Page 27 of Onyx Cage: Volume II
“Not entirely.” Again, she looked at Korhonan, guilt playing over her features.
And again, I couldn’t quite make sense of her motives.
She wanted to marry, but not him? She didn’t want to marry at all, but found him the most suitable of her options if forced? She did want to marry him, and the timing was a coincidence?
His clenched jaw made me suspect that he also had no answer to those questions.
“You know perfectly well that Rowan and I were betrothed before this, and it had nothing to do with an alliance,” he said at last.
So that was where he had landed.
“No,” I agreed easily. “Just the threat of execution hanging over her head. I also know that you called that betrothal off yourself.”
It didn’t hurt to remind the room of that, to aid in whatever negotiations occurred.
“Becauseyoutook her,” he countered, losing his fight with his composure.
That was a convenient way to blame the way he had quit fighting for her entirely on me. Had he thought that marrying the captive princess of our enemy would come without obstacles?
“Andyousaid it was of utmost importance that you marry quickly and produce heirs,” I reminded him. “So let’s not pretend politics doesn’t play a role here, shall we?”
He dropped his jaw in anger, but his tiny stalwart protector held her hand out. I wondered if he was embarrassed knowing that the feral princess was the more reasonable of the two of them at the moment.
“Yes,” Rowan huffed, cutting into my thoughts. “Obviously, the alliance is advantageous. Allowing it serves your people as well as mine, because not only will we avoid a war, we can resume trade. Isn’t that why you’re here?”
It was moments like this I remembered that she had been raised for politics, however little she usually let that show. She loved to hide behind her mask of ridiculousness, the same way she let her massive curls obscure her features the night before.
It was easy to forget she was the same woman who stared down her enemies unflinchingly and took up a sword in defenseof soldiers she barely knew. Who had apparently made it her mission to stop a war these past few months.
“The alliance is not restricted to Elk, then?” I clarified, still trying to get a read on the situation.
On her.
If she only needed an alliance, or if she had intentionally chosen him. She narrowed her eyes at me, but it was her aunt who answered.
“It’s true that we’ve had other offers,” Princess Jocelyn explained in her no-nonsense voice. “Sir Mikhail from Ram sent one.”
I shouldn’t have been surprised. Only Mikhail would believe that he had something to offer an eighteen-year-old princess who was…passably attractive.
Gorgeous,my traitorous mind argued. It hardly mattered, because she was infuriating, I reminded myself.
“How ever did you resist that temptation?” I murmured in an effort to drown out my thoughts, and Rowan’s lips twitched in response.
“Lord Luca from Lynx,” the blonde princess continued.
I blinked several times. Arès had declined to mention that, but it was markedly different from her request to marry Korhonan. There was no reason I should say no to my new allies.
No reason I should want to.
Mikhail might not be a catch for her, but Luca was only a few years older than she was, and the brother of her only friend in Socair. She had laughed with him, and he had cast her more than one appreciative glance.
An alliance with my kingdom, with my ally, something to thwart Elk.
My heartbeat thundered in my ears. She didn’t belong to Luca, or to Clan Lynx.
From a Lochlannian standpoint, he wasn’t her best option, though, something I certainly didn’t note with relief, even as I went on to comment on it.
“That’s hardly helpful to you, on the opposite end of Socair from the mountains.” The trade routes would take twice as long and be nearly impossible in the winter. Not to mention the length of her journey home.