Unless.Savannah would not liveunlessthe duchess saw to it somehow that she did.
“What do you want?” Rohan asked Zella.
“Tell me, Rohan: Would you give upeverythingfor her?”
Rohan knew what Zella meant when she saideverything. “The Mercy.”
“All you’d have to do is abdicate and choose the right heir.”
“You.” Rohan saw her play then, clear as day. He’d won the Proprietorship, and she’d responded by boxing him in. By choosing a new pressure point.
“I can see to it that Savannah doesn’t lose.” The duchess let him ruminate on that for a moment. “I can guarantee that she will live. Am I lying?”
“No.” Whatever deal Zella had struck, whoever and whatever she’d betrayed to be in this position, the duchesscoulddo this. She was not lying about that.
Rohan flashed back to the moment his fingers had closed around the Proprietor’s cane, the moment it had all becomehis, and then his mind took him back further, to seeing Savannah unconscious on the garden path.
“Is she worth it?” Zella asked. “To you?”
“Is she wortheverything?” Rohan shot back. “All I’ve ever worked for? All I’ve ever known? All that I have ever wanted?”
But even as Rohan said the words, he could hear himself saying that hedidn’twant it anymore, and not just because it wasn’t what he’d thought.I don’t think I’d want it, he’d told Jameson Hawthorne,even if it was.
Power came at a price. It always had, and Rohan had always paid it, and to what end?
Don’t be a fool, he told himself, because only a fool would make a deal like this. Without the Mercy, he would be nothing. He’d never again hold cards worth even a fraction as much as what he was being asked to sign away now. And romance was nothing but a trick of light. An illusion. A sleight not of hand but of heart. Rohan knew that. He’d always known that.
And yet, he could hear himself saying,Right from the start, what choice did I have with you?
There were moments in life when one was forced to choose: The guaranteed payoff or the risk? The long game or the short one? To try to be clever—or to let yourself be played the fool.
“Well, Rohan?” the duchess said. “Do we have a deal?”
One last wager.
One last game.
Winter girl.
“You know,” Rohan said, his voice low and vicious, the die cast, “that we do.”
Chapter 84
ROHAN
Some bargains, once struck, could not be undone. Some crowns, once passed, were gone.
A signature in purple ink. Rohan’s fingerprints immortalized beside it in his own blood. The entire process recorded. No good would ever come of claiming such a thing had been signed under duress. A Proprietor who could lose the upper hand to that extent was no Proprietor at all.
“It’s done,” Zella said, once he’d passed the paper back through the gaps in the blades.
Rohan closed his fingers around the metal quill. “I’ll be keeping this.” It might have some utility as a weapon. Though he’d attempted to negotiate for his own release on top of Savannah’s survival, some things, it seemed, were not in Zella’s power.
Katalin wants us here.
“My turn.” Toby’s voice was cavernous and dark. “Makemean offer.”
“I can’t save your daughter, Toby.” The new Proprietor of the Devil’s Mercy was not without compassion, and her tone made that clear.
