Page 67 of Onyx Cage: Volume II
But she hadn’t known what she wanted. I sure as hell wasn’t going to take the blame for ensuring she got home, where she was safe and had a relative degree of space to make a single storms-damned rational decision.
“And how would that have worked, Rowan?” I demanded, both clipped syllables of her name dripping with all the frustration I couldn’t quite quell at her stubborn refusal to see me as anything other than the villain in her narrative.
Like I hadwantedto send her away. Like it hadn’t damn nearkilledme to watch her leave.
“You didn’t know what you wanted,” I reminded her. “You had been in love with Korhonan five minutes before that.”
And apparently five minutes after, I just barely stopped myself from adding.
She reared back, offended by the honesty she had insisted on only moments ago.
“I didn’t know whatIwanted? What about whatyouwant, Evander? Do you even want to marry me, or do you just want to make sure that no one else can have what you already think is yours?”
Both, Lemmikki.Always both.
“If I didn’t want to marry you, I wouldn’t have proposed.” I made sure she heard how very obvious that was, pretending for all the world as though this weren’t the first time I had admitted it to myself as well.
I had plenty of options available to stop her marriage to Korhonan, and she damned well knew. If I hadn’t wanted to marry her, I would have pushed her to choose Luca, or leveraged the trade I could get from Elk and Lochlann both for agreeing to her proposal.
I would have done anything besides risk my father’s wrath on all of my people, if I hadn’t had a visceral need to keep her for myself.
“Then why the hell did it take someone else getting there first?” She all but yelled. “When you left Bear, were you even planning on offering this betrothal?”
There was the barest raw edge to her tone that stopped me short, that made me want to give her any answer other than the truth. When I left Bear, I had been too furious to plan anything. I had only wanted to see for myself if it was true, if after everything, she wanted to be with Korhonan.
If she was safe, and happy.
No, I hadn’t planned on proposing, on bringing her back to Bear where she was neither of those things. Even now, I knew it was selfish.
“No,” I admitted.
Even knowing that whatever precipice we were dancing along was sure to crumble beneath our feet, I still wasn’t willing to lie to her about something this important.
She looked away, but not before I saw hurt flicker across her features. She took a deep breath, letting it out in a scoff. “Yet you have the nerve to accuse me of indecisiveness?”
My lips parted. Yes, I accused her of indecisiveness. Even now, she was upset I hadn’t raced here to marry her when she was already half betrothed to Korhonan. For that matter, she had thrown my proposal back in my face when I did make it.
Just like that, my guilt evaporated.
“Need I remind you, Lemmikki, that when I did propose, your first inclination was to say no? That you had to be forced into considering it at all?”
She scoffed.
“Need I remind you what that proposal sounded like?” Her voice deepened into what I could only presume was an imitation of me. “I own you, and even though I don’t want you, I don’t want anyone else to have you either, so I’ll make the sacrifice of marrying you for my people.”
I almost—almostsmirked, but anger won out over my amusement. What had she expected? Poetry and cliche charms that represented everything she wasn’t? A declaration of lovewhen she was hanging on another man’s arm and sleeping in his bed? She seemed to be continually forgetting that tiny detail, the way she had alternately thrown him in my face then acted like she had the right to be upset with anything I did or didn’t do.
“That does sound familiar,” I bit out sarcastically. “Not unlike when you burst into my rooms in the middle of the night in a fit of jealousy, then spent the entire council room meeting the next morning clinging to Korhonan like I was the villain in a children’s tale come to steal you away in the night.”
She leaned forward, her spring-green eyes never leaving mine. “What was I supposed to do when Theo was professing his love for me and offering me an alliance I needed while you were apparently sitting on your arse in Bear convincing yourself I didn’t know my own mind?”
My heartbeat thundered in my ears, veins pulsing with the force of my mounting frustration.
If bysitting on my arse, she meant,getting blood on my hands to pay the price for getting her to safety, then sure. And there had been no need to convince myself of anything when she had made it appallingly apparent just in the handful of days I had been here.
“You didn’t know your own mind!” I fought to control my temper, but it was slipping away from me in the light of her unending unreasonableness. “You were a prisoner for months. You went through hell, and you went from being surrounded by your family to only me. Of course you thought?—”
I cut off, unwilling to give her more than I already had. Besides, did I really know what she had thought? Hadn’t she believed she had feelings for Korhonan as well?