Page 65 of Onyx Cage: Volume II

A moment that felt half as real as the blood seeping from the wound she suffered on behalf of me?

Korhonan didn’t stay for as long as I might have expected. He emerged with an unreadable expression, eyeing me for a long moment before he spoke.

“She will see you now,” he said quietly before turning to go.

I wanted to scoff at the imperious words, but my feet were already carrying me into her room.

The first thing I did when I came into the room was scan her for injuries. She was in a chair but sitting up. Her features lacked the pinched quality they had taken on for weeks after her flogging, so she wasn’t in any tremendous amount of pain.

“Lemmikki,” I greeted, my shoulders easing slightly as I closed the door behind me.

Rather than return my greeting like a normal person, she scrutinized me.

“You stepped between me and a sword today without even drawing your own,” she blurted out. “You could have died.”

Did she honestly doubt that I would do all that I could to protect her, even after everything?

“And you would have died if I hadn’t,” I reminded her.

Surely, she understood by now that was an unacceptable tradeoff for me.

“You asked me what I wanted to know, the other night,” she began, again not outright responding to me.

I didn’t have to think too hard about what she was referring to, the last time she had barged into my room unannounced. The sober time.

“When have I ever lied to you, Lemmikki?”

“When have you ever really told me the truth?”

“What is it you want to know?”

That conversation had been like most of our interactions since I arrived, full of unmet challenges and unsettled arguments.

“I did,” I confirmed, settling into the chair across from her to brace myself.

“Then I have a question.”

I said nothing, though I couldn’t help but be curious what she was finally willing to ask outright after the day we had had. Storms, after the week we had had.

She lifted her chin in a challenge, meeting my gaze solidly with her pale-green eyes.

“WhatdoesLemmikki mean?” The words fell like hoofbeats on a silent winter night, unexpected and more obtrusive than they should be.

Of all the things I might have expected her to ask, that question had never crossed my mind. On its surface, it was a simple enough question, a translation she could have asked her spy-maid for.

But the stubborn set of her jaw told me she knew damned good and well what she was asking, and it had nothing to do with technicalities.

But why now? After months at my estate, where she never questioned the nickname. After a week of hanging off Korhonan’s arm—Korhonan, who she had wanted to see before me.

After she had nearly died today.

The first time I had spoken the word, I had told myself it was to stake a claim, to further piss Korhonan off. Though, even then it had rolled off my tongue a little too easily, an unreasonable feeling of rightness in every syllable.

Then theaaliohad told her it meantpet, and it had suited my purposes to agree. As time passed, I could never quite bring myself to look her in her fierce, gorgeous, challenging stare and tell her I had been calling her darling from the moment she became mine.

Hadn’t I put enough of my pride on the line this week, playing her song and dance and competing with the man she had said more than once would be her choice in husband?

I swallowed, hearing her accusation echo in my mind even as I proved her right.