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Good.
Reminding him of whose daughter I was would hopefully taunt his desire to break me. Could he do so without taking me to wife? Certainly. Was he already planning to? Absolutely. But that wouldn’t get him the army he needed to reach his goal.
I brought my clammy fist to the door and gave three knocks. There was a long moment of silence before a muffled, “Enter!” vibrated through the set of heavy doors.
Forcing the tremble from my fingers, I pushed on the wing of the raven and stepped into its treacherous nest. One illuminated by a large stone-hearth to the right, although an oil lamp also flickered where it stood on a small desk to the left. Lemongrass and seasoned oak scented the air, lingering between a set of couches and a large… I wasn’t exactly sure what I was seeing. Pillows? Yes, lots of pillows, spread out and neatly arranged in a circle at the far end of the room where a bed should have been.
“Why you suddenly bother to knock is beyond me,” Malyr said. “I need you to scout out a valley near the western coast and see if a group of our own is hiding there, struggling to get south and to safety.”
So he was waiting for someone.Sebian?
My throat narrowed.
Lorn?
Malyr crossed from a wooden armoire toward the desk, wearing only black breeches and boots, his broad upper body exposed, and scarred. Not large patches of puckered skin like Sebian, but raised dark lines on his shoulder, down his upper arm, the side of his torso. I couldn’t tell how bad the damage was, but that roil in my stomach had me take a guess.
“The sooner you can head there, the better,” Malyr continued and, when no response came, he turned toward me. “Take a fate with you, in case—” He froze in place, silently staring at me for three seconds or thirty, and quickly reached for the white shirt that hung over the backrest of the chair. “You came to me.” My ears pricked at the breathed consonance of those words that seemed to run deeper than surprise, but he cleared it away, straightened his face. “Why are you here?”
I curtsied as he shuck on the shirt, taking no small amount of pride in howIhad clearly taken him off-guard for once. “To offer myself up.”
He grabbed the metal pitcher from his desk, filled the cup standing beside it, took a sip, then arched a brow at me. “Offer yourself up?”
“For marriage.”
“Of course…” A sneer twitched over his narrow lips as though he had expected something different, then he crossed the distance. “You are your father’s daughter, indeed; plucky enough to seek me out and offer me nothing.”
“My father’s army is not nothing.”
He prowled around me, sipping his wine and running a finger around the neckline of my dress. “Many a ladies at my court come with armies.”
“Yet all of them combined won’t surmount to my father’s army, who is holding the largest one in all of Dranada, second only to King Barat’s,” I pointed out. “I daresay you would have to marry all those ladies to match that… or just me.”
“You wish me to take you to wife, little dove? Have you considered this closely? The hate I harbor for you? The pain it will bring? The humiliation?” The way he stopped in front of me, keeping his gaze locked with mine as his fingernail traced the fresh, sensitive scars on my chest, was all malice, threat, and spite. “Until death… do us… part?”
“We both know there will be pain and humiliation, regardless. Presume I could accept that fate wearing cotton, but I would much rather do it wearing silk. Or feathers, if it pleases my husband.” If my time at the Court of Ravens had taught me one thing, it was that one could not die of shame. Hunger and sickness, however… “You might take Ammarett with the army of another bannerman, it’s true, but certainly not withoutheavylosses. Most of them sustained by taking Tidestone first, which is necessary if you want to break north without my father severing your line of supplies before cutting you in the back.”
“Mmm, you have a mind for strategy, I give you that.” He took another slow sip of wine, staring down at me over the rim of his cup. “You are raising valid points, little dove.”
My chest lifted. “So you will agree to our betrothal?”
His prowling steps continued until he stepped up behind me, gently removing a pin from my hair. A curl sprung free, which he twirled around his finger, only to stretch it long and lay it on my shoulder. He did that twice more, unfurling my strands with a patience that drove up my pulse. More intense was the wash of warmth against my back as he stepped closer and slung his arm around my belly, his breath warm against my ear. Gods, I hated the effect this man had on me…
“Anything but that,” he whispered at last. “Anyone but you.”
A chill crept under my skin, but I wouldn’t let that deter me. I had come here, fully expecting to leave his chambers hurt, humiliated, belittled, cut-up, bleeding, bruised, raped. But by the gods, I wouldnotleave unbetrothed.
I stepped out of his arm and turned to face him. “What will it take for you to agree?”
“Nothing you can offer. As you pointed out so eloquently, you were born worthless.”
I breathed through the painful truth. “You won’t ever let me hear the end of that, will you? Because you know how much that knowledge hurts.”
For a moment, for a fraction of a breath, he worked his jaws, eyebrows drawing together. “Yes. I do know how much that hurts.”
“Well, I’m still good enough to provide you with your sick amusement, and perhaps even a sense of delivered atonement.”
“Atonement.” He chuckled into his cup, emptied it with a long swallow, only for his mouth to emerge as a crooked grin. “Pray tell, little dove, however might you achieve that?”
