Page 117 of Onyx Cage: Volume II
Not that it should matter anymore, after the things he had done. I hadn’t had an actual father for a long time, and I didn’t need the approval of one now.
Which was probably just as well, since I doubted very much I had it. Of course, that begged the question of why the king was here at all.
I forced a smirk, giving it my best guess. “So, your wife forced you to come, then?”
Or Avani?
He let out a low laugh, but didn’t immediately respond. Instead, he took a deep breath, crossing the room to the table with my belt and moving toward me.
His features were still guarded, but something close to grief churned in his emerald gaze as he wrapped my belt aroundmy waist. Perhaps even…remorse. I stood still, allowing him to complete whatever ritual was necessary for reasons I didn’t quite understand.
“Not this time,” he finally answered, fastening the silver sporran. This one had arrived along with my kilt, carved with an intricate engraving of a bear in the center of a rowan tree.
He could have been saying that it was someone else who forced him to come, but there was a softness in his movements that belied that explanation. For whatever reason, he had chosen to come here of his own accord.
I didn’t have a response for that, so I said nothing.
Once my sporran was securely in place, he reached for the black coat that hung on the outside of the armoire.
“My Dá died before I married Charlie,” he said, holding it out. “So, a good friend, a man named Aengus, stood in his place.”
I heard what he wasn’t saying. In the absence of a father, this role could have been performed by a friend. Was that the real reason Davin and Gallagher had come earlier?
They had been just as surprised as I had by the king’s arrival. He had made a choice to come, when no one expected him to.
I shrugged into my coat, words failing me as he buttoned each of my buttons with a wholly unexpected gentleness. For the first time, I saw the man from the portraits, the one who must have buttoned up any number of coats and dresses on a horde of unruly children. Who had brought up his daughters and nieces and nephews with enough affection that they openly teased the warrior of a king who struck fear into the hearts of two kingdoms.
And now, he was extending that to me, for reasons I couldn’t quite fathom.
“And now, I’ll stand in for...” he paused, taking a breath as he pulled my coat into place. “...for your father.”
He said the words without a trace of the vitriol I wouldn’t have blamed him for.
Now he would stand in willingly for a man he had spent the last two decades hating. A man who hated this family and the cherished daughter I was carting back within his reach.
By choice.
Swallowing against the sudden, unexpected feeling that brought forth, I finally found the words I was looking for.
“Thank you, Your Majesty.”
He smiled outright at me, letting the expression stand for the first time since I met him. “Ach, I suppose ye can call me Logan.”
He clapped me on the back. “And now it’s time to go.Mo bhobainwill kill us both if you’re late.”
A chuckle escaped me, and I made a note to ask Rowan what the name meant later.
“That she will.”
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
The great hall was completely packed—filled with faces that I recognized, and many that I did not. A muscle feathered in my jaw as I resisted the urge to shift my weight from one foot to the next. I usually prided myself on my patience, but standing at the end of the aisle, waiting for my bride to appear, for our wedding to begin, was testing that patience more than anything else ever had.
I couldn’t shake the part of me that was waiting for the other shoe to drop, that was waiting for the clouds to break and finally let loose the storms they had been holding back until this very moment.
Until my lemmikki became my wife. Became mine in name, and law, as well as truth.
When the doors finally parted and the music began, my breath caught in my throat.