Page 156 of Onyx Cage: Volume II

Rowan was pacing the room when I opened the door, though her motions weren’t quite as furious as I had expected them to be. Frustration still brimmed behind her bright-green gaze, but it was tempered with a thoughtfulness that gave me pause.

She looked up when I entered, studying everything from my guarded expression to the way I remained standing in the doorway.

Though I had returned with the intention of a conversation, I realized I had no idea where to begin. Perhaps she felt the same strain, the same sense of unfamiliar terrain when it came to all the uncharted places in a relationship that had been hastily sketched from a series of murmured confessions without any of the roads to connect us along the way.

She sighed after a beat, making her way to the bar, which was certainly a fair place to start. I closed the door behind me while she pulled two crystal liqueur glasses down from the shelf, filling them both with a healthy serving of vodka.

Though I closed the small amount of distance between us, she didn’t turn or acknowledge my presence until she was finished putting the bottle away. Then she reluctantly met myeyes, though she was still silent as she held one of the glasses out to me.

My gaze lingered on the glass, wondering if she meant it as a peace offering or if she was hoping to curb my own temper before she unleashed her own once more. Her features were controlled, though, and the day had certainly called for a drink, so I took the proffered glass.

Her fingers were warm against mine, just as they always were. The energy hummed between us and she swallowed. I was almost tempted to revert to our earlier solution, but there was no need to bury yet another body when we were already swimming in the corpses of all the things we never quite acknowledged.

Even now.

This, at least, was a problem wecouldsolve.

I gestured to the small seating area in our main room, a silent invitation for us to sit before we began our conversation.

Rowan took a seat on one of the oversized armchairs made from leather of the deepest black.

Her fair skin and scarlet curls stood out in stark contrast to the leather. Even her size was too small for the chair, like it was made for anyone else in the world but her. And of course, it had been.

Or at least, it had been made for anyone who wasn’t my tiny, feral Lochlannian wife.

I sighed, taking another sip from my glass, still at a loss for where to begin. I wasn’t precisely sorry, and I wouldn’t insult her with an apology we both knew wasn’t sincere.

Neither had I missed the point of all the things my cousin had said.

While I was still debating how to move forward, Rowan surprised me by speaking up first.

“I can acknowledge that I was, perhaps, not entirely in the right for speaking up in the council room today.” Her voicewas barely above a whisper, each word of her almost-admission pulled reluctantly from her lips.

Still, my eyebrows climbed upward. I had been half bracing myself for more hurled accusations of sadism.

“You understand that it’s not that I want you to be silenced,” I responded, wanting—no,needing—her to see the truth of that. I hadn’t fallen in love with a demure woman, and I certainly didn’t expect for her to become one now. To show some restraint, yes. But not to disappear into the shadows, or to lose that fire I had come to love in her.

“Yes and no,” she began.

My lips parted, a migraine forming in the center of my skull. When I began to argue, however, she held up a hand to silence me.

“I do understand that your authority here is…” she continued, her pupils dilating on the wordauthority, the delicate skin on her cheeks flushing that same rosy shade she got whenever she wanted to test the limits of my stamina.

“Necessary,” she continued after clearing her throat. “And hard-won.”

Some of the tension in my shoulders began to ease at her understanding, but of course, she wasn’t finished.

“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.”

My hand clenched around my glass at the idea that my slow, careful maneuvering was tantamount to the way he would have obliviously forged ahead into a lifetime of silencing her while thinking her private sparring sessions were a favor to her. She couldn’t have thought he would have brought her to the Council of Lords, probably ever.

I was trying to create a space for her, but she needed to understand that there was a difference in having a seat at thetable, having a voice and wielding it like a finely honed weapon, and barreling into a room with less than half the information you needed and none of the tact.

I ran a hand through my hair, trying to filter those thoughts into something that was conducive to this conversation rather than provoking her again.

Though her comment rankled me, I forced myself to remember who she was. Outspoken, yes, but also impatient. In Lochlann, anyone in the general vicinity of the council room had the right to an opinion about its proceedings.

Here, your right to speak was earned. Even grown heirs didn’t speak at Summits most of the time, and the lords wouldn’t have dreamed of talking at a Council before they had sat through at least a year’s worth.