Page 18 of Onyx Cage: Volume II
Covered herscarsentirely, which I suspected was the point.
She was also leaner than she had been in Bear. Harder. And the hand in mine was covered in small calluses that hadn’t been there before.
She had been training. A lot, by the look and feel of things.
Out of fear? Anger? Boredom?
Something else?
She returned her gaze to mine, taking a breath as she stepped into position.
“We were expecting Lord Taras.” It was surprisingly subtle for her, like being in her kingdom gave her the modicum of decorum she had been so lacking in mine.
And again, there was the formality, like she hadn’t called him by his first name while she declared him arseprint champion only a handful of months ago.
Like she hadn’t nearly died for his brother.
“He had things to take care of in Bear.”Like making excuses to my father so I could come here in his stead.
The music started up and I rested my other hand lightly on her waist, ignoring the pinpricks of lightning that raced across my skin.
“So you came all this way yourself, for mere trade agreements?” Her words were as thoughtless as they were probing, a reminder of her vibrant kingdom and how very much it differed from mine.
Another thing she seemed to have forgotten in the handful of months she had been gone.
I spun her out, and she was closer when she returned. Too close, but I couldn’t very well push her away without ceding ground I was unwilling to relinquish.
“There’s nothingmereabout the benefits of trading for my people, as you well know.”Seeing that it will keep many of them from starving to death next winter.“So yes, I came myself. Why else would I be here?”
I hurled the question at her, willing her to stop tiptoeing around what she wanted to know. She wasn’t an idiot, however much she seemed to enjoy playing one. She had to know damned good and well that I had no intention of sitting back while she entered the alliance I had taken her captive to prevent.
She reared back ever so slightly before shooting me a smile that was more a baring of her teeth. “I thought perhaps you had come to offer congratulations on my upcoming betrothal.”
Crimson edged into my vision at her confirmation, though I had seen the evidence as soon as I’d walked into this room.
“Well, that would be wholly unnecessary, seeing as you can’t possibly hope to finalize a marriage in Socair without my permission,” I reminded her, in case that was another thing she had managed to conveniently remove from her memory. “Or did you forget that I own you, Lemmikki?”
Rowan let out an indignant huff, either at the use of herpetname or at the implication.
“Not here, you don’t,” she growled. “You can’t stop me from marrying in my own kingdom.”
“Of course not,” I shrugged one shoulder while using the other arm to lead her into another spin. “If Korhonan is willing to live out the rest of his life here, then you hardly need to worry about it.”
She must have known that as well as I did. Sure enough, she muttered a curse as she returned to me, her eyes sparking with frustration.
“Theo has already said he’s willing to agree to the terms we reached at negotiations,” she bit out. “You haven’t given a single damn about me or our blood debt since I returned, and now you want to step in and be difficult because I’m?—”
Did she actually have the nerve to accuse me of not caring when I had risked my entire clan for her freedom, all so she could traipse back here and marry her darlingTheo? Bile rose in my throat, along with no small amount of rage.
“Doing the very thing I took you to avoid in the first place?” I interrupted her.
“With the caveats you agreed to!” she hissed.
A small—very small—part of me could acknowledge she had a point, but it wasn’t one I was willing to consider. For reasons I also wasn’t willing to consider.
“I would have agreed to anything to get rid of you that day.” Especially after she had risked the negotiations to get off with Korhonan, then called me a child murderer. “Circumstances are different now.”
She shook her head subtly in disbelief.