Page 52 of Onyx Cage: Volume II

As I said, it had been obvious from the start that she was raised to rule.

She sat in the armchair closest to the wall, giving her the best vantage point of the room. I sat across from her, though having my back to the passageway created an itch between my shoulder blades.

She still didn’t speak, only took a long sip of her whiskey. This was a familiar game in Socair, a quiet reading of the atmosphere until the one least comfortable with the silence was forced to speak.

Ten minutes ticked audibly by on the artfully carved clock in the corner of the room.

I could have played it out, could have happily and silently sat in this chair until breakfast, but I hardly thought the princess and I staring at each other for eight and a half hours was conducive to any sort of camaraderie.

I handed her the victory early on, sacrificing a pawn for the sake of the overall game. “I see where the similarities end.”

When Rowan had something to say, nothing in this world or the next could force her to hold her tongue for even one minute, let alone ten.

Avani raised her eyebrows, a beat too late to be genuinely curious.

I obliged her anyway. “Patience isn’t her strong suit,” I said more bluntly.

“No.” The corner of her mouth tilted up. “Nor yours, I suspect.”

I considered that briefly. Patience was vital to being a leader. I could sit through endless meetings with the dukes, ceremonies that took several times as long as they needed to. I could wait out an ambush and carefully manipulate my father’s unpredictable moods.

Patience and control. They were the key to survival in Bear.

But both seemed to be in short supply every time I spotted Korhonan trying to take my lemmikki. I thought of her coaxing my guards off their shifts to play cards with her and mentally amended that statement to include any situation that involved her.

“Not lately, anyway,” I acknowledged.

Avani nodded, like that was the answer she had been expecting. It struck me again how different she was from her sister. Once I entered a world of brazen royals with crimson curls and sharp tongues and a penchant for sword-fighting, some part of me had wondered whether one would start to feel like the next. Or perhaps I had only hoped that.

But I was still drawn to Rowan by the same invisible force that had rebelled against the idea of Korhonan claiming her long before I had staked my own.

Which was the last thing I felt like thinking about tonight.

“Shall I bother to ask what you’re doing here?” I finally opted for bluntness, since the Lochlannian family appreciated it anyway, and I suspected it was the only way to move this conversation along.

“Funny.” She gently shook the contents of her glass, causing firelight to dance along the amber hues of the whiskey. “I came to ask you the same thing.”

It was both more and less than I expected from her, a question I had answered many times over by now with an answer I suspected she wouldn’t settle for.

“Isn’t it obvious?” I countered.

She let out a huff of air, somewhere between amusement and exasperation. “Not to everyone, apparently.”

I could harbor a guess at who she was referring to.

“I had intended to send a representative for trade, anyway.” I told her what she already knew. “When I received Korhonan’s letter about the betrothal, I assumed it would be more convenient for me to negotiate those terms in person.”

More convenient. More effective. Both were true, and neither was why I had come. I could acknowledge that much now, though certainly not to Avani.

She smirked around her sip of whiskey. “Ah. And the proposal of marriage from you, Lord Evander. Was that also a matter of...convenience?”

A chuckle escaped me before I could stop it. There may not be a word in her language or mine that described my proposal to Rowan less.

“I’m not certain that’s a word that will ever apply to matters involving Princess Rowan.” That surely didn’t come as a surprise to her sister.

Avani gave a long blink, shaking her head slightly before waving her hand for me to answer her original question.

“Surely you see the political advantage.” I offered what was, again, the obvious explanation.