Page 223 of Onyx Cage: Volume II

Her voice was quieter now, though no less sure.

“Yes, My Lady.” His tone was a match for hers, his stress of her title intentional.

Did she hear what he wasn’t saying? That he would do this for her, but as his Clan Wife. Because she had earned his respecthere in this estate, not with the title she had brought from another kingdom.

Because she belonged to Bear now, not storms-blasted Lochlann, where she was certainly not going to return to indefinitely. Surely.

Though, she still hadn’t answered on that front.

“Lemmikki?” I pushed, not sure if I was asking again if she was leaving or just trying to get her to look at me once.

She had been furious with me before, of course, but even on our worst day, when she was clinging to Korhonan in the middle of the Lochlannian court, she had never felt as far away as she did right now.

She took a deep breath, shaking her head incrementally.

“Thank you,” she said to Taras, turning as Taisiya appeared to open the door.

I reached out for her arm, half expecting my hand to meet with nothing but air. She still didn’t feel quite real, quite tangible.

But my fingers closed around the steely links of her unusual armor, sticky with dried blood.

“Rowan,” I said more insistently, almost growling.

She turned very slowly, meeting my eyes at last. Whatever calm she had summoned to speak to the squires and Taras was eclipsed by something far more wrathful when she fixed her attention on me.

“Just leave me alone, Evander. You’re good at that.”

I had heard her breathe my name like it was the only deity she believed in, had heard her growl it in anger and scream it in ecstasy and sing it in her teasing tone.

But I had never heard the three clipped syllables fall from her lips like they were the freshly sharpened edge of her dagger, flaying us both from the inside out.

It felt like she had slapped me all over again. I stood, frozen, as she tugged her arm out of my unmoving grasp and slammed the door in my face.

Taras only raised his eyebrows and let out a low whistle.

“Can’t say I didn’t see that coming, Cousin,” he said drily, though he did wince a bit in sympathy.

If I had been less tired, perhaps I would have mustered up the energy to punch him in the face. As it was, I only glared at him.

Still, he clapped me on the shoulder in a show of support before he took off down the hall, presumably to see to Rowan’s orders, which I had every intention of following up on myself, once I actually spoke to my wife.

I didn’t blame him for his turn of mood. We had survived. He was going to see his wife again, be there for his child, and that would be a happy occasion since she would likely consent to speak to him. Unlikemywife.

I turned back to her door, rapping on the solid wood.

“Lemmikki,” I called. “Talk to me.”

Had she ever refused to speak to me? I thought back to our long line of arguments, everything from the first time we had danced to our more recent fight about the council room.

She always had something to say. Sometimes I had wished she didn’t, but this...this was infinitely worse.

I tried a couple more times before finally forcing myself to walk away. A sick, sinking feeling twisted in my gut with each step I took farther from her. Time still felt precarious, the war still far from over. Every part of me rebelled at spending it away from my wife when she was here. Safe and alive.

But we were getting nowhere tonight, and she needed rest.

Hell, we all did.

There was no telling how long this reprieve would be. But I knew that was exactly what this was, a reprieve.