Page 155 of Onyx Cage: Volume II
“Which is precisely why she should have refrained from commenting,” I responded, my voice far calmer than my mood was.
“Did you tell her that before she came?” His deceptively mild inflection said he knew I didn’t.
I had, admittedly, expected her to know.
“Is that something that needs to be said?” Sarcasm crept into my voice, though my defensiveness was evident as well.
Taras sighed. “To a Socairan woman? Probably not. To a woman from Lochlann who is used to saying every last thought that creeps into her head?”
He glanced over at me. “Honestly, I thought she showed remarkable self-restraint for the first half of the meeting, considering. She didn’t bat an eyelash when my father talked about executing the men who broke into the food stores, though I can’t imagine that punishment is standard for Lochlann.”
“If you thought she was so remarkably restrained, why did you take my side?” It was an unfair question when I knew the answer, but I was unreasonably irritated by the entire situation.
My cousin sighed. “Besides the obvious? Because I know what she doesn’t about the laws. I didn’t say she was right, just that it was understandable. But…”
Taras trailed off, and I paused at the top of the stairwell, looking at him.
“When we traveled to the negotiations together, we all slept in that farmhouse,” he finally said.
I nodded impatiently, trying to follow his uncharacteristic non sequitur.
“She had been trapped in the tunnels at that point,” he explained. “Put on trial for her life. Kidnapped by a man she only had reason to fear. And she was laughing, teaching the men her ridiculous card game, andmockingyou, for storm’s sake.” He let out a low chuckle that almost sounded impressed. “I took a guard shift that night, and she didn’t stir in her sleep, even in the middle of a room full of soldiers.”
I remembered. Half the kingdom was terrified of me, but not this tiny slip of a princess who actually had reason to be. It had been...infuriating.Intriguing.
“I’m sure the vodka had something to do with that,” I muttered. “But it’s not exactly evidence of her discretion. If anything, you’re provingmypoint.”
He gave me a look that said I was being deliberately obtuse, and I raised my eyebrows.
“The point is that she was more resilient than you could expect anyone in her situation to be. But after Samu got a hold of her…” Taras's eyes darkened. “Van, she didn't leave that bed for weeks. She barely smiled. In the limited time we spent in your study, even I heard her cry out in her sleep, so I’m sure that wasn’t rare.”
I could hardly stand to think about those days.
The way she tried to hide the constant pain she was in whenever she moved. The way she had gone from talking and laughing and hell, even yelling, freely, to shutting herself silently inside the black canopy of my bed for days on end.
And the nightmares.
“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 SIXTY-FOUR