Page 32 of Onyx Cage: Volume II
The queen declared the meeting ended, casting a glance between her newly mute daughter and me, while I tried to decide if this could be considered a victory for me.
Or if we were right back at an inn in Socair, drinking down the world’s worst fish stew while we both refused to blink—just a higher stakes version of a game we were both destined to lose.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
My mind reeled as I left the Council Room and silently headed toward the barracks, replaying my time in the room with every single step.
You said you had no intentions of marrying.
It hadn’t been a lie. Marriage just hadn’t been a necessity until now.
I said I had too much chaos in my life for a wife.
A muscle ticked in my jaw as I pushed open the doors to the barracks, recalling the way her skin flushed in response to that. The look of pure fury on her face when I refused to back down.
My cousin caught my eye as soon as I entered the soldiers’ quarters. Whatever he saw in my expression had him nodding in the direction of the sparring ring.
He grabbed two training swords while I removed my jacket, laying it neatly on one of the benches. Once I finished rolling up my sleeves, Yuriy tossed my sword through the air, charging forward on the offensive.
It was a relief to take out the frustration from earlier with every blow. I focused on the movements, the vibrations that ricocheted from the dull blade up through my arm before infusing that energy into each of my strikes.
I didn’t regret my offer of marriage or the offer to allow her to stay behind in Lochlann. It had been the only choice. The only course of action that made any sense, even if every reason I had sworn off marriage came crashing in on me as I sparred.
Bringing someone else into the complexities of my life at Bear would be an entirely less entertaining kind of chaos than what the Lochlannian family offered.
I blocked my cousin’s sword, shuffle-stepping to the side to get a better position in the ring. The movements were easy. A slide step, a pivot, ducking out of reach while bringing my sword down against Yuriy’s leg.
He recovered quickly, keeping me on the defensive.
Ava already targets her, let alone my father.
It should have been an easy solution, her staying here. It didn’t feel that way. Yuriy launched a series of quick jabs that forced me to cede ground to counter. He was skilled, but not that skilled. He never should have been able to push me backward, but of course, I was distracted.
Eternally so.
And distraction was something I could ill afford at Bear, yet another reason I had chosen to stay unmarried.
Storms knows she was enough of a distraction as a captive. How much more so when she is my wife?
Though that was assuming she agreed.
I went through each of the motions, trying and failing to forget the way my lemmikki had clung to Korhonan in the Council Room. The bright shade of her verdant eyes as she insisted she would agree to marry him at the end of the week.
The shock. The anger. The blatant refusal to acknowledge that my offer was the better one.
I parried Yuriy’s blade away, using my strength to off-foot him to gain the upper hand.
Even if she does agree, if she comes to Bear, how long will she stay when she sees the realities of what life there entails? What it requires from me…and what it will inevitably require from her?
It was my turn to go on the offensive, and he admirably met each of my blows without fail.
The exertion helped to clear my head enough to make a plan for moving forward. I would deal with Korhonan and my lemmikki later, but first, I needed to spin this to my father. I never would have offered marriage if I hadn’t believed it was possible, but it would still require careful maneuvering to make this feel enough like his idea that it would keep Rowan safe, regardless of what came next.
And to keep his temper from razing my clan to the ground once he heard the news.
I lost myself to my thoughts and the familiar feel of a sword in my hand so much that I almost missed the signs of Yuriy flagging. A quick glance out the window revealed the position of the sun. Storms. We had been sparring for longer than I’d realized.
“It’s strange that she doesn’t look like herself,” Yuriy interrupted my thoughts, not bothering to pretend he didn’t know exactly who had gotten me to this state.