Page 126 of Onyx Cage: Volume II

I trailed off, considering all the ways he might have wrangled that support in my absence.

“But?” Charlotte prompted.

I didn’t answer right away, still trying to identify the niggling feeling in the back of my mind. Why now? If anything, he would have even less support than he had before.

Lynx was allied to us through marriage, taking away a neutral party that might have stood by while Iiro took the throne.

He might have been making a desperate bid to try to forestall my marriage to Rowan in Socair, but there would still be limited legitimate means for him to interfere with a clan decision. Decisions on marriage had always been left singularly up to the dukes, even when the monarchy reigned.

Not that legitimacy concerned him.

“But Iiro is sharp, calculating,” Rowan answered in my stead. “So if he’s doing this at all, he must have reason to believe he will succeed.”

It didn’t surprise me that she had already reached that conclusion as well. For all her pretenses and distractions, she was plenty perceptive when she wanted to be.

I nodded, still feeling like I was missing something. “And it certainly isn’t a coincidence that he waited until I was here. Not only was I unable to interfere, but we haven’t yet finalized our marriage in Socair.”

Legitimate or not, he would have more power to at least try to interfere with our marriage if he was playing at being king.

The question wasn’t why, but how.

Iiro was a bastard, but he wasn’t an idiot. He wouldn’t have declared himself king without the means to see it through. And if his claim hadn’t been based on some sort of rationale, Taras wouldn’t have been concerned enough to call me home.

There it was, the piece of the puzzle that had been dangling just out of reach, the one I hadn’t wanted to acknowledge.

Because the only thing worse than Iiro taking the throne was if I lost my power to remove him from it. And the only person who could take that from me was the duke of my clan.

Taras had written.

My father wasn’t always lucid, but even he wouldn’t fail to react to the news of Elk on the throne. He would call his second-in-command back, whether he thought that was me or his dead brother.

His guards would have known where to send the letter, yet one had never come.

Tendrils of dread crept along my spine. Hadn’t I promised my lemmikki that I would keep her safe? But if my father had allied with Iiro…

“Theo must have sent word when he left,” Rowan continued to theorize. “That must be why Iiro made his move, knowing he had no chance of allying with us now.”

That was half of the reason. I didn’t comment on the other half, not in a room full of people who were ignorant of my father’s state of mind. Besides, I wasn’t sure yet.

There was still the fragile thread of hope that I was wrong.

The only thing I was certain of was that I wouldn’t be dragging Rowan back to a kingdom where Iiro and my father might be waiting to casually slaughter her before the people were any the wiser.

Would they use it as an excuse to march on Lochlann? To try to take by force the resources I had already secured for us?

Or was her death enough for them both, revenge and power rolled into the elimination of a princess who had only ever been in the wrong place at the wrong time, born to a family they both despised.

I would find a way to eviscerate them both before I let that happen, even if it cost me my life and my clan.

But first, I needed to be sure.

I cleared my throat, returning my attention to the room and steeling myself for Rowan’s response.

“Which still leaves the questions of why and how.” I swept my gaze over my gorgeous, perfect wife, soaking in the final seconds of our time that she wasn’t furious with me. Because she was about to be. “I need to get back to find out and?—”

“No,” she cut me off, putting together where I was going before I even finished my sentence.

Her eyes were wide, her head shaking in a denial of what even she had to know was the truth.