“What’s that?” Damien asks in a low growl.
“Your wife.”
16
Rage
Damien
My hand balls into a fist, my molecules pulling apart into shadow. Warbill places a steadying hand on my shoulder. “I’m sure we misheard you, Jaqual. Surely you know better than to threaten a shade’s mate.”
I glare at Jaqual as Eloise comes to me and stands by my side. Her lip curls in the way it often does when she doesn’t know what to make of something or someone. She lifts her chin, her glare sliding down her nose at the Rivertoad king.
“You did not mishear me, and there is no mistake,” Jaqual says. “The one who tames the dragon rules this world. She is the dragon, and if you want my men, you will give her to me. Not as my wife but as my prisoner.” My growl echoes around us, and he adds, “And I will return her to you the moment we win the war and the people elect a leader. Once the Rivertoads are free, she will be free. It’s a simple bargain, Hymir.”
I glare at Jaqual but then I shift my attention to Eloise, and the look I see on her face makes me lean back on my heels. There was a time in the beginning when my jealousy and possessiveness might have led me by the nose. Not today. Not anymore. I am no longer the newly mated shade I once was, and I see the scene of us standing in the clearing in front of our wagon as if from a distance. Then I laugh until everyone is staring at me like I’ve lost my mind, even her.
“What exactly do you find so funny?” Jaqual asks.
“Youaskingmeto hand over my mate. Your first mistake, Jaqual, is thinking that Eloise is mine to give. She may be my mate, but I don’t control her, and I do not own her to lend or give away in exchange for your men.” Eloise gives me a grateful and self-assured look, and I know that I’m onto something. “Now, you could ask her to stay with you in exchange for your men, and she might consider it because my wife, my mate, my queen, has a deep love for this kingdom and a penchant for self-sacrifice, but you could never hold her. Make no mistake, she is the most powerful being among us.”
Jaqual’s eyes fall on Eloise. “Well? Then I pose my offer to you, Eloise. Will you stay with me in exchange for an army capable of flipping this kingdom? Will you be my leverage to ensure your mate doesn’t go the same way as his brother?”
Eloise glares at the man, her green eyes hard and cold. She’s bound to me. I trust her. But the longer she doesn’t speak, the more I worry she might actually be considering Jaqual’s proposal for the state of the kingdom. I can’t fathom such a thing. To be without her, even for a day, would be torture. To know she was here, with this man,even if we were planning the same war and her absence was only political—I couldn’t stand it.
I trust her.
I don’t trust fate.
“No,” she says decisively. I hide the tremble in the breath of relief I release. “Damien is right. I am my own person, and I make my own rules. I will not offer myself to be traded or possessed. You’re a smart man, Jaqual. You saw what I am, and you know the prophecy. You also know what will happen to your people if you do nothing. The writing is on the wall. A decade from now, your children will work in a dark elf mine, and you’ll ask yourself what you could have done to stop it. And you’ll remember this conversation. You’ll remember how you knew New Stygarde was stealing children, drugging them, and making them slaves all over Tenebris, and you thought you could outrun that fate. And you’ll know you were wrong.”
He scowls. “Rivertoads have always taken care of their own.”
Eloise shakes her head. “You think that your tradition of traveling can save you from being ruled by them. But they don’t care about your traditions. And they don’t care about your freedom. New Stygarde has a pattern of oppression. First, they’ll restrict your mobility, then they’ll restrict you economically. Then, once you’ve watched families who’ve counted on you starve to death despite your best efforts, they’ll attack, burn your wagons, and execute your leaders on trumped-up charges, and there will be no one left to help you.”
Jaqual’s amulet winks.
“Am I lying, Jaqual?” she asks.
He growls. “The Rivertoads will never fall. Our caravan was born with this world and will only die when the world dies with it.”
Eloise glances at me and snorts. “Shall we tell him, Damien, how long the journey between life and death can be?”
With a smug curl of my lip, I say, “You wouldn’t believe how long. Made longer by every life for whom you are responsible.”
The amulet winks and Jaqual winces. “Then I’m afraid we’re at an impasse. You are free to rest in the wagons until we pull up stakes. You have about four hours.”
“Thank you, but no,” I say. “We’ll be going now.”
Eloise nods. “I’ll get my things.”
Warbill grimaces. I can’t imagine he relishes facing a day’s ride with no sleep. But he obeys like the true umbrae he is. “I’ll fetch the rabble beasts.”
Once they both leave us, Jaqual turns to me. “Your father never once reached out to my people, Hymir. That toxic blood of yours is why this world is in danger to begin with. Imagine believing you could cure a poisoned land by pouring on more poison.”
I shove past him toward the door to the wagon. “Imagine believing the poison won’t kill you while you watch everyone else who drinks it die.” He sneers at me in response. “My blood isn’t poison, Jaqual. Maybe it was once, but that was a lifetime ago. My father never reached out to the Rivertoads because you were too busy keeping his son drunk on cheap wine to come to the negotiation table, and too obsessed with traveling to speak to him about the peace you took for granted.”
“A narrow view of the circumstances?—”
