Chapter 21
Chapter
Twenty-One
ALLIE
“ T his wasn’t what I thought you meant by fighting .
” I stared down the long table littered with too many parchments and papers to count.
Some of them looked to have been dragged from the deepest recesses of vaults nobody had opened for generations.
The last time I’d witnessed so many numbers etched onto rows upon rows, I’d been losing nights over the Protectorate vault ledgers.
Another wasted effort nobody else in my Clan had bothered with–or appreciated.
“A negotiation is a fight in anything but the name,” the Commander said from the other end of the table. “Or were you expecting some crazy plan to go against the Clan Council and dismantle the system holding the entirety of Malhaven together from being destroyed by Clan wars?”
Well…it wouldn’t have been the most ridiculous idea someone had this month. Silas was currently leading the Protectorate, after all.
“We could have at least sent more emissaries and tried to change the magistrates’ minds,” I grumbled.
“Soryn, your cousin Clara, and all of our best negotiators have already done what they could,” he said, his voice a distant echo in this cavernous dining room coated with thick, carved stones.
Only the candles and the massive fireplace kept us company, along with the ancient weapons adorning the walls.
Even with the Commander’s size and my archer eyesight, I had to strain in my chair to see past the stacks of paper to see him–fifty of his biggest, fiercest warriors could have feasted at this table without bumping elbows.
Two enemies divided by contracts which would seal their futures together.
The Gods had a strange sense of humor, because this could not be justice.
I sagged back against the velvety chair cushions and stared down at the frankly insulting marriage contract the Clan Council had sent over, filled with stupid, condescending clauses.
“The fact that the magistrates felt it was important to include a rule against killing each other– through any means, be it direct, indirect, compensated, accidental, culinary or conveniently untraceable, including but not exclusive to paid assassination, poisoning with known dangerous foods, and accidents, witnessed, staged, or occurring under suspicious moonlight –is proof enough this whole marriage thing is utterly deranged,” I said.
The Commander rested his cheek on his fist and chuckled. The sound sounded too comforting. Like it could shatter the ice wall caging me. “You missed the amorous maiming clause.”
Gods.
My cheeks had burned just reading it, but hearing the words drip from the Commander’s lips sent trembles racing down my spine.
Despite the lingering fatigue, my traitorous body remembered the rush of relief when he’d appeared and freed me from Orion’s grasp and the warmth as his arms circled me and brought me back to safety.
But my mind still held onto that lone word.
Harmless .
Was that truly how he saw me? Someone to coddle, not to fear or respect?
“Don’t worry, we’re not going to fuck each other to death,” I deadpanned.
His jaw ticked as he unfurled his fingers and clenched them again in a perfectly controlled gesture, his gaze sparking at me.
“You’re in a mood,” was the only thing he said.
“Why aren’t you?” I shook the contract in my hand. “This is ridiculous.”
“It’s also unavoidable. I won’t scream at the sky hoping it would split in three just because I want it to,” he said. “I have other problems which I can control the outcome of and I choose to focus on them.”
Yes, because he still had a city to rule.
I had…nothing.
The clothes on my back, shelter, and food were given by the enemy Clan, my power was still fickle, my body was playing tricks on me, and my mind was tired. So tired.
For the first time in my life, I didn’t even have a goal.
I was simply existing. Drifting from one day to the next, keeping myself busy with my small sparks of power, and hovering somewhere between suffering and numbness.
“Any clause you don’t like?” he asked when the silence turned suffocating. “Soryn said the Clan Council expects a bit of pushback on the minor ones.”
“The heir clause,” I said quickly. “ The parties, being of sound mind and presumed magical ability, consent to the propagation and raising of a minimum of one heir within a maximum of two years . Impossible.”
He furrowed his brows. “Why?”
“Because the mere thought of bringing a child into this mess makes me wretch. If they tried to kill me , what would they do to a defenseless babe carrying my blood?”
It was a thought too gruesome to bear. I would rather have died at Orion’s hand than risk a child– my child–to be in any danger.
I could barely stand. I was in no state to care for another life right now. There was a chance I never would be.
The world had proven itself to be too wicked for me to even entertain the idea.
“So it’s not because you don’t want children in this life,” he said slowly.
“I–” I felt the weight of the implied question and his stare on me. I shifted in my seat. “I don’t know. Not right now.”
Rejecting the idea of an heir as a Clan ruler had never been an option. My father had kept my old childhood books to read to his inevitable grandchildren.
But now, the Protectorate was out of my reach. I had the freedom to decide the future of my bloodline, unencumbered by the weight of the crown.
And I couldn’t do it.
“I don’t want to decide right now.” I cleared my throat, trying to dislodge the fears from slipping from my tongue. “Those two years are nothing. Gone in a blink.”
My legs tensed as I waited for the Commander’s reaction.
“I agree. I doubt the Clan Council will allow us to strike it out completely, the whole point is to combine our bloodlines so we won’t kill each other and the next generation won’t want to murder their cousins,” he said, swiftly and calmly. “We can try and change the term.”
“Then let’s lengthen it. Ten years?”
Too much could happen in that time. Either of us could die–that thought rattled me more than I cared to admit.
“Fair.” He drew a sharp line with a pen on his copy of the contract and it reflected on mine, writing ten . I stared at his curved letters, so different than the jagged lines I’d imagined would spill from his large hands.
Knots constricted my stomach as the ink darkened, watching my fate twisted by some other hand, just as caged as mine.
“Anything else?” he asked.
I licked my lips. “This whole having to share one meal per week clause sounds a bit much, we should take it out–”
“No.”
The paper crinkled as I placed the contract on the table and splayed my fingers on top of it, as if I could cover the future it weaved for me. “No?”
“No.” He looked up at me, eyes sparking with perfect conviction.
“Whether we want it or not, we’ll get married.
I won’t be living with a stranger for the rest of my days.
If we need a clause to achieve that, we will.
It also means you’ll have to walk out of your room at least once a week. I consider this a win.”
Damn him, that was sound logic. But admitting he was right…that was another issue. “I thought this was a negotiation.”
Taking place in his fortress, at his table, in his realm. The one I’d asked him to bring me back to.
“It is.” He jerked his chin at the piles upon piles of paper. “All of my family assets, heirlooms, city resources, and some of the previously mentioned jewels.”
I gawked at him. “Am I supposed to choose from your family heirlooms?”
And city resources? I didn’t want to take anything from these people. They needed all the help they could get in this remote world.
“No, these are for you to look over so you know what you’re getting, down to the last coin, deer trophy, and polished stone.
” He shrugged, like he wasn’t just giving me the keys to his entire kingdom, frozen and strange as it was.
“You seem like the kind of woman who wants to know what she’s getting herself into.
You are going to be my wife. What is mine is yours from the moment we meet at the end of that altar.
” He said it like a promise. He splayed out his arms and arched them over the parchments, the leather of his armor crinkling. “This is what I can give you.”
My lips parted as I stared–then kept on staring.
A fortune was laid out in front of me in numbers, deeds, and codes, free for me to explore and use.
I hadn’t asked for this–any of the things he’d given me freely, someone who’d been his enemy mere weeks ago.
To a woman who’d trained her arrows twice on him–the last time was an accident, but still–and had jumped at him with a broken bottle.
The Commander hadn’t flinched, hadn’t backed up, and he hadn’t cowered.
He’d faced me, time and time again.
He’d bared his lands to me, and now his family riches.
And I had nothing to give back.
I swallowed past the lump in my throat. “This is going to be a very short negotiation, then.”
I hated how small and detached my voice sounded, especially in this mighty room. Why did everything have to be so big around here?
He cocked his head to the side, watching me closely.
“I don’t have anything to give back.” My throat wanted to seize, but I persisted.
“Whatever dowry I had is back in Aquila. I have no throne for an alliance. I have no crown to wear on our wedding day. My Vegheara blood is the only valuable thing I have, but even that will take at least ten years to profit off of.”
Not even my power was in a state I could barter in.
From the Protectorate’s First Daughter, I’d become a beggar. A lonely, sad beggar, surviving on the goodwill of the Blood Brotherhood, of all Clans.
The gash inside me grew.
Not because of things –trinkets, silks, and golds could always be lost and made back again–but because the lack of them made me vulnerable in an arranged marriage negotiation.
Perhaps the Commander was right.
I truly was harmless.