Chapter 15
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
M y mind reeled as I left the Council Room and silently headed toward the barracks, replaying my time in the room with every single step.
You said you had no intentions of marrying.
It hadn’t been a lie. Marriage just hadn’t been a necessity until now.
I said I had too much chaos in my life for a wife.
A muscle ticked in my jaw as I pushed open the doors to the barracks, recalling the way her skin flushed in response to that. The look of pure fury on her face when I refused to back down.
My cousin caught my eye as soon as I entered the soldiers’ quarters. Whatever he saw in my expression had him nodding in the direction of the sparring ring.
He grabbed two training swords while I removed my jacket, laying it neatly on one of the benches. Once I finished rolling up my sleeves, Yuriy tossed my sword through the air, charging forward on the offensive.
It was a relief to take out the frustration from earlier with every blow. I focused on the movements, the vibrations that ricocheted from the dull blade up through my arm before infusing that energy into each of my strikes.
I didn’t regret my offer of marriage or the offer to allow her to stay behind in Lochlann. It had been the only choice. The only course of action that made any sense, even if every reason I had sworn off marriage came crashing in on me as I sparred.
Bringing someone else into the complexities of my life at Bear would be an entirely less entertaining kind of chaos than what the Lochlannian family offered.
I blocked my cousin’s sword, shuffle-stepping to the side to get a better position in the ring. The movements were easy. A slide step, a pivot, ducking out of reach while bringing my sword down against Yuriy’s leg.
He recovered quickly, keeping me on the defensive.
Ava already targets her, let alone my father.
It should have been an easy solution, her staying here. It didn’t feel that way. Yuriy launched a series of quick jabs that forced me to cede ground to counter. He was skilled, but not that skilled. He never should have been able to push me backward, but of course, I was distracted.
Eternally so.
And distraction was something I could ill afford at Bear, yet another reason I had chosen to stay unmarried.
Storms knows she was enough of a distraction as a captive. How much more so when she is my wife?
Though that was assuming she agreed.
I went through each of the motions, trying and failing to forget the way my lemmikki had clung to Korhonan in the Council Room. The bright shade of her verdant eyes as she insisted she would agree to marry him at the end of the week.
The shock. The anger. The blatant refusal to acknowledge that my offer was the better one.
I parried Yuriy’s blade away, using my strength to off-foot him to gain the upper hand.
Even if she does agree, if she comes to Bear, how long will she stay when she sees the realities of what life there entails? What it requires from me…and what it will inevitably require from her?
It was my turn to go on the offensive, and he admirably met each of my blows without fail.
The exertion helped to clear my head enough to make a plan for moving forward. I would deal with Korhonan and my lemmikki later, but first, I needed to spin this to my father. I never would have offered marriage if I hadn’t believed it was possible, but it would still require careful maneuvering to make this feel enough like his idea that it would keep Rowan safe, regardless of what came next.
And to keep his temper from razing my clan to the ground once he heard the news.
I lost myself to my thoughts and the familiar feel of a sword in my hand so much that I almost missed the signs of Yuriy flagging. A quick glance out the window revealed the position of the sun. Storms. We had been sparring for longer than I’d realized.
“It’s strange that she doesn’t look like herself,” Yuriy interrupted my thoughts, not bothering to pretend he didn’t know exactly who had gotten me to this state.
I furrowed my brow, wondering when he had seen her.
“She talked to me on her way out of the ballroom with—” he cut off, possibly because I went on a more rigorous offensive for completely unrelated reasons.
At least she wasn’t treating everyone from Clan Bear like the villain from her sweeping three-week romance with Korhonan.
“You could talk to her a lot more if you wanted to attend court with me,” I muttered, effectively pivoting the conversation.
Though I had wanted to keep him away from the court, he would be a nice distraction for the rabid ladies therein. He was quieter and generally kinder than either Taras or me, not to mention a titled Socairan with a soldier’s build.
He shook his head. “Unless you order me to that court, Van, I’m just as happy where I am.”
I could hardly blame him there, and we both knew I wouldn’t order him to do something so pointless when he already gave up pieces of his soul for the sake of being one of my men.
I disarmed him with a few more quick moves. Clapping sounded as he tumbled to the dirt floor, and his cheeks colored as we both turned to face the intruder.
The ring was one of the smaller sparring arenas available, and comprised of only my men, none of whom would clap at any point in training.
I was unsurprised to see that it was Davin, wearing a smirk that reminded me of everything—and every one I had come here to avoid thinking about.
“Don’t worry,” he said to Yuriy, crossing to the center of the sparring ring. “My cousin kicks my arse all the time in this ring, too.”
“The princess?” Yuriy asked.
“Worse. Lady Gwyn.” Davin said her name like it was the topic of a horror story told around campfires, shooting me a smirk as he added, “Though, I hear you’ll be getting to know her better soon.”
Yuriy raised his eyebrows as he took my proffered hand, getting to his feet.
I declined to comment, turning to fully face Davin.
“I never said he was my cousin.”
His smirk widened. “And I never said Rowan was mine.”
That was fair enough. Yuriy’s resemblance to me wasn’t as strong as his brother’s, but we shared most of the same features. They just looked softer on him.
Still, I suspected Davin had many ways of obtaining information. That had been true even in my kingdom.
His brow furrowed, his countenance turning more serious. “I won’t go announcing it to the court, though you should know that we wouldn’t allow threats to any of you within these walls.”
I shrugged noncommittally. “All the same,” I said shortly, then changed the subject. “I assume you aren’t here for fun?”
Something told me that Davin rarely sparred for fun, of his own accord, though I was sure he had been trained along with the rest of the royal family.
“Not for me, but my auntie sent me to invite you to family dinner tonight.”
His auntie, the queen. So it wasn’t an invitation I could decline, on top of which it would be foolish of me, considering the reason I was here.
“Shall I assume I’m not the only one invited to dinner?”
“Of course not,” he said. “Where would be the fun in that?”
He turned to go without waiting for my response, since we both knew I had no choice but to go. At least if I knew anything about the Lochlannian royal family, I wouldn’t be the only one uncomfortable at this dinner.
Korhonan was uptight, even with his own men. He had no idea what he had in store for him here.
Dinner was even more chaotic than I had predicted, and I hadn’t even rounded the corner.
That wasn’t a problem for me. I had been trained relentlessly to adapt to an array of circumstances. This dinner was like any other battle in the midst of enemy territory, and not unlike being in the middle of a skirmish with the Besklanovvy .
There were at least four separate conversations spilling out into the hallway that led to the family dining room. Even more plants hung in this part of the castle, and colorful portraits lined the walls. They weren’t the stiffly posed ones that adorned Socairan sitting rooms.
There were curly heads of crimson hair askew with laughter. Rowan and Princess Avani sparring, with swords in their hands. Several redheads gathered around a lake, along with Davin and a man with chestnut hair I assumed was the late husband of the crown princess.
Just before the doorway was a portrait of the king with a tiny princess on each knee. The one on the right had pale green eyes, a mischievous smirk…and she was snatching his crown from his head.
It wasn’t hard to guess who that was.
I didn’t stop to examine it further when Korhonan’s footsteps sounded just behind me. I had never lost to him in any competition, and I damned sure wasn’t going to start tonight…however ill-thought-out this one might be.
So, I entered the room of bedlam as if I spent all my meals surrounded by a cacophony of voices, my eyes landing on the present-day version of the wild-haired princess.
She cut off whatever she had been saying as soon as she caught sight of me, her cheeks coloring.
There were empty chairs on either side of her, so I chose the one closest to her parents. There was a small child with hair just a shade darker than Rowan’s sitting in the lap of the glowering king, next to her mother, whose smile was only the slightest bit forced.
Her older sister was here, too, sitting still and silent like a ghost among humans.
Who in their right mind would want to go through what Avani did? Rowan had thrown the rhetorical question out on a frigid balcony one night when I suspected her nightmares had chased her from her bed.
My bed.
I hadn’t understood then, but I had started to now.
Korhonan sank into the chair on the other side of Rowan, looking thoroughly disgruntled that I had beaten him here.
Davin’s family filled the seats closest to him, along with two identical red-headed girls who I assumed were her younger sisters.
Once we were all seated, the queen cleared her throat. “We don’t stand on ceremony here, boys, so help yourselves.”
It was to the general surprise of no one that the Lochlannian royal family didn’t stand on ceremony, but when my lemmikki squared her shoulders next to me, I got the feeling she was about to go much further than that.
“Roll,” she yelled down the table, eyes blazing with defiance.
One of the twins shot her the smirk that was apparently common to every member of the royal family, then hurled the roll down the table with a speed that would have put my recruits to shame.
Rowan caught the roll in her hands, placing it on her plate before buttering it.
Korhonan looked predictably horrified, but I had come prepared to adapt and overcome.
“I’ll take one as well,” I asked the twin.
Her smirk widened, and she threw the next roll with impressive accuracy toward my plate. I caught it just before it made contact, and Rowan turned her head to glare at me.
I held her stare as I lifted the bread with deliberate casualness, taking a slow bite. She let out an irritable breath, averting her gaze while Davin choked on a laugh.
“There are civilized ways to obtain food as well, Lord Theodore,” Jocelyn offered, holding out a bowl.
He gratefully accepted, and Rowan clenched her teeth, refusing to look in my direction. That was fine. I didn’t need her attention now.
We both knew damned good and well who had won the first round.