Chapter 74
CHAPTER SEVENTY-FOUR
D espite my general aversion to thinking about him, Korhonan’s words followed me all the way back to the room I shared with Rowan. She was propped up against the headboard when I walked in, her endless curls spilling over her shoulders and framing the impressive curves that were barely contained in her corseted top. The dress she had worn this morning was tossed carelessly over an armchair, something that only mildly made me twitch now that I had grown so accustomed to it.
Something must have shown in my features because she raised her eyebrows when she caught sight of me.
“Fun day with the council?” She gave me a sardonic smile.
Where to begin on that question?
I sighed, removing my jacket and hanging it neatly from the hook that hung for that very purpose…right next to the one intended for her dress.
“Isn’t every day fun with Iiro as an almost king?” I said by way of answer, turning back to her.
It struck me all over again how close I could have come to being forced to attend this inane summons to watch over my father, without her by my side. How I might have instead been forced to watch her sit at Korhonan’s side in a navy gown while she pretended to support his aalio of a brother.
That, of course, was one of many things we hadn’t discussed, but I couldn’t quite stop myself now. I didn’t like the way he had hinted at knowing more than I did about what happened in Lochlann, like I was the one missing something.
“You never did tell me…what happened...with Korhonan,” I prompted her, falling short of any eloquence in the wake of the unsettling meeting with Iiro.
She didn’t quite tease me, but she did raise her eyebrows. “I told you what didn’t happen. I wasn’t aware you wanted details of the rest.”
Yes, Lemmikki, please add to the storms-damned day I’ve had by regaling me with tales of you pressed against Korhonan so that I can eviscerate him and expedite the start of this inevitable war.
I leveled her with a look. “I can assure you, I do not. I meant when he left Lochlann.”
“Oh.” She furrowed her brow, openly scrutinizing me. “I asked him in so I could tell him what I had already decided, but he got there before I did.”
The day she had been stabbed, when I had been so sure she had told him he was staying. It had never occurred to me to be grateful that he had left quietly when I had still been too furious that he had tried to take what was mine to begin with.
I still wasn’t precisely grateful , but I could acknowledge that he had been…less difficult than he could have been. Than I would have been . If what he said today was true, though, he had seen no point in prolonging the inevitable.
Was that what he had said to her?
She must have read the unspoken questions on my face because Rowan went on.
“He said that you and I were inevitable...that he could see it from the first time we danced.” She averted her gaze, running her fingers along the elaborate stitching of the blanket. “Which is...ridiculous, obviously.”
I thought about that day. Even then, her body had moved instinctively with mine.
And even then, the rest of the room had fallen away when I looked at her. Just as it did now.
I crossed the distance to her, grasping her chin in my hand and tilting it upward until she consented to meet my eyes.
“Is it?” I challenged.
Her eyes burned into mine, an unspoken answer to my questions. Whatever part of her soul called perpetually to mine had ignited the first time I touched her that day at the Summit. I leaned down to press my lips to hers, a renewed sense of urgency in every touch at the reminder of how close I had come to losing her to our ridiculous pride and all the stupid games we had played.
She moved toward me just as she had then, her body endlessly responsive to mine, an addiction that time was doing nothing to sate.
I moved my hand down her body, skimming along the indent near her hip and the swell of her thigh, nearly to her knee before my mind caught up with my body.
Something was missing, a part of her that was every bit as familiar to my fingers as the peaks and valleys that made up her perfect body.
And it wasn’t like her to go without her weapon when I hadn’t even returned to the room yet.
I lifted my head from where I had burrowed it into her neck, boring my gaze into hers. “Where is your dagger?”
“Um…” She blinked several times, scrunching her nose. “I think we knocked it behind the dresser.”
She sounded utterly unconcerned for someone who had been in a palace with several people who wanted her dead without a single storms-damned way to defend herself, and even the reminder of how we might have failed to notice the dagger clattering to the floor wasn’t enough to distract me.
“You were unarmed all day?” I demanded.
She wiggled impatiently underneath me, huffing out a sigh. “By necessity, yes. And a few more minutes won’t make a stars-damned difference.”
Der’mo .
Her dagger was not an issue I planned on ignoring, but the demand in her tone reminded me that I wasn’t the only one who could use a reprieve after a day of all the tensions in this storms-forsaken palace.
Not to mention that I still hadn’t forgotten the niggling feeling from a moment ago, the urgent need to touch her and remind myself that we hadn’t lost each other, hadn’t lost this .
“You would think that I had been neglecting you.” I lowered my lips to hers once more, willing the coincidental timing of her missing dagger from my head, if only for long enough to enjoy my wife.
You would think that we didn’t have ample reason to suspect we had knocked your dagger behind the dresser this very morning, Lemmikki.
She nodded with mock seriousness. “I feel very, very neglected. It has been…eight whole hours since you showered me with any sort of attention.”
“Well, we can’t have that.” I wished I had only been teasing her, that I didn’t have an ominous feeling that the day would come soon when we would regret not taking every opportunity we could to lose ourselves in one another.
I had never been prone to regret, and I didn’t intend to start now.
Once I was finished making sure my wife felt thoroughly un -neglected, I did, in fact, return to the issue of her dagger. After moving the furniture around the room and scouring every possible place it could have hidden, I was finally forced to admit what I had suspected from the moment I skimmed my hand along her very bare thigh.
Even if a maid would have risked stealing under the authority of the new king, no one would have stolen the dagger when there were far more valuable, less recognizable things in this room.
Rage pulsed through my veins at all of the reasons someone might want to specifically deprive my wife of her only means of defense in this den of vipers.
Her very recognizable means of defense.
“So, they wanted your dagger specifically,” I growled, something about that niggling at me.
“So I would be unarmed?” she guessed, her voice wobbling a bit on the last word.
It was a reasonable assumption, but it didn’t quite add up. Anyone who wanted to harm her would have to know that we would replace the weapon. It made little sense to put her on the alert first, unless they were only trying to scare her.
Even then, there were surely more effective means.
“Perhaps,” I answered, not sure I believed my own assurance. I returned to her side, running both of my hands along her arms. “I’ll make sure you have a replacement by tomorrow. In the meantime, you don’t leave my side.”
I reminded myself that we had known coming here was dangerous. We had prepared for the possibility. She could just as soon fight with a different dagger, and I would slice the throat of anyone who looked at her sideways anyway.
Even Iiro.
There was something almost unhinged in the way he despised her, hinting at the cruelty he usually saved for the darker parts of his dungeons. For a man who had shown nothing but control in the time that I had known him, he had let her affect his judgment on more than one occasion now.
Which made sense. He cared for nothing more than his pride and his family, and in his eyes, she was a threat to both. She had hurt Korhonan by denying him, had hurt their family’s pride when it was made public, and her very outspoken existence challenged every tradition he was trying so desperately to claw his way back toward.
She met my eyes, not giving voice to the fears that churned in her own. She leaned into my touch, bringing one hand up to my heart and holding it there.
Instead of objecting the way I expected her to, she only nodded, pressing her lips against my chest.
“I won’t.”
Her easy acquiescence should have been comforting, but seeing the bravest woman I knew cowed by a man like Iiro only fanned the flames of my rage further.
I vowed then and there that I would use those flames to burn us both to the ground along with the whole of Socair before I let him lay a single hand on my lemmikki.