Page 29 of Tarnished Crown
Now it was my turn to raise my eyebrows. “That’s hardly a secret. Why would you waste your one question on something Iiro already told you?”
He scrutinized me before responding with another infuriating shrug. “Humor me.”
“Apparently everything I do is already for little more than your humor,” I muttered.
He cleared his throat pointedly, and I sighed. Leaning against the railing of the ring, I gave him the truth, the blandest possible version of it. I even threw in one of the casual, arrogant shrugs he was so fond of giving me.
“My sister was grieving.” Which was a mild way to sayhadn’t left her room in months. “I thought a good bottle of vodka might lift her spirits.”
It was an awkward subject to broach, but Evander didn’t say any of the unhelpful sympathetic things people usually offered up.
In fact, he scoffed. Outright. “You agreed to answer honestly.”
“I...did answer honestly,” I hedged.
“Really?” His tone dripped with condescension. “So you couldn’t have, I don’t know, gotten her a different gift?”
“Vodka is her favorite drink,” I countered.
“What about sending someone?” he pushed. “Did you really need to accompany your guard?”
I narrowed my eyes. “And ask someone else to take that risk on my behalf?”
“And all of the other times you were in the tunnel? Were those for your sister, too?” He arched a disbelieving eyebrow.
Iiro must have mentioned that when he was recounting my story.
“Not all of them.” None of them, to be exact. We had gone twice to get a fancy jeweled egg for Davin’s lady friends, and several more times for vodka.
Evander nodded like he heard the part I hadn’t said aloud.
He stood up straighter. “So you were happy at the castle, before you left? Getting along with everyone?”
Memories of my last conversations with my family crept into my mind.Damn it, Rowan.Can ye not go five minutes without doing somethin’ stupid?
My mother, chastising me for not caring who I married.
Avani, refusing to leave the bed she had shared with Mac.
“My family is very close.” The words came out more quietly than I intended.
“That’s not what I asked,” he argued.
“Well.” I glanced away. “I already answered your one question.”
Evander made a humming sound in the back of his throat. “But not truthfully, so it doesn’t count.”
What are we, children?
“I think I would know that better than you do,” I snapped.
“Would you?” He let out a low, disbelieving laugh. “Because I’m not sure you and the truth are always on the best of terms.Ithink the truth lies somewhere in why a Lochlannian princess who grew up with everything at her fingertips decided to risk her life, on multiple occasions, for little more than a whim.”
He took a step toward me, and I took a step back in spite of myself, as much to escape him as the honesty he was hurling in my direction.
But he wasn’t finished.
“So tell me, Lemmikki, were you running away from something, or were you just thatbored?”