Chapter 9
S ir Nils downed his entire glass in one, long gulp before gesturing for me to pour him another. He was an old miser, but he didn’t mind using our alliance to take advantage of the five bottles of vodka I brought into the tent.
I supposed that was for the best though. If I could ply the dukes with enough good liquor, perhaps then they would listen to reason. Or perhaps, it would backfire spectacularly, and they would simply dig their heels in about kickstarting a war none of us needed, and at least some of us didn’t want.
Unfortunately, as the night wore on, I had a feeling it would be the latter of those two options. Especially as Iiro refused to speak up on behalf of the princess he pretended to care about.
Instead, he sat silently in his chair, sipping my vodka like his work here was done. And maybe it was. The bastard only ever maneuvered toward his own ends, but I sure as hell wasn’t going to let him put my clan in the line of fire with his antics.
“We have our resources to consider,” I began, trying to argue this a different way. Nils cut me off before I could continue.
“We have our honor to consider!” he spat, slamming his glass down on the table.
There were several murmurs of agreement.
Der’mo . These men would sacrifice their storms-damned families for the sake of their precious pride, and they didn’t respect anyone who wasn’t willing to do the same, so I dipped my chin in assent.
“That is true. And I know my father would agree with you all,” I said. “But as much as none of us want to face it, Socair is dying.”
That got their attention. My words were met with several indignant glares, as well as a handful of considering ones.
“How long have we been depending on dwindling food stores? Or fighting against the storms and the land to produce more? An alliance with Lochlann would mean easing that burden.”
“You speak of your father, but you know as well as I do that he would never agree to such a thing,” Mikhail argued. “He may despise the Lochlannians even more than Nils does.”
Several voices rose and fell as the dukes debated who hated Lochlann the most.
“But he sent me here because he trusted me to make the best decision for my clan,” I raised my voice just enough to be heard over the din.
When they quieted down, I continued.
“You know as well as I do that my father has done, and will continue to do what is best for Bear, and Socair as a whole. Even if that means feigning a friendship with the enemy in order to protect our legacy.”
That wasn’t strictly true.
Not in the past, and certainly not now when everything he did was tinged with madness… But he would protect his legacy, no matter the cost, this I knew.
The Stenvall line would continue and thrive, even if it meant slaughtering the other eight clans to make that happen. Storms, even if it meant slowly destroying his own clan to make it happen.
The dukes considered this for a moment—Arès, in particular, hadn’t been a fan of sending the princess to her death, but he was carefully studying me now, like he could see past my words, somehow.
For a moment, it seemed like the tides would turn. Like I had gotten through to them somehow. But that moment was all too fleeting.
In the end, it didn’t matter how much vodka they drank, how much I reminded them of the stakes, the clans were finally united in a decision, ready to break out the war drums and die for the noble cause of killing the slip of a girl who had dared insult them to their faces.
I paced the length of my tent, listening to the low crackles of the dying fire. The party this evening had been heavy with the weight of her death sentence. It hung over the dance-floor like the noose that was poised for her delicate Lochlannian neck.
I had seen so much death by now that one not-so-innocent girl’s should have been inconsequential in the wake of it all. Still, she was hardly inconsequential. Her death would catalyze an entire war that would push my people further into starvation.
Which is the only reason I cared. Obviously. Not because, irritating as she was, she was the most vibrant thing in this entire kingdom. Not because the idea of her being dead when she was so very alive right now made me unreasonably…dissatisfied.
Whatever the reason, I spent the rest of the night awake, combing carefully through Iiro’s plots and motives and coming up with a contingency plan for each one. And when morning came, I was still not prepared for what happened next.
In the nearly twenty years since Socair had implemented the concept of Summits, not a single one had ended early.
Until now.
Until one tiny, red-headed princess had managed to insult every last clan leader in the entire storms-damned kingdom into stony silence.
I ran through scenarios in my head, all the contingency plans I had spent the sleepless night contemplating. One by one, I arranged them, first by how likely they would be to succeed, then by how willing I was to go through with them.
I would never be able to convince my father to offer Lochlann safe passage to attack Elk, so if the tunnels were truly blocked, there was no way for me to throw this at Elk’s feet. She had to stay alive.
Something like panic surged in my chest for the first time in as long as I could remember. I was so distracted by the feeling that I nearly missed the look that passed between Theodore and the princess, the way she gave him a wan, reluctant smile.
The entirely audible whisper when she leaned closer to him.
“I accept, on one condition.”
I froze.
It wasn’t possible…
I had convinced myself the night before that there was no way marriage was the endgame, that it made entirely too little sense to go through this entire charade just to marry the princess off to someone she would have agreed to marry without this.
But somewhere along the way, I had grossly miscalculated.
Both because marriage clearly was the plan...
And because it would appear Princess Rowan had not, in fact, readily agreed to it, even to save her own life. Which shouldn’t have mattered, shouldn’t have remotely factored into anything, and it didn’t really, except that it was…interesting.
Korhonan, on the other hand, looked downright giddy. “Oh?”
“That I never have to eat borscht again.”
Not only had she apparently not wanted to marry him, but now she was joking while she begrudgingly accepted the only lifeline she had. Theodore nodded to his brother, who breathed out a relieved sigh before getting to his feet with an unimaginably self-satisfied smirk.
After everything, she was going to marry Theodore, and Iiro would have the chance to make a serious bid for the throne.
And I didn’t think. Didn’t consider the long-term consequences or play out every nuance of the variables in my head. It had been my least favorite plan, one I had dismissed out of hand because there were an endless amount of ways it could go wrong.
Now, it was the only option I could see.
Iiro’s smug expression died on his face when I swept to my feet in the Summit Tent.
Calm . I needed to look calm, collected, in charge.
“I claim my family’s blood debt against the Pendragon family,” I announced in the blandest tone I could muster.
My heartbeat thundered in my ears, a rhythmic staccato so loud that I barely registered the damning words that came out of my mouth.
This was undoubtedly a mistake. Even if there was a grim satisfaction in depriving Korhonan of his ill-gotten prize, bringing the princess to Bear could do more harm than outright killing her, in the long run. Especially with Mairi and my father in the picture.
But anything was better than allowing Iiro to form this alliance. That was as good as giving the throne to him, and that would mean a war just as surely as if Lochlann came calling. My father would never let that stand.
The difference was, while Lochlann might cut through my people to get to Elk, Iiro would come to destroy us directly.
“On what grounds?” Arès asked, his far too observant eyes assessing me carefully from across the long, dark table.
What grounds, indeed? My mind felt sluggish, though I had already considered this the night before.
“Her parents facilitated and witnessed the wedding that broke the agreement with my father, which led to the war.”
“I wasn’t even born then!” she fumed.
“It doesn’t matter.” I shrugged with all the nonchalance I didn’t feel. “It’s your family’s debt against mine, and it is within my rights to pursue that.”
“A broken agreement does not constitute a blood debt,” Iiro hissed from his spot at the head of the table.
Wan shafts of sunlight shone down on him from the opening in the tent roof, highlighting the furious flare of his nostrils and his pale, pursed lips.
“No, but the resulting war does,” I responded, regaining a bit of my composure internally, allowing me to more smoothly continue. “More specifically, the murder of my father’s brother that King Logan committed when he blew up the tunnels.” I glanced at the Council, knowing they couldn’t possibly argue this in Iiro’s favor. “Remind me, does that constitute a blood debt?”
“It does,” Mikhail said, though he seemed bitter to be forced to acknowledge that truth.
He was always quick to jump to the winning side, though.
“Regardless,” Iiro regained the floor. “Before I was interrupted by a boy who shouldn’t have a voice in this Council at all, I was preparing to announce my brother’s betrothal to the princess. Remind me,” he said sarcastically to me, “are clan wives subject to blood debts?”
“Of course not.” I shrugged again, a hint of smugness creeping in. Whatever else happened, I would have successfully thwarted a plan he must have been banking on. “But a betrothed does not a wife make.”
“Then they will wed tonight.” The calm in Iiro’s tone was being edged in ever so slightly by panic, and I couldn’t deny that I enjoyed that, just a bit.
Even if we hadn’t had a history, I was certain he had orchestrated at least part of this. The reason I would now be stuck with Princess Pain-in-the-arse for the foreseeable future.
“You cannot enforce the protection of a Clan Wife after I claim my blood debt,” I asserted. “That would make a mockery of our most sacred laws.”
I managed to say those last three words without a trace of sarcasm.
“Lord Evander is correct,” Arès said deliberately, though he shot me a glance that conveyed an almost paternal sort of disappointment. “If we allow marriage as an avenue of escape from a blood debt after the claim is staked, the law would be all but useless.”
“Is someone going to tell me what this blood debt even means?” The princess finally spoke up, because of course, Korhonan hadn’t bothered to explain this little detail affecting her entire life while his brother was busy pontificating.
“It doesn’t matter, because he isn’t taking you.” My old friend finally bothered to speak up.
Naturally, I ignored him, turning instead to answer her question.
“It means your life belongs to my clan for the one that was stolen from us.”
Her lips parted in…horror? Shock? A combination of the two?
“So you’re going to kill me because my mother helped her best friend avoid a marriage to a barbarian, and my father defended his kingdom from a war your people started?”
There she was again with that word—barbarian—though I certainly couldn’t argue it where my father was concerned. But of course she would think I wanted to kill her, even after I spent five days at this Summit arguing against doing that very thing.
Was she paying no attention at all to the proceedings that determined her entire life, or was she merely so blinded by her preconceived notions that the reality didn’t register?
“No,” I told her with another smirk, hoping to irritate her half as much as she was currently irritating me. “I don’t think I’ll kill you yet. I think you’ll make a very entertaining pet.”
Korhonan moved as though to duel me since, apparently, he had developed an actual sense of bravery and a mind that thought for itself in roughly the past fourteen seconds. Fortunately, he was saved from having to act on those rare feelings by his knight-in-shining-tiara.
“No!” She threw herself between us with all the impulsivity that had landed her—and me—in this mess to begin with. “Don’t. I’ll go.”
“Stand down, Theodore,” Iiro ordered. “You know what I will have to do if you spill blood here.”
Korhonan’s face was angrier than I had ever seen it, more furious than I frankly thought him capable of. Whatever games Iiro had been playing at, his brother’s feelings were genuine.
Wonderful . Another complication.
Arès shot me a grim look before speaking up to explain to the princess that I now owned her in every possible way.
For the first time since she got here, the na?ve, spoiled princess seemed to truly understand what her being here meant, the price she would pay for a mistake she hadn’t possessed the sense to take seriously.
Pure dread overtook her features. Her lips parted, but she didn’t appear to have the capacity for her usual sardonic or ridiculous running commentary.
I had wanted her to understand the gravity of her situation, the reality of the consequences of her everyday thoughtless choices, but not quite like this. Besides, I could hardly have her falling apart in the carriage the entire way back to Bear, though. Better to pull her out of this catatonic state now.
“Come along, my little Lemmikki,” I said, attempting to pull her out of herself.
The endearment—one that seemed to come entirely on its own—I mostly tacked on for Korhonan’s sake, unable to resist the temptation to taunt him when he was incapable of retaliating.
She still looked dazed, turning to Korhonan for an explanation.
“It means pet ,” he spat.
That was an interesting way to describe it, especially considering my comments to that effect. Perhaps I had misjudged his reasons behind failing to translate for her, as his grasp of the colloquial common tongue seemed shoddy, at best. Then again, he hadn’t grown up with a Lochlannian in his house.
If anything, though, his explanation only furthered my goal of angering the princess out of her stupor. Her eyes had widened in shock, but now they narrowed as she turned them on me. The fire she seemed to inherently possess burning bright.
“I am not your anything,” she growled.
That point was debatable, but there was no sense in pushing her any further when I had already achieved my goals.
“Least of all your pet ,” she went on. “And I will come after I’ve said my goodbyes. It’s the least you can do.”
The least I could do after she backed us all into this wildly uncomfortable corner? She looked at Korhonan with sadness and longing, like she hadn’t practically waited until the noose was wrapped around her neck to begrudgingly accept his betrothal.
To hell with not pushing her further. She sure as storms had no qualms about pushing me.
“The least I can do?” I scoffed. “And this is after I already rescued you from your reluctant nuptials. I believe I’ll add ungrateful to your lengthy list of flaws.”
Still, she would probably be at least slightly more tolerable if I granted her this.
“Very well. Fifteen minutes, but stay where I can see you.” I couldn’t resist the urge to remind her of just what situation she was apparently so devastated to be leaving, though. “Never let it be said that I am not…accommodating.”
She shot me a final scathing glance before storming away with her apparent beloved .
I took the opportunity to find my men, instructing Henrick to ready everything to leave and send a bird to my cousin letting him know to meet us on the road.
Fortunately, the soldiers I had chosen to accompany me were picked because they were the best trained of our already impressive military. Fifteen minutes was more than enough notice for them to be on the road—a fact I was lamenting when that left Kirill plenty of time to approach me.
His features were more guarded than he usually bothered to be with me, his eyes heavy with judgment. So I preempted whatever objection he was about to make.
“Don’t pretend we haven’t done far worse for the good of our clan.”
His blue eyes iced over, his spine stiffening with the reminder of the sins that followed us around.
“When there was no other choice,” he bit back. “Do you honestly think your best option here was to drag her within reach of Lady Mairi and your father?”
“Obviously, I do, or I wouldn’t have done it.” My tone was just as frigid.
He raised his eyebrows in disbelief, and I chose to ignore him, sighing.
“I will keep her safe,” I assured him, belatedly tacking on a caveat. “At least, as long as her wellbeing continues to be in the clan’s best interest.”
He shook his head slightly, as though he was disappointed in my answer.
As though we hadn’t both slaughtered more innocents than we would ever be able to tally up for that same cause.
The good of the clan. Everything came down to that. Even her .