Chapter 22
Y uriy guarded the hallway outside the princess’s rooms, nodding at me gravely when I strode over. I stood outside the door to the room that had been unoccupied for years now, hesitating only a moment before knocking sharply.
My aunt had lived here as a girl. It was where she would return when she needed solace from the Unclannings and the floggings and the nights at court that sometimes felt even worse, or so she’d said.
It was where she hid me from Mairi, too, and where she came to care for my wounds. I used to wonder if my father had been more like her, in the years before my mother died. If there was some small bit of kindness in his bloodline as well, or if she had been the rare exception.
Overall, the room was a place of mixed memories that hadn’t been occupied in the years since the woman who claimed it died. Until now.
“Come in,” the princess’s relaxed tone called through the door, like she wasn’t unarmed in the castle of her enemy.
Der’mo.
A growl escaped my lips, Mairi’s subtle threats and my father’s more obvious ones fresh on my mind as I pushed open the door.
Then promptly stopped in my tracks.
Because she wasn’t merely unarmed. She was also undressed—or nearly there, lying back with her neck exposed like the easy target she insisted on making herself.
There were other things exposed, too, visible through the thin, damp lace of a skintight nightdress that was nothing at all like the sea of ruffled horrors she had been wearing the night before. One of Lady Mila’s, then? She must have just gotten out of the bath because small droplets of water still streamed from her curls.
For a moment, with her posture relaxed, sitting by the cozy fire in the only room I had ever felt safe in, I almost forgot who she was and why I was here.
Almost.
Then she lunged abruptly forward, covering her chest with her hands and glaring like I was the one in the wrong. All at once I remembered why I had come and what she would be facing while I was gone. She might not have the sense to care about her life, but I did.
For my people.
And because she was mine. For now, at least. Until I could find a reasonable way to offload her back to being someone else’s problem.
I cleared my throat, which was dry for no reason at all.
“I came to tell you I’m leaving tomorrow.”
I assumed she would dance with joy at that, not realizing the implications. Instead, the blood drained from her face.
“Am I to be your father’s pet now?”
I pictured my father with a hand around Rowan’s throat. Patricide was a taboo in Socair, enough that even I had never been able to bring myself to take that final step against him. Not to mention the anarchy it would throw my clan into.
But the urge rose up in me, visceral and untamable.
I might still have to kill Rowan myself, but I damned sure wouldn’t give her to my father in the meantime.
“No,” I growled.
She visibly relaxed, her narrow shoulders lowering, and I couldn’t help but wonder if she knew she was the only person in this kingdom who wouldn’t be terrified to be my pet, my father notwithstanding.
What had she heard that made her so much more terrified of him? And would it be enough to keep her afraid while I was gone?
“Well, I’ll try not to be too desolate in your absence,” she quipped.
So no, then.
“I expect you to stay in your rooms,” I bit out.
She only raised her eyebrows, like as a prisoner, she was shocked that she had any actual restrictions. Something in her expression told me she was already finding ways around that particular edict.
Why did she have to be so storms-damned difficult? At this rate, I would come back to find her strung along the outside wall.
“Trust me, Lemmikki,” I told her in the same tone I generally used just before I drew my swords. “You will not enjoy the consequences if you disobey.”
Her pale green eyes flickered in the firelight, uncertainty flashing across her features. And finally, fear.
I felt a strange mix of relief and disappointment, which made no sense since her fear was what I needed. She nodded, still more reluctantly than I would have wanted.
“My men will be watching,” I added.
She stuck her nose in the air, plump mouth settling into a familiar expression of obstinance.
“Inside these rooms you insist I stay in? That hardly seems appropriate.”
Something about this tomb of a room and my lack of sleep was getting to me, images coming to me in sharp focus, of all the ways my father would delight in bringing the stubborn princess of Lochlann to heel.
I should have told her that, should have recounted his favorite war stories of how he had put the Queen of H’Ria in her place before he finally granted her death. But it was hard to do that in this room.
The cozy, flickering fire, the soft, patterned wallpaper, the remnants of the closest thing to a mother I had ever known. I pictured my aunt’s quiet disappointment at the person I had turned into, and I couldn’t quite bring myself to be a monster in this space.
And then there was the girl by the fireplace, somehow nearly as vivid as the flames burning behind her.
I needed to get out of here.
Shaking my head, I delivered one final warning before I left. “I told you at the Summit, you didn’t have the sense to be afraid. Now would be a good time to remedy that.”
With that, I left, casting a single rueful glance at my own door before heading down the hallway to my cousin’s room.
Taras answered on the first knock, proof that he had been waiting for me.
“More treason?” he said, pushing a glass of vodka into my hands.
Of course word had reached him already. There was no accusation in his tone, only the same resignation I felt.
“We leave at dawn. I’ll need a guard rotating outside the princess’s rooms. Only the men we trust. She is not to come in or out.”
His expression was dubious.
“I’ve already given her the order,” I told him in a tone far more certain than I felt. “We just need to give it to the men.”
“To Yuriy, you mean?” Taras clarified with a knowing expression.
“I’m concerned he will be soft for her,” I confirmed.
My cousin raised an eyebrow. “He wouldn’t be the only one.”
“Yes, well, I sent Kirill home to his wife already.”
Taras said nothing, and I pretended his silence wasn’t pointed. Finally, he cleared his throat.
“And tomorrow?”
“I’ve already sent Dmitriy to find a suitable scapegoat.” Here was hoping someone in the village had assaulted someone recently so it would be one less thing to weigh on my conscience. “Should be minimal casualties, and no children.”
Another small win, if we pulled it off.
Taras graciously didn’t comment on that either.
I drained my glass and set it down, anxious to get back to my rooms for what little rest I could eke out before tomorrow. Just as I reached for the doorknob, Taras cleared his throat again.
“About the…girl.” He said it like he was going to call her something else, but changed his mind.
Problem?
Tiny, irritating princess who might get our people killed by her very presence?
“I have it under control,” I said.
This time, he snorted, and I couldn’t even feign offense.
Rowan was a lot of things, but I doubted seriously anyone had ever had her under control.