our defects?” She cracked her whip against her thigh and grinned at their spellbound faces. “By mating me with the haughtiest of men, they forced me to confront my own awful flaws!”

“How did you persuade Shaardul to outlaw human sacrifice?” Ikshula asked.

Inanna’s amethyst eyes glowed “Not just human sacrifice, sweetling, but also the burning of a tantrika every thirty-sixth moon—which the Council had dared to consecrate as a day of public celebration. The noble who had pushed that bestial law through generations ago loathed our kind—the tantrika he’d panted after left him for a chariot driver after her seven-year term and the small-minded jackal could never forgive her. Although the High Tantrika was exempt from that ghastly lottery, I fought fo...

Please subscribe to keep reading.