Chapter 22
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
T hough I didn’t harbor any especially warm feelings toward him when Davin burst into my rooms through the passageways, I was grateful for the distraction he offered when he invited me to go shooting.
Apparently, Rowan was not the only one who used that particular hallway, though Davin assured me it was only family. We spent the day at a vast archery field, along with Gallagher, Gwyn, and Avani, the latter of whom split several targets.
After that, we enjoyed dinner at court, accompanied by several more unsubtle offers of both the marriage and the bedroom variety. All throughout the meal, I felt two sets of green eyes glancing my way—one with unmistakable ire and one with curiosity. Whatever Avani was wondering, she didn’t ask before the meal was over, though she was seated at my side.
And it was more than clear what Rowan was furious about, if her clenching of her wine glass every time Lady Fiona laughed was any indication.
Though Jocelyn hadn’t wanted either of the princess’s potential suitors to sit by her at dinner—something about the propriety of it all—we were to take turns escorting her back to her room. Tonight, it was my immense privilege to enjoy her glower all the way up the stairs.
Not that Korhonan would have received the same reception, of course. Why would he, when he was only the one who had thrown her in a dungeon to begin with?
We walked most of the way in silence, neither willing to be the first to speak. Tension still hummed in the air, fixed on the point where her hand rested reluctantly on my bicep. She stared resolutely ahead, her jaw set.
Our conversation from breakfast had been niggling at me all day, a puzzle where none of the pieces quite fit. She hadn’t just been indignant. Something darker had shadowed her features.
But I had watched her in the weeks after her flogging, hell, in the days after the fever that nearly stole her life. She had fumed her way through every sip of broth and practically inhaled the first biscuits Taisiya had allowed her to eat.
She was safer here. Happier. And yet…
She opened her door, but I held out an arm to bar her way.
“If you weren’t ill, and you weren’t suffering the after-effects of copious amounts of liquor, why weren’t you eating?” I demanded.
She glared up at me through her kohl-lined lashes. “I already told you, that isn’t your concern.”
The actual storms-damned hell it wasn’t.
“Whatever else you are or have been, you are still mine by bloodright. That means that everything you do is my concern. It’s my duty to keep you safe, and alive, and fed.”
A breath escaped her, close enough to ghost along my lips and filled with a bitterness so thick it poisoned the air between us. “Another sacrifice you make for your people?”
“If I must,” I snapped. “This isn’t a game.”
She pulled her arm away, the hallway turning several degrees colder in its wake.
“Like everything you have done since you got here hasn’t been a game?” she spat, shoving against my arm.
I didn’t move it, not yet. Those were rich words, coming from someone who had glared at a courtier for the sin of speaking to me after practically sitting on Korhonan’s lap at breakfast.
“Lemmikki,” I growled softly, moving closer to her and finally giving voice to the thought that had tormented me since seeing her paler, thinner form. “Did someone hurt you?”
Emotions flitted through her eyes too fast for me to read, before she finally settled on something I recognized all too well. It was the same look cast my way whenever I was forced to walk into a room full of people whose loved ones had died by my hand.
Accusation.
“No, Evander. No one hurt me. Not since I left Bear.”
With that, I let my arm fall away, and she disappeared behind the door.
As I turned to go, I locked eyes with her sister, who had apparently rounded the corner just in time to witness the tail end of our exchange. She was escorted by Gallagher, both now wearing twin inscrutable expressions.
I strode down the hallway casually, nodding to them both.
They nodded back, but something unfamiliar blazed behind Avani’s polite gaze. I wondered how long I would have to wait to figure out what it was.
Not long, it appeared.
I didn’t know much about the heir to the Lochlannian throne, aside from the obvious. She had been raised to rule, which would have been evident by her mere presence, regardless of what I had been told.
She was more introspective than her siblings, though whether that was by nature or by grief, I couldn’t be sure.
And somewhere behind her calm facade lurked the same stubborn kind of recklessness that seemed to run deep through Lochlannian royal family’s veins, since she was the first royal in over a thousand years of their kingdom’s history—either the H’rian or the Luanian side—to marry a commoner.
So I wasn’t altogether surprised when she strode in through the passageway with all the confidence of someone who was in line to own every stone in this castle, though I was getting slightly exasperated by the sheer volume of people here who refused to use the actual door.
“Princess Avani,” I greeted, getting to my feet. “So nice to see you here, in my rooms, through my not-so-secret passageway. Another charming family trait, I see,” I said more quietly, setting my glass down.
She only gave me a slight smirk gracious nod in return, crossing the room without speaking and helping herself to my decanter of whiskey. She poured her own glass first, then held the decanter out to me, establishing from the start that she intended to be in control of whatever impromptu meeting she had just created.
I nodded, grabbing my nearly empty glass and holding it out while she served me as if I were her guest this evening. And not the other way around.
As I said, it had been obvious from the start that she was raised to rule.
She sat in the armchair closest to the wall, giving her the best vantage point of the room. I sat across from her, though having my back to the passageway created an itch between my shoulder blades.
She still didn’t speak, only took a long sip of her whiskey. This was a familiar game in Socair, a quiet reading of the atmosphere until the one least comfortable with the silence was forced to speak.
Ten minutes ticked audibly by on the artfully carved clock in the corner of the room.
I could have played it out, could have happily and silently sat in this chair until breakfast, but I hardly thought the princess and I staring at each other for eight and a half hours was conducive to any sort of camaraderie.
I handed her the victory early on, sacrificing a pawn for the sake of the overall game. “I see where the similarities end.”
When Rowan had something to say, nothing in this world or the next could force her to hold her tongue for even one minute, let alone ten.
Avani raised her eyebrows, a beat too late to be genuinely curious.
I obliged her anyway. “Patience isn’t her strong suit,” I said more bluntly.
“No.” The corner of her mouth tilted up. “Nor yours, I suspect.”
I considered that briefly. Patience was vital to being a leader. I could sit through endless meetings with the dukes, ceremonies that took several times as long as they needed to. I could wait out an ambush and carefully manipulate my father’s unpredictable moods.
Patience and control. They were the key to survival in Bear.
But both seemed to be in short supply every time I spotted Korhonan trying to take my lemmikki. I thought of her coaxing my guards off their shifts to play cards with her and mentally amended that statement to include any situation that involved her.
“Not lately, anyway,” I acknowledged.
Avani nodded, like that was the answer she had been expecting. It struck me again how different she was from her sister. Once I entered a world of brazen royals with crimson curls and sharp tongues and a penchant for sword-fighting, some part of me had wondered whether one would start to feel like the next. Or perhaps I had only hoped that.
But I was still drawn to Rowan by the same invisible force that had rebelled against the idea of Korhonan claiming her long before I had staked my own.
Which was the last thing I felt like thinking about tonight.
“Shall I bother to ask what you’re doing here?” I finally opted for bluntness, since the Lochlannian family appreciated it anyway, and I suspected it was the only way to move this conversation along.
“Funny.” She gently shook the contents of her glass, causing firelight to dance along the amber hues of the whiskey. “I came to ask you the same thing.”
It was both more and less than I expected from her, a question I had answered many times over by now with an answer I suspected she wouldn’t settle for.
“Isn’t it obvious?” I countered.
She let out a huff of air, somewhere between amusement and exasperation. “Not to everyone, apparently.”
I could harbor a guess at who she was referring to.
“I had intended to send a representative for trade, anyway.” I told her what she already knew. “When I received Korhonan’s letter about the betrothal, I assumed it would be more convenient for me to negotiate those terms in person.”
More convenient. More effective. Both were true, and neither was why I had come. I could acknowledge that much now, though certainly not to Avani.
She smirked around her sip of whiskey. “Ah. And the proposal of marriage from you, Lord Evander. Was that also a matter of...convenience?”
A chuckle escaped me before I could stop it. There may not be a word in her language or mine that described my proposal to Rowan less.
“I’m not certain that’s a word that will ever apply to matters involving Princess Rowan.” That surely didn’t come as a surprise to her sister.
Avani gave a long blink, shaking her head slightly before waving her hand for me to answer her original question.
“Surely you see the political advantage.” I offered what was, again, the obvious explanation.
“Indeed,” she deadpanned. “Usually in order to gain a…political advantage, though, one or both of the parties need to actually compromise.”
I stopped short of telling her compromise was all I had been doing since I got here. Compromising my pride to play this inane game with her sister, to sit in a council room without a single ally, to allow my wife to stay here once we were married, an entire kingdom away from my protection.
“Indeed,” I parroted, ready to be finished with this discussion. “If that’s all...”
She raised her eyebrows at the dismissal, setting her glass down before she got to her feet. “Yes, I believe you’ve told me everything I needed to know.”
Chin imperiously high, the crown princess made her way back to the passageway without another word. She slid it open, but paused before she left, speaking over her shoulder.
“For whatever it’s worth, Lord Evander, I do hope things work out to your...political advantage.” The last two words dripped with sarcasm, like she hadn’t believed a single word of the excuses I had given her. But her features were soft when she tacked on, “both of yours.”
I wasn’t sure what to make of her unexpected approval, so I gave her a rare bit of raw honesty in response.
“So do I.”