Page 179 of Onyx Cage: Volume II

Despite my general aversion to thinking about him, Korhonan’s words followed me all the way back to the room I shared with Rowan. She was propped up against the headboard when I walked in, her endless curls spilling over her shoulders and framing the impressive curves that were barely contained in her corseted top. The dress she had worn this morning was tossed carelessly over an armchair, something that only mildly made me twitch now that I had grown so accustomed to it.

Something must have shown in my features because she raised her eyebrows when she caught sight of me.

“Fun day with the council?” She gave me a sardonic smile.

Where to begin on that question?

I sighed, removing my jacket and hanging it neatly from the hook that hung for that very purpose…right next to the one intended for her dress.

“Isn’t every day fun with Iiro as an almost king?” I said by way of answer, turning back to her.

It struck me all over again how close I could have come to being forced to attend this inane summons to watch over my father, without her by my side. How I might have instead beenforced to watch her sit atKorhonan’sside in a navy gown while she pretended to support hisaalioof a brother.

That, of course, was one of many things we hadn’t discussed, but I couldn’t quite stop myself now. I didn’t like the way he had hinted at knowing more than I did about what happened in Lochlann, like I was the one missing something.

“You never did tell me…what happened...with Korhonan,” I prompted her, falling short of any eloquence in the wake of the unsettling meeting with Iiro.

She didn’t quite tease me, but she did raise her eyebrows. “I told you whatdidn’thappen. I wasn’t aware you wanted details of the rest.”

Yes, Lemmikki, please add to the storms-damned day I’ve had by regaling me with tales of you pressed against Korhonan so that I can eviscerate him and expedite the start of this inevitable war.

I leveled her with a look. “I can assure you, I do not. I meant when he left Lochlann.”

“Oh.” She furrowed her brow, openly scrutinizing me. “I asked him in so I could tell him what I had already decided, but he got there before I did.”

The day she had been stabbed, when I had been so sure she had told him he was staying. It had never occurred to me to be grateful that he had left quietly when I had still been too furious that he had tried to take what was mine to begin with.

I still wasn’t preciselygrateful, but I could acknowledge that he had been…less difficult than he could have been.Than I would have been. If what he said today was true, though, he had seen no point in prolonging the inevitable.

Was that what he had said to her?

She must have read the unspoken questions on my face because Rowan went on.

“He said that you and I were inevitable...that he could see it from the first time we danced.” She averted her gaze, running her fingers along the elaborate stitching of the blanket. “Which is...ridiculous, obviously.”

I thought about that day. Even then, her body had moved instinctively with mine.

And even then, the rest of the room had fallen away when I looked at her. Just as it did now.

I crossed the distance to her, grasping her chin in my hand and tilting it upward until she consented to meet my eyes.

“Is it?” I challenged.

Her eyes burned into mine, an unspoken answer to my questions. Whatever part of her soul called perpetually to mine had ignited the first time I touched her that day at the Summit. I leaned down to press my lips to hers, a renewed sense of urgency in every touch at the reminder of how close I had come to losing her to our ridiculous pride and all the stupid games we had played.

She moved toward me just as she had then, her body endlessly responsive to mine, an addiction that time was doing nothing to sate.

I moved my hand down her body, skimming along the indent near her hip and the swell of her thigh, nearly to her knee before my mind caught up with my body.

Something was missing, a part of her that was every bit as familiar to my fingers as the peaks and valleys that made up her perfect body.

And it wasn’t like her to go without her weapon when I hadn’t even returned to the room yet.

I lifted my head from where I had burrowed it into her neck, boring my gaze into hers. “Where is your dagger?”

“Um…” She blinked several times, scrunching her nose. “I think we knocked it behind the dresser.”

She sounded utterly unconcerned for someone who had been in a palace with several people who wanted her dead without a single storms-damned way to defend herself, and even the reminder of how we might have failed to notice the dagger clattering to the floor wasn’t enough to distract me.