Page 10 of Crimson Kingdom
Heir to Clan Bear
And there it was.
The last, ridiculous, inane reason I hadn’t been able to bring myself to accept any of the other marriage proposals, officially gone.
I heard Evander’s voice in my head, just as I had last night.What would you know of responsibility?
It was well past time to put that to rest.All of it.
Clearing my throat, I addressed the room again in a carefully neutral tone. “So, we’ll reply to Clan Elk. Tell Lord Theodore that he can come here where we can discuss the terms in person. If we can reach an agreement, we will...go forward on that front. Does that sound reasonable?”
I would have known I didn’t sound like myself even without the cautious expressions coming from my family.
My parents exchanged a look.
“It does,” Mamá said.
My father grunted what might have been an agreement, but probably wasn’t. “I want it made clear in no uncertain terms that Iiro is not to set foot in this kingdom. The boy can come with a contingent of no more than ten soldiers.” He glared at the offensive letter still sitting on the table. “And the same will go for Bear.”
Just like that, my life was thrown off kilter all over again by the kingdom of Socair.
CHAPTERFIVE
The next two weeks passed in a slow cycle of sleepless nights and days spent in the council rooms discussing each new wave of unrest that washed through the kingdom.
The people were growing restless, and calls for war or retaliation sounded in every corner of Lochlann.
They had even taken to protesting outside of the castle walls and declaring their thoughts on the matter during the days my family held court.
I wasn’t sure which was worse. The sympathetic looks from those who considered me a delicate, innocent victim in all of this, and the way they wanted to use me as their banner child to go to war.
Or the accusing glares from those who didn’t want to go to war, those who knew I had played a role, however unintentionally, in pushing us toward it.
Either way, it was clearer each day that I had made the right decision in inviting Theo to come.
As soon as I was dismissed from the council meetings, I headed straight to the sparring rooms to work off all of the tension I’d acquired there.
I barely noticed the way the movements tugged at my scars these days. Ever since that day with Avani, I had pushed myself harder and harder until I couldn’t feel them any more.
Even my sister couldn’t say that I was still babying them.
If I wasn’t training, I often found myself in the nursery with my youngest sister. It was a calm reprieve from a castle full of expectations and realities I would just as soon not think about.
Auntie Clara smiled when I came in today, happily relinquishing Ellie to me while she found something else to do for Mamá. Sometimes she stayed to visit, but she seemed to sense that I needed space today.
“Wo!” Ellie yelled her version of my name as I spun her around before pulling her in for a hug.
I held her tightly, breathing in her scent of lilacs and fresh powder and sunshine. At least that hadn’t changed, even if everything else about her had. When I left, she had been a crawling, toothless baby, and now she toddled around with a mouth full of teeth.
She giggled as my hair tickled her face, wrapping her tiny fists around my curls.
“You don’t judge me, do you Elspeth?” I asked wryly, and her grin widened.
She shook her head, her deep red waves swaying with the motion. Of all of my siblings, her hair was the darkest, and instead of the green eyes the rest of us had, hers were the same striking shade of amber as Uncle Finn’s.
I walked her around the room, moving toward the glass doors that led to the balcony and looking out at the Masach Mountains in the distance. Ellie didn’t seem to care about them and instead devolved into another fit of giggles at the fistful of my curls she was holding.
It was nearly impossible to be in a bad mood when I held her, even as I stared hard enough at the snow-covered peaks that I almost believed I could see to the other side of them.