His voice echoed inside the hollow shell of his body. “Thank you for your patience. I know that was uncomfortable, but I did need to see her personally.”

“You are not the source of my frustration,” Aetha snapped. Quil awaited them in the hallway, leaning lazily against the wall and sighing when Aetha turned a glare at him and accused, “My huntmaster waited entirely too long to inform me that a dignitary from Revan had entered the palace.”

“Hardly a dignitary,” Quil muttered, “I’d asked him here to help purify plagued blood.”

“You’ll show greater respect for the termins of Revan from now on,” Aetha commanded. “Each represents King Hysmal himself, as far as I’m concerned.”

Quil nodded. “Yes, my queen.”

“I appreciate it, but I do not desire King Hysmal’s voice. He’s no physician. I must speak as myself.” The green-glass termins paced to the window, standing there with light refracting through his body. He had been crafted – or at some point taken the form of – an anthral woman of the littorn carnivate breed, walking on long, clawed toes and crossing spiked arms over his narrow torso. The form had no bearing on his identity. He may be a glass sculpture of an anthral woman, but termins were universally male, their forms changing to their liking each time they shattered and reformed. If he chose, he could one day reincarnate in the shape of a completely different creature.

Perhaps because he could not be killed or truly hurt in any way, the termins spoke to Aetha with a kind of blunt honesty seldom directed at the queen of the sanguinates. “What kind of anthral is Eiri’el? An omnivate, of some kind, by her looks.”

“Both our mother and father were descended from sollin carnivates. Four generations ago our family was gilt-furred,” Aetha looked at the skin of her pale arm. “Lost that along the way, but kept the scarlet hair.”

“It’s becoming of sanguinate royalty,” the termins said. “Forgive the question, but given her constitution, I need to wonder: is she inbred?”

Scoffing in disgust, Aetha snapped, “No. She and I are true blood siblings, pure sanguinates from the lines of Al’ain and Al’oth.”

“Then why does she look so unlike you? Has she been drinking of plagued blood?”

“Her diet is immaculate!” Aetha said in some offense. She shook her head and put her hands on her hips, glaring off at nothing. “I would never speak ill of the past kings and queens of Al’ain, but my parents made certain decisions. It was right after Eiri’el’s birth that the blood plagues multiplied and rationing began. I was the elder sibling, so all her blood was allocated to me and she was given nothing, starved like a pauper. I was forbidden to share, but hunted on her behalf. Gave from my own veins sometimes. Eiri’el drank too much of tainted blood and animals when she was a child.”

“I see.” The termins ran a glass claw over his glass cheek, the gesture eliciting a screeching sound. “I have spoken to your royal physicians. It’s their opinion that Eiri’el’s weakness is irreversible.”

“If I were interested in their outdated opinions I would not have asked a foreign physician to see her.” Aetha snarled. “And they’re clearly wrong. One meal of blood from a proper beast gave her enough strength to-“

“You cannot cure a lifetime of weakness with a few meals from a monster. Especially with such side-effects as the violent madness she experienced and the illness that now takes her.”

Aetha narrowed her red eyes at the termins. “The madness was no side-effect. It is the right of a ruler to do with her subjects she pleases. Your king would agree, despite his façade of peace.”

The termins was quiet at that. His eyes did not show much expression, just curves of jade glass that morphed strangely as he pondered. He seemed to stare at her, though. Aetha considered testing his immortality by shattering him.

Instead she said, “Eiri’el’s current fits are the withdrawals of her body’s strength. I’m sure of it. If she had a steady enough supply of the beast’s blood, she could live in all of the might I glimpsed and would not need to experience this pain.”

“Then you,” the termins said dubiously, “Will want me to examine the blood of the beast. The way you described it, the thing might be some kind of anthral. Your own physicians cleared it of plagues, but there are subtler diseases and abnormalities that a more experienced eye will see, and my experience outweighs theirs by several lifetimes.”

“Yes.” But the blood was gone, used up or spilled in the night. And the beast had fled. Aetha eyed Quil. “Get Kan and bring him to me. You know what we must do.”

Quil almost smirked as he inclined his head. “I live to hunt in your name, Prime Sanguinate.”