Chapter 77
CHAPTER SEVENTY-SEVEN
T he silence that fell was as sharp as glass, each slow ticking of the clock, each stilted breath threatening to crack it wide open.
Iiro slowly turned to stare at his wife, his eyes widening, his jaw clenching.
“If that’s true…” he began, forcing the words out through gritted teeth. “Why not speak up sooner, my dear?”
His chest rose and fell as he waited for her answer.
Inessa swallowed, calmly glancing between my wife and me, before cutting her eyes back to Iiro.
“I confess, it was a matter of propriety,” she said simply. “Lady Rowan reached out to me with questions of a delicate nature, and I visited her rooms to answer.”
I froze, too afraid to react, to risk putting my wife in further danger by even blinking and giving away the blatant falsehood that just might serve as our salvation.
Iiro appeared to be frozen as well, though in his case, it was from shock. He tilted his head, as much in genuine bafflement as the show of doubt he tried to portray.
“And you spoke of such things in front of Lord Evander?” he pressed, not yet willing to outright accuse her of lying, but clearly giving her another opportunity to help him implicate at least one of us.
“He was unwilling to leave,” she said, shrugging in a show of innocence with her gaze still solidly fixed on her husband’s.
Iiro hesitated, his posture rigid as he processed her response.
Tension continued to roll through the room like distant thunder, low and rumbling, waiting for that next clash of lightning to set it free.
“And how long were you there?” Iiro bit out.
“I had only just left when we heard Lady Ava’s cry,” she responded, not so much as blinking in discomfort while she effectively destroyed the last shred of possibility that he could pin this crime on either of us.
I studied her features, each one carved into serenity, but for the barest defiant tilt of her chin. In the time I had known her, I couldn’t remember her ever stringing this many words together at a time, let alone to contradict her husband. But now she was lying to him, for my sake, or more likely, Rowan’s.
She had hugged her goodbye that day at the Summit, had talked with her at our wedding. Was that enough to explain the shift in loyalty that had always been so singularly fixed on Iiro?
She had neatly boxed him into a corner. He couldn’t accuse her of lying. Whatever else I could say for the bastard, he adored his wife. He would never let her hang for treason or be branded a Besklanovvy , both standard punishments for lying to her king.
But she didn’t even have to take that gamble because he stood to lose all that he had worked for if he was undermined by his own wife in his own throne room. Her willingness to lie to him, to thwart his schemes, would only make him look weak.
Not to mention that her father was among his few staunch allies, and the man was unlikely to stand for his daughter’s honor being questioned.
In a few short words, she had upended months of his planning, and I should have felt something at that—amusement or victory or, at the very least, relief. But her motives were a mystery to me, and I didn’t like feeling like I could only see half the pieces in play on the board when the stakes were my clan and my lemmikki.
Iiro turned toward Rowan, unleashing all the fury in his gaze that he had shielded his own wife from.
“And what did the two of you discuss?” he demanded.
It was almost laughable that he was trying to shame the woman who had mocked me about referencing her feminine needs in the first week that I knew her.
Still, she made an admiral attempt to pretend to care.
“I was inquiring after herbs for my…moontime pains,” she said in an undertone, even going so far as to dip her head in a show of shame to sell the lie.
Iiro blinked several times, his mouth contorting with the force of his ire.
“And that conversation took the better part of an hour?” he pressed.
“One thing led to another,” Rowan continued with a shrug. “If his majesty wishes to be informed of every detail of a conversation about my...delicate female matters, I would be happy to oblige.”
A few of the dukes shifted uncomfortably, clearly hoping she wouldn’t, in fact, oblige.
He narrowed his eyes, ice settling into his expression.
“I’m certain that won’t be necessary,” he said, though he continued to stare at her like she had sprouted a new head.
The Duke of Viper cleared his throat. “It seems the investigation will need to continue.”
“Indeed,” Iiro replied flatly.
This was my opportunity to leave. Every instinct in me told me to take it, to take my wife and my men and put as much distance between us and the Obsidian Palace as I could manage.
We might have escaped Iiro’s plot for now, but I had no doubt we had only enraged him further by avoiding his machinations, especially when he was sure to blame Rowan for his wife’s unexpected defense.
“In the meantime,” I spoke up in a voice that carried, “I need to return to Bear with my father’s body to see that the funeral rites are followed. Unless, of course, you have an objection to that.”
Without proof of guilt, he couldn’t deny me this. Funeral rites were sacred, especially for a duke. He had no choice but to let us go.
I knew it, and the dukes knew it, and Iiro storms-damned well knew it, too. It would almost have been satisfying, had the victory not been tainted by the image of my father’s corpse impaled by my wife’s dagger.
“Of course not,” he practically spat the words, dismissing us with a gesture. “You may leave immediately.”