Page 51 of Onyx Cage: Volume II
We walked most of the way in silence, neither willing to be the first to speak. Tension still hummed in the air, fixed on the point where her hand rested reluctantly on my bicep. She stared resolutely ahead, her jaw set.
Our conversation from breakfast had been niggling at me all day, a puzzle where none of the pieces quite fit. She hadn’t just been indignant. Something darker had shadowed her features.
But I had watched her in the weeks after her flogging, hell, in the days after the fever that nearly stole her life. She had fumed her way through every sip of broth and practically inhaled the first biscuits Taisiya had allowed her to eat.
She was safer here. Happier. And yet…
She opened her door, but I held out an arm to bar her way.
“If you weren’t ill, and you weren’t suffering the after-effects of copious amounts of liquor, why weren’t you eating?” I demanded.
She glared up at me through her kohl-lined lashes. “I already told you, that isn’t your concern.”
The actual storms-damned hell it wasn’t.
“Whatever else you are or have been, you are still mine by bloodright. That means that everything you do is my concern. It’s my duty to keep you safe, and alive, and fed.”
A breath escaped her, close enough to ghost along my lips and filled with a bitterness so thick it poisoned the air between us. “Another sacrifice you make for your people?”
“If I must,” I snapped. “This isn’t a game.”
She pulled her arm away, the hallway turning several degrees colder in its wake.
“Like everything you have done since you got here hasn’t been a game?” she spat, shoving against my arm.
I didn’t move it, not yet. Those were rich words, coming from someone who had glared at a courtier for the sin of speaking to me after practically sitting on Korhonan’s lap at breakfast.
“Lemmikki,” I growled softly, moving closer to her and finally giving voice to the thought that had tormented me since seeing her paler, thinner form. “Did someone hurt you?”
Emotions flitted through her eyes too fast for me to read, before she finally settled on something I recognized all too well. It was the same look cast my way whenever I was forced to walk into a room full of people whose loved ones had died by my hand.
Accusation.
“No, Evander. No one hurt me. Not since I left Bear.”
With that, I let my arm fall away, and she disappeared behind the door.
As I turned to go, I locked eyes with her sister, who had apparently rounded the corner just in time to witness the tail end of our exchange. She was escorted by Gallagher, both now wearing twin inscrutable expressions.
I strode down the hallway casually, nodding to them both.
They nodded back, but something unfamiliar blazed behind Avani’s polite gaze. I wondered how long I would have to wait to figure out what it was.
Not long, it appeared.
I didn’t know much about the heir to the Lochlannian throne, aside from the obvious. She had been raised to rule, which wouldhave been evident by her mere presence, regardless of what I had been told.
She was more introspective than her siblings, though whether that was by nature or by grief, I couldn’t be sure.
And somewhere behind her calm façade lurked the same stubborn kind of recklessness that seemed to run deep through Lochlannian royal family’s veins, since she was the first royal in over a thousand years of their kingdom’s history—either the H’rian or the Luanian side—to marry a commoner.
So I wasn’t altogether surprised when she strode in through the passageway with all the confidence of someone who was in line to own every stone in this castle, though I was getting slightly exasperated by the sheer volume of people here who refused to use the actual door.
“Princess Avani,” I greeted, getting to my feet. “So nice to see you here, in my rooms, through my not-so-secret passageway. Another charming family trait, I see,” I said more quietly, setting my glass down.
She only gave me a slight smirk gracious nod in return, crossing the room without speaking and helping herself to my decanter of whiskey. She poured her own glass first, then held the decanter out to me, establishing from the start that she intended to be in control of whatever impromptu meeting she had just created.
I nodded, grabbing my nearly empty glass and holding it out while she served me as if I were her guest this evening. And not the other way around.