Page 38 of Obsidian Throne
“No.” My voice was quiet. “It wasn’t.”
“And that’s not even including the injuries themselves,” he reminded me.
Even if the entire wedding hadn’t seen her scars by now, Taras had helped me carry her to my rooms the day it happened. That was another image I would never get out of my head.
Rowan, chained to a post, the top half of her dress ripped away and blood pouring from the deep gashes in her pale, perfect skin.
“Can you honestly not see why the subject of flogging might have been too much for her to stay silent on?” he pushed.
I thought about the words she had hurled at me earlier, when I had been too angry to take them into account. Words liketorture.
The reminder that she almost died.
“You’ve made your point,” I said shortly.
“Good,” he said simply. “Then I’m going to get back to my own wife.”
We parted ways, and I continued down the hallway, trying to tame the whirlwind in my head before Rowan and her temper no doubt added to it.
CHAPTER TWENTY
ROWAN
Iwas pacing the room when Evander finally walked in.
He froze in the doorway, assessing me with an unusually hesitant expression.
I hated this. Fighting. Seeing that guarded look on his face instead of the open one he had been wearing this morning.
But even with everything Mila had said, I couldn’t quite shake this feeling of frustration. There was understanding too, though.
With a sigh, I went to the small bar and poured us both a glass of vodka, handing one out to him. He eyed it warily, but took it, his fingers lingering on mine long enough to steal my breath, in spite of everything.
Finally, he gestured to the chairs for us to sit.
We stared at each other for a long, tense moment, until I reluctantly broke the silence.
“I can acknowledge that I was, perhaps, not entirely in the right for speaking up in the council room today,” I muttered.
He raised his eyebrows, a hint of surprise showing on his features.
“You understand that it’s not that I want you to be silenced,” he said evenly.
“Yes and no,” I answered.
He started to argue, but I held a hand up to stop him. Taking a breath, I tried to explain.
“I do understand that your authority here is…”sexy, I thought irrationally, remembering our afternoon.
Judging by his raised eyebrow, he knew exactly what had crossed my mind. I hastened to go on.
“Necessary,” I finished. “And hard won. On the other hand... When I was going to marry Theo, I had resigned myself to a life of having no voice. I didn’t expect that here.”
Evander ran a hand through his hair, sighing. “I hear what you’re saying, but have you considered that this has nothing to do with the fact that you’re a woman, and everything to do with the fact that you have exactly no experience with any of this?”
I bristled. “Are you going to make another tiara comment now?”
“No. I...shouldn’t have said that.” It didn’t escape my notice that he didn’t actually take it back or say it wasn’t true. “But I will say that I didn’t speak at my first council meeting. Storms, I didn’t speak at my first ten council meetings. Ilistened.”