“Tonight,” Rhordyn rumbles, his barreling voice filling the room, “I address not just the people of Ocruth, but the entirecontinent.”
My spine straightens, gaze coaxed to the podium by the deep tenure of his familiar voice threatening to undo me.
Rhordyn assesses the crowd for a long, haunting minute, capturing hundreds of breaths, tilting hundreds of chins, widening hundreds of pairs of eyes before he takes Zali’s hand in his own.
My blood chills.
He might as well have busted the same hand through my ribs and grabbed hold of my heart. Because right now, he’s controlling my beats, deciding whether to let the thing keep pumping or to yank it from my chest and toss it at the ground.
He doesn’t look at me. Not once. Just squares his shoulders and says, “I found love in the secure roots of a friendship I’ve treasured for a very long time, much the same way I treasure the protection of my lands. Mypeople.”
The crowd cheers, filling the ballroom with a meal of merriment that starves me of breath.
He lifts Zali’s left hand, parading her bare wrist like it’s some sort of trophy.
Itmocksme—makes me feel like my chest is caving.
Don’t do it, Rhordyn.
Please don’t ...
“Tonight, I make our most sacred promise to this woman beside me.”
I can’t breathe, can’t think. I’ve climbed to the tallest branch in the tallest tree, snapping them all in the process, and now the only way down is tofall.
“But I also make the same promise to our people. Because Zali and I will not just be uniting in love, but also interritory.”
Love.
The word tears a hole in my heart; brings a fresh wave of tears that threaten to spill.
“We will be smudging the border between our lands in an effort to make them safe again!”
This time when the crowd erupts, it’s deafening. A booming applause riddled with hoots and whistles and screams—the desperate pleas of people who have been living in fear for far too long. People who believe this coupling is the cure for their very worst nightmares.
And perhaps it is ... but it’skilling me. Plundering my heart and planting a shadow seed amongst the fleshy mess of my insides.
My foot darts forward as Rhordyn reaches for the cupla secured around his wrist, and the hand anchoring me grips tighter.
“Don’t,” Cainon growls.
“Screw you.”
I’m about to take another step when the bastard tugs my arm until it’s locked against his torso.
“You’re a dick,” I bite out, watching Rhordyn cinch that obsidian oath around Zali’s wrist, feeling part of me break away and wither at the sight.
“Undoubtedly. But you’ll thank me later.”
“Not likely.”
The catch is fastened, and the crowd erupts in a riot of cheers, toasting frothy glasses while I resist the urge to rip my arm right from the socket and dash back to Stony Stem where I can lick my wounds in peace.
He did it. He actually fucking did it.
I whip a glass off a passing tray and down the entire thing in one gulp.
“Impressive,” Cainon yells over the roar of the mob, and I murder him with a glare, my back to the dais ...
