Page 80 of Onyx Cage: Volume II
“Yet here I am,” I shot back quietly. In the land of my enemies, wearing a kilt and eating dessert she fed me by hand.
“Yes. Here you are,” she agreed, leaning in close while she trailed a hand casually along my arm. “Sacrificing away.”
Her breath ghosted along my mouth, and my lips parted in spite of myself. Rowan smirked, backing away as she dropped her hand. She plucked up the wrapped dirk, handing it off to one of the runners who had been in charge of keeping our purchases today, then looped an arm casually through mine.
The festival games might not have begun, but my lemmikki had started her own plenty early today.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
After another hour of perusing the stalls, we finally reached the area near the games. The crowd here was decidedly less friendly, perhaps because they had nothing to directly gain from kindness.
We garnered several disapproving glances, and a few voices rang out louder than the rest.
“...Hooring around even before she went to Socair.”
“Only one reason to marry that quickly.”
“...and to think this is the second laird.”
Fury flashed through my veins. It was one thing when they hurled insults at me, but this was their own princess. And my futurewife.
In Socair, anyone who called the Clan Wife a whore—or implied it—would have forfeit their lives.
I must have given some outward indication of that thought because Rowan shook her head.
“I know everything in Socair is punishable by death or dismemberment, but we don’t react to a little gossip here. Besides, you should hear what they say about Davin.”
It wasn’t actually more promising that they gossiped about all of the royals they were supposed to respect, but I also wasn’t concerned with Davin’sdelicatereputation.
Nor Rowan’s, especially. Only with the scorn her own people dared to cast her way when she was making her own sacrifices to keep them from a war.
She let out a sigh, but it was cut off when a voice rang out in an unfamiliar accent.
“Tiny gorgeous girl!”
My scowl deepened as I turned to face the newcomer, lessening only when I realized the tall, dark-skinned man was old enough to be her father and the affection in his eyes resembled exactly that sort of relationship. He was standing next to a man who was at least ten years his senior with ruddy skin and whose balding head barely reached my elbow.
“Cray,” the first man said. “I found our girl.”
“What are you doing here?” Rowan asked, a genuine smile spreading across her cheeks as the man embraced her.
“Ye didna think we wouldna come to assess your man-friend here for ourselves, did ye?” He scrutinized me with narrowed eyes, then sank into a theatrical bow. “We are the Purloiners of the Piney Plantation.”
“No’ again, Sai,” the shorter man—Cray—interrupted him.
And here I had thought her family was chaos.
Cray turned to me. “We’ll nae force ye to donate your gold teeth tae the cause, Laddie, so long as ye be stayin’ on our girl’s good side.”
“I’m not certain I’m on her good side to begin with,” I said it lightly enough that it could be mistaken for a joke, though there was nothing but truth to the words.
“Decidedly not,” she agreed easily.
Just then, another member of the odd group joined, a slim woman with white-blonde hair. She had one hazel eye and one that was pale blue.
A shade of blue that was distinctly Socairan, just like her hair and the olive undertones to her skin. But she sure as hell didn’t act like any Socairan woman I knew. She walked with a predatorial grace, an inherent lethality even more pronounced than Gwyn’s.
Rowan’s cousin was skilled enough to decimate just about anyone in a battle head-on, but this woman seemed more suited to quiet daggers in the dark.