Page 225 of Onyx Cage: Volume II
“I will honor my wife’s arrangement,” I said tersely.
“As long as it is hers alone,” he agreed.
I understood what he wasn’t saying. He would not fight for me, whatever I offered him. Whatever she had done, whatever she had promised, he was hers.
They all were.
I spun to leave without another word, more than ready to find a bed after a night and day that had stretched into eternity already.
I didn’t consider going to our rooms without her. The enemy might have been gone for now, but there was no way in hell I was sleeping on the other side of the estate from my wife.
Besides, I couldn't shake the feeling that she would disappear in the night. So I headed toward the room that held far morememories than I had wanted to face tonight, trying not to remember the way it had felt the first time I thought I had lost her for good.
Trying not to suffocate under the staggering weight of the casualties we had sustained, the men whose deaths I had scarcely had time to acknowledge.
Trying not to think at all.
I hadn’t thought sleep would come easily, but my body gave out on me shortly after I rid myself of the week’s worth of grime that had soaked into my skin.
Dusk had fallen by the time I awoke. Kirill stood guard outside my lemmikki’s door, the sight so familiar that I nearly stopped in my tracks. Had it really been over a year since the first time I climbed the stairs to find her cackling over her ill-gotten victory over my youngest cousin in cards?
Once I verified with Taisiya that Rowan was still resting, I made the rounds in the estate, checking in on the wounded as well as the refugees. Several ladies and villagers alike were tending to the injured men, and Lady Sidorov had taken it upon herself to see to the children whose families we hadn’t yet accounted for.
In whatever short time she had spent here, Rowan had garnered enough of their respect that they wanted to follow her lead as soon as they heard what she had done. Then again, that was just her way.
Just in the first few weeks she had been at Bear, she had Kirill teaching her to call me anaalio, Yuriy breaking years of training to play cards with her, and Dmitriy playing her ridiculousdrinking game. Even Taras had become protective of her, in spite of himself.
If people respected me for my strategic mind or feared me for my position, they felt something else entirely for her. Rowan inspired people.
Sometimes, she inspired them toward less charitable feelings as well, but it was rare that anyone felt neutral where my wife was concerned.
When I finished seeing to the rest of the estate, I headed to the war room, surveying the map with the information I had now.
Taisiya entered shortly after I arrived, carrying a bowl of stew and the news that Rowan was still sleeping. I forced myself to eat, fighting the growing temptation to check on her myself. Not that she wanted me to.
Pushing that thought away, I read through the missives with a sigh. I needed firsthand reports from the lords, but I wouldn’t pull them all from their beds just yet. It could wait until the morning.
Besides, I needed to wait for my wife to wake up. For all that she had accused me of not giving her a voice, I had yet to attend a war meeting without her so long as she was available. Even at camp, the command tent had always been open to her, and she certainly needed to attend this meeting, given that she was the only one with information on herBesklanovvy.
I looked around the table, thinking of the last time we had been in this room, and the council room before that. She was the first Clan Wife in the history of Bear to be in the war room to begin with. But because of that, there wasn’t a clear place carved out for her.
That, at least, had a solution. I got to my feet, eyeing the way my chair sat at the head of the long table, where every duke sat in his own war room. Though the table was narrow, it wasby no means too small to fit several chairs on this side of it. The placement was intentional, a way to emphasize the duke’s command in a room where tensions ran unusually high.
Last time, Rowan had sat directly to my right, a placement that conveyed her importance to me and the room. But that wasn’t a spot for a Clan Wife, it was a spot for a high-ranking lord or commander.
There was no place for her here.
Pushing my chair to the side, I pulled a chair over from the right side of the table and settled it next to mine. Then I moved the other chairs so the gap wasn’t apparent, nodding when I surveyed the results.
Perhaps it would help her to understand that it wasn’t her right to a voice in this room I had ever questioned. That with a chance of survival, I would have her fight at my side every time.
No, I was never going to sit by while she marched to her own torture and death, when there was no conceivable escape, but I had made it clear time and again that I had faith in her.
Maybe she would remember that now.
It was after midnight when I headed back to the East Wing. All the resolve I had not to go into Rowan’s rooms had waned with each hour she stayed behind her solid oak door.
Surely, she should be awake by now.