I have a girlfriend, I reminded myself as my heart began to thud at the clearly flirtatious attentions that I receiving from this young woman. Then I paused - did I? Regina was a young human woman in service to my brother whom I had, at various times recently, had very consensual intercourse with. Pleased, Morningstar had encouraged the match and Regina and I had arranged an arrangement of sorts, but no words of 'girlfriend’ or 'boyfriend’ had actually been mentioned. And where we stood in terms of our mogonomy … I came from a family where sisters had mated with brothers, but then, at the beginning of the world, there had been nothing else. Only us, and the Old Gods. And what other personalities existed to near the start.

Monogamy had never been strict amongst my family, my world in the depths of Rahl, or here. Indeed, I had delighted in the pleasures of the flesh, but never in a way where it was known we would be true to only one another. My last relationship … well.

I shifted slightly, gazing into Kora’s eyes as she looked into mine. The finger slipped away and I let the rag fall to the countertop. There was a small thump and a mug of beer appeared by my shoulder, but I did not touch it, nor pay attention to the bemused barmaid. Instead I laid my hand on the bar, resting my long fingers pointing towards hers and I spoke.

“So, what do you do so late out? You look barely older than my daughter.”

My daughter. That sounded weird. And yes, my daughter was approaching fifty, but she was half demon, half primordial, which meant she had stopped aging at maturity. She looked permanently eighteen. Beautiful and young, full of life and now away from her threat of her father (the non-biological one) who might as well have kept her in a cage she was so naïve about the real world.

She had got confused over what a common donkey was.