The words are absorbed by the sudden hollow between us. A chasm of his own creation.
I’m here, keepingmypromise, while he’s danglinghisover my head like a line of bait.
Perhaps he’s under the illusion that simply being his High Mistress is enough to satisfy me. That he’s giving meeverythingRhordyn didn’t and therefore, I should be grateful.
Truth be told, I couldn’t give two shits about the title. About the pleasure his lusty eyes promise me in spades.
I want those ships.
All the heat snips from his stare, and he eases off the bed. “Fuck, sorry …” He grips the bridge of his nose and digs through his pocket, flipping a tiny, weatherworn scroll through his fingers. “Not that it’s any excuse, but I’m on edge,” he says with a burst of nervous laughter. “If you can’t already tell.”
My curiosity cranes her neck.
“What’s that?”
He looks between me and the scroll, then holds it out. “Rhordyn’s headed to Bahari to retrieve his ships. Payment for his prized mare.”
He ...what?
I leap off the bed and snatch the scroll, scanning the tiny scripture, then once more—slow, hungering over the slanted curves and delicate flicks in a way I know I shouldn’t.
Hiswriting.
A dainty scrawl so at odds with the man it spilled from. I’m not sure why that makes the organ thumping in my chest ache, but it does.
I stop myself just shy of running my thumb across the parchment, feeling the dent of each syllable scratched into the surface.
He’s coming for the ships.
Unease wrestles with my insides as I realize there’s a high chance I’ll be forced into his proximity at least once before he leaves …
Shit.
“While he’s here, he’ll be searching for weaknesses.”
I look up, frowning. “What do you mean?”
“I can’t remember the last time he bothered to visit my territory,” Cainon continues, stuffing his hands deep into the pockets of his gray leather pants. “He could’ve sent someone else. The only reason he didn’t is because he’s seeking signs that you’re not here of your own accord so he can use the law that protects people against extortion to his advantage.”
“I don’t follow ...”
Cainon snags the parchment and rolls it into a perfect little scroll. “Since Zali and Rhordyn publicly announced their allegiance at the ball, I’ve been outnumbered. The Eastern Territory of Rouste is almost the size of Ocruth, and Zali’s army is savage, forged from blistering dunes that are near inhabitable. Together, they’re a formidable match I have no hope in standing up against, and I don’t know what their plan is. I just know it’ssomething.” He pauses, pocketing the scroll. “I’m a bug beneath his boot, Orlaith. You give him a reason to believe you’re not here because youwantto be, and he’ll put his foot down—use his pretty new alliance to destroy me and my people.”
I shake my head, thinking back to the most recent Tribunal—to the people who went to Rhordyn with cupped hands and ache in their eyes. “He has no need for extra land to manage. He’s having enough problems as it is.”
“But that’s just it. The jungle that separates us from both Rhordyn’s and Zali’s territories is thick and dark and riddled with Irilak—a natural Vruk deterrent. It’ssafehere, and people are starting to notice. I’m packed full of refugees arriving on trade ships daily while the people that choose to stay behind are being slaughtered.”
I chew on his words, trying to find a comfortable space for them to settle inside me.
Rhordyn thinks Cainon is seeking to shift the borders through a territory war, and vice versa. There’s so much finger pointing that it’s literally costing lives.
Cainon’s palm grazes my elbow as he steps close. “He’s always been bigger, stronger,betterthan the rest of us. The fact that I’m his people’s salvation is twisting him up. I can see it.”
I look from his hand, now wrapped around my arm, to his eyes—wide and beseeching.
“You give him the faintest reason to believe I’m holding you here against your will before you’re officially released from his guardianship and he’ll exploit it. He’ll use my own ships against me and that war neither of us want will fall upon our doorstep.That,Orlaith, is why he can’t have the ships until after we’re coupled.”
I see the sense. His words are easy enough to follow.
