"In case you've forgotten," she snapped, her voice cutting through the heavy silence, "you were going tokill melast night."
The words lashed out sharper than she intended, a shield against the heat rising in her cheeks, against the treacherous turn of her thoughts.
Her pulse thundered. She clung to her anger like a weapon, refusing to let him see the flicker of weakness that had just threatened to betray her.
"Things change," he said simply. "Believe me when I say I no longer intend to kill you. It wasn't something I wanted to do in the first place. Accept it. Move forward."
Her eyes narrowed. "Is that whatyoudo? Just accept?"
He shrugged, unbothered, shadows curling faintly at his feet. "It is our way."
"The orc way?" she pressed, her tone sharp. "To quickly forget grudges? I'm not an orc."
His gaze deepened, and when he spoke again, his voice was lower, rougher—something hoarse and dangerous curling beneath the words.
"No. But you are a woman."
Heat flushed her skin, and she hated herself for it.This can't be happening.
"I can show you," he rasped, the words sliding over her like a dark promise, "that there are benefits to being with one such as I."
Anger coursed through her, white-hot, stripping away the last of her caution.
He had abducted her from her own bed, held a blade to her throat, bound her like an animal, and dragged her across the plains to this prison of stone. He had stolen her freedom, her dignity, her crown—and now he spoke to her of marriage benefits? As though the violence between them could be so easily forgotten? As though the fear that still lingered in her bones whenever he moved too quickly was nothing?
No.
This was beyond inappropriate. This was madness. This shadow-orc who had shattered her world overnight nowpresumed to rebuild it according to his whims—and that was proof enough of his insanity.
Before she even realised what she was doing, her hand closed around a heavy tome from his desk. She swung it up and hurled it at him with all the fury she could summon.
"You do not get to do this to me," she spat. "Not after what you've done.Leave me."
The book struck him squarely, a dull thud echoing through the chamber.
He didn't move to block it. Didn't retaliate.
He just stood there, silent, shadows licking faintly at his feet, the strangest expression carved across his face—something she couldn't read, something she didn't want to.
Her heart pounded in her chest as she tore her gaze from him, turned on her heel, and stormed out of the study.
Chapter
Sixteen
Rakhal stood in silence, the faint echo of the slammed door still reverberating in the stone chamber. He didn't move to follow her. Instead, he turned toward the window, bracing his hands against the rough-hewn sill, staring past the walls of the stronghold.
Beyond lay the plains, endless and scarred by war, patches of scorched earth still visible from the last battle. Beyond them, the shadowed mountains rose like jagged teeth against the sky, their peaks capped with early snow. And farther still—her country. Maidan. The lands he had only ever seen through a warrior's eyes, now to be entered as a consort.
Her city. Her people.
He thought of her anger, her defiance, the sharp flash in her eyes as she'd hurled the tome at him. The sheer audacity of it. Did she not understand what she was? His prisoner. Bound by rope and circumstance, held in the heart of his stronghold where no one could save her. He could have done anything to her. Anything.
And yet she acted as though none of that mattered.
As though she still sat a throne.
The mindset of a queen, he supposed. A queen unaccustomed to being told what to do.
