Page 8 of Sky’s Edge

(And just to say, it was the male who determined if the trial was a success or a failure, so I was screwed on that score too, unless I could convince him during that weekend I was not the queen for him, something I fully intended to do.)

Of course, there was no actual law that said I, who had not signed a betrothal agreement, had to adhere to said agreement.

At least there wasn’t a law in Night’s Fall, where I lived.

However, if I didn’t, I could kiss my mother and father goodbye indefinitely, even eternally.

Although Dad and I could cross horns, I loved him. I loved both of them. I did this with all my heart. I did not want to lose them, even if this whole business was crazy archaic.

Just the concept of being disowned by them terrified me.

Mom, as a human, could, and probably would, defy this demonic edict.

Dad never would.

Never.

If we made it through the trial and I didn’t marry Tanyn, I’d lose Dad forever, and I couldn’t even think about that without feeling sick to my stomach.

Tanyn conceded my point by inclining his annoyingly attractive head, a movement that was annoyingly attractive.

“Sweetheart,” Dad called me, all loving and kind now, of course.

I turned to him, and I knew my face was not loving or kind but carefully bland.

Dad sallied forth anyway.

“Tanyn wishes for you both to be coronated together,” he announced.

Bully for Tanyn.

“As such, and with Aleksei and Laura’s engagement party coming closer, we really don’t have time to delay,” he went on.

I said nothing.

“Sweetheart,” Dad whispered, the word this time dripping with remorse.

Farg his remorse.

Sure, he was a male. He didn’t have to put up with this nonsense. In real terms, he could not get how this felt.

But he was living with me and Mom and the rest of the world in these modern times. He had to know how much he was asking of me, how totally antiquated this expectation was of female demons being married so damned young. He had to have some understanding of what this was going to cost me.

And he’d had a hand in making me. He knew me. He knew how I’d react to him doing something like this.

Even so, he laid me out right in front of Tanyn like I was not behaving like a female who’d had her options and free will torn from her, but instead, like I was a disobedient child.

So…oh yeah.

Farg his remorse.

“Will your beings arrange transport, or shall I?” I asked Tanyn.

“I’d prefer you have a detail,” Tanyn replied.

“I know. They escorted me here,” I reminded him, leaving off and everywhere else for the last week. “Unnecessarily, since no one knows anything about us.”

“And it was thought no one knew Laura was Aleksei’s mate, and she was attacked months before she even met him, because she was Aleksei’s mate,” Tanyn rejoined.