Page 56 of Onyx Cage: Volume II

I huffed out a laugh, noting the way she had excluded Rowan. The princess who decidedly did not love baking glared at me, but I continued to peel my fruit like I didn’t notice.

The queen went on. “And it means something to the people when we give them something we’ve made with our own hands. Of course, the kitchen staff will help also, considering the scope of the work, but a majority of it comes from us.”

It made sense, in the slightly inefficient and illogical way that all of the emotionally driven people of this kingdom did.

“That’s a tradition worth carrying to Socair,” Korhonan said in a tone earnest enough to make me actually roll my eyes.

I expected Rowan to blithely agree with him as she had a habit of doing when she didn’t feel like telling him the truth. It was a much more peaceable alternative to the way she argued with me for the same reason.

Either way, her intentional honesty was hard won.

This time, though, she only hummed in the back of her throat, the sound somehow both noncommittal and almost…somber.

A beat of silence passed, and I wondered if Korhonan even noticed the shift in her mood or how little she liked the idea of baking in Socair. Of doing anything in Socair, perhaps.

Avani looked at her mother, then flicked her eyes toward Korhonan with purpose—subtlety clearly not a trait these sisters, or this family, possessed.

“Lord Theo,” the queen asked. “Could I put those muscles of yours to use in the storage cellar for a moment?”

Korhonan chuckled good-naturedly. He whispered something to Rowan, who was unusually reserved while she setout a set of wooden bowls. He turned back to her mother, either oblivious to that fact or unwilling to draw attention to it. He might have been anaalio, but he was Socairan, and we had both been raised to avoid a scene.

“Of course, Your Majesty,” he agreed easily.

The queen looked at my half-empty barrel. “Lord Evander, you can take a break from the apples to help Rowan.”

She wanted Korhonan gone, and me working with Rowan. For the sake of fairness?

I might have thought so, but for the concerned look Avani shot her younger sister.

“Of course, Your Majesty.” My tone was only slightly mocking, but the queen raised her eyes in a maternal sort of chiding, like she was telling me to be nice to my irritating younger sibling.

I gave her a wry smile, and she turned to lead Korhonan into the storage room. Avani turned back to her task, and Rowan gestured to the bowls wordlessly. Her sudden reticence, compared with her reluctance to speak, brought back a different set of unwanted memories.

For all that I had complained about her acerbic responses, the reminder of her shutting herself behind a black canopy for days on end was decidedly worse. Still, I understood what it was to need silence and mindless routines. So I followed the list she set out, using common sense and labels to navigate my way around the fairly intuitive kitchen.

The first time she held a jar out to me, I was surprised, not because I didn’t know what she needed but because I was shocked she was willing to ask for my help. But she was more focused on efficiency than her pride, apparently, which was…concerning.

I opened the jar wordlessly, handing it back to her. Working together with her was almost peaceful, yet an unwelcomereminder of how seamlessly she had blended into my space. A reminder of how she was the only person whose presence wasn’t obtrusive to me.

Though we were working on the same task, it was easy to see where she was going next on the list and to therefore take the step after that. She likewise did the same for me, so that we weren’t doubling up our efforts or getting in one another’s way.

Rowan was not inherently intuitive, and my own men couldn’t read me. It had never made sense to me the way she always seemed to intrinsically know what room I wanted to be in or when I actually needed silence rather than just wanting it, or when I was hiding amusement instead of fury, like I let the others believe.

It didn’t matter, not when she had made it clear, more than once, that her life was here. Korhonan might not understand that, but I saw it in her reluctance to leave or to bring these traditions to Socair. Her family was here. She might marry me for the politics of it, or even because of whatever the hell attraction was between us, but interactions like these would never play into our day-to-day lives.

Which would be fine, as long as she was safe.

Perhaps I was too distracted reminding myself of that. It was the only explanation I could see for why I missed the small shift in her stance that meant she was reaching across my side of the high wooden table. I reached for the salt block over her head before I registered her movement, and she barreled directly into me.

I expected her to back away, murmur an apology or an accusation, and go on pretending we had never been that close to one another before. Instead, three and a half heartbeats passed in a still, unbroken silence.

Then she hitched in a breath.

Rowan was many things, but she was not prone to crying. Not even after she had killed a man in battle or been taken captive by a man she hated. The last time I had heard that particular sound was on a bed at an inn the night Dmitriy had died.

She had sobbed that night for reasons I had always suspected went beyond the loss of a friend.

Then, she had left.