Page 182 of Onyx Cage: Volume II

“Do you want to tell me what the hell just happened?” Her voice was pitched low, but fear wound its way through every word.

I poured us both a drink since it was the closest thing I could offer to comfort without outright lying to her.

“Iiro sowing seeds of dissension.” I intentionally kept my tone even so at least my own anxiety wouldn’t pile on top of hers. “He wants to tax forty percent of the food, including your dowry.”

“What?” she demanded. “Can you say no?”

Her expression was so hopeful, filled with all the faith I had asked for from her. It ate away at something inside me that I didn’t have another answer to give.

No, Lemmikki, I don’t have any power here. I don’t have a way to fix this for us. I don’t even have a contingency plan yet.

For all the maneuvering I was capable of, I was not yet Duke, and there were things beyond even my control when my father insisted on destroying his own storms-damned clan from the inside out.

I pushed her glass into her hand, giving her the fortification she would need while I threw back the contents of my own glass.

“I could have, if my father hadn’t just said yes,” I explained shortly while my mind replayed through the events of the evening.

I was still missing something. Something I felt in my gut was important. Iiro wanted power. Over our kingdom, our resources, my wife. Me. Of course, manipulating my father helped him achieve those things.

But I couldn’t shake the oppressive feeling that he had a greater end in mind. My father wouldn’t live forever, and Iiro shouldn’t have wanted to work quite so hard to alienate me, knowing I would someday control the only clan that might pose a real threat to his rule.

Why wasn’t he more concerned about that? Was it more of his lacking judgment because of my choice in wife? Or was there something more?

“What else?” Rowan asked, accurately reading into my silence as she so often was able to do—even when I wished she wouldn’t.

I wasn’t quite ready to delve into the rest, but I had promised her to make more of an effort in that regard, so I forced myself to give her a real answer.

“This is twice now he’s baited me into publicly disagreeing with my father. I can’t tell if this is a general tactic to undermine me so it’s easier for him to get his way, or…something else.” A headache formed behind the backs of my eyes and I idly massaged at it.

Rowan’s smaller hands brushed mine aside, tracing firm patterns along my forehead that slowly eased the tension there, if not the mounting pressure on my chest.

“We’ll figure this out,” she said quietly, pressing her lips against my forehead. “Iiro is a connivingaalio, but frankly…so are you when you want to be.”

The barest hint of a smile turned the corner of her mouth, and I huffed out a semblance of a laugh.

Still, I didn’t miss the faraway look in her eyes when she glanced at the storm in the distance, like she could sense another one on its heels, one that had nothing at all to do with the churning clouds outside.

CHAPTER SEVENTY-SIX

Somewhere between her soft skin and her unwavering confidence, Rowan had almost convinced me that we would leave the Obsidian Palace without incident. That we might still find a way out of whatever Iiro was scheming.

Until the screaming started.

Had Iiro decided to attack outright? But, surely, he wouldn’t have started with a woman.

And the only rooms that close to ours were…my father’s.

Der’mo.

My heartbeat pounded in my chest. I wanted to tell Rowan to wait in our rooms, but that was time wasted on an order she would never follow, so I reluctantly accepted that she would follow me into whatever awaited us in the hall. Unarmed.

Edging myself in front of her, I wrenched open the door with one hand, already reaching for my sword with the other. Whatever awaited us, I would have time to push one saber into her hand while I drew the other. She wouldn’t be unprotected.

Assuming there was danger, and not just my father flying off a handle from twenty-year-old grief that felt brand new to him.

I froze when the hallway came into view, stopping just short of drawing my sword.

It was my stepmother who had screamed, who was still wailing in the awkwardly held arms of my father’s newest personal guard. Mikhail and Andreyev had emerged from their own quarters to assess the scene, both still and uncertain in the light of her hysterics.