"Aye, my father." She turned her eyes. "The messengers have departed to the mountains for the snows; the servants are cleaning. I have ordered the tables set in the crystal court, inside the hedge, and I have arranged for a band of dancers and musicians on the appointed day." "And the robe. You did not forget the new robe?" Lakkon smiled. Naia shook her head, her eyes dancing. "I am a woman," she replied. "The makers came at my summons to take my measure. It will be ready on the seventh day from this." "That is well," Prince Lakkon said. But he sighed. And suddenly Naia's face lost its light and grew sweetly brooding. She stretched out a rounded arm and touched him on the breast. "You are tired, my father," she spoke in almost crooning fashion, edging nearer to him. "The day with Uncle Jadgor has left you weary." "Aye, somewhat," Lakkon confessed. With a swift, yet powerful gesture, he reached out and swept her into his arms, drawing her against his massive chest and sinking his cheek to touch her golden hair. "Naia, my daughter, thou knowest that I love you well," he said. Croft quivered in his being. It seemed to him he was looking into Lakkon's heart and reading there all his lips held back--the fatherly love, the fatherly pain, attendant on that scene in Jadgor's apartment, where he had spent much of the day. It was that, he felt, inspired that sudden, almost hungry clasping of the girl's supple figure to the father's breast--that almost plaintive cry for her assurance of her faith in his love. But Naia seemed not to sense any deeper reason than the mere love between them expressed. Her red lips parted, and she laughed softly as she lay against him, lifting a hand to his gray-shot hair. "Know that you love me?" she repeated. "Think you I could doubt it? Did you not give me my life? Do we not love what we create--so long as it comes from ourselves?" She nestled her head in the hollow of his corded neck. Above that gold-crowned head the man's face worked. "We were happy the day of thy birth, thy mother and I," he said. And now it seemed that at last the woman sensed some trouble unexpressed in the mind of the man. Very gently she released herself and sat up on the padded cushion. Her almost purple eyes looked full into those of her parent. "Concerning what did you speak with Uncle Jadgor today?" "Concerning thee." Lakkon met the issue fairly now that it confronted him at last. "Concerning me?" To Croft every line of Naia's figure stiffened. "Aye." Prince Lakkon sat up. He spoke swiftly, briefly, and paused. Yet ere he paused he had fully outlined all King Jadgor planned. And while he spoke the eyes of the woman widened swiftly, as the iris stretched to leave her pupils deep wells of horror.