AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Already did, Ruhn replied. You should see the lightning around Athalar’s mind. He burned their probes into crisps.
Yuck. Don’t say probes.
Ruhn snorted, and his presence faded from her mind just as Morven continued, “Sathia has promised me nothing. In fact, she has refused to pay my asking price. A generous one, at that: her choice between the males who stand beside her. And as a female has no worth here beyond the offspring she might bear Avallen, I don’t see a reason why your sister should remain in this haven another moment.”
Morven’s words sank in. “I’m sorry,” Bryce said, glancing between Sathia’s outraged, pretty face and the Stag King and his feral shadows, “but to clarify: Are you saying you’re requiring any females who seek refuge here to marry?”
“It would be unsafe for so many unwed females to be running about without a male relative or husband,” Morven said, picking at an invisible fleck of dirt on his night-black pants.
“Yeah,” Bryce said, “the gods know what would happen if all us females were unsupervised. Absolute anarchy. Cities would crumble.”
But Flynn said to Morven, “So bring their brothers and husbands over.”
Bryce glared at him, but Morven declared, “I have no need for more males in this land.”
Bryce ground her teeth hard enough to hurt. This was the male who’d agreed with her father that Bryce and Cormac should marry, injecting more power and dignity into the Fae royal line.
Flynn said, “And my parents?”
Morven sniffed. “I have allowed Lord and Lady Hawthorne to remain here, as our ties date back to the First Wars. They are currently residing at my private hunting lodge up north.”
“So send Sathia to my dad,” Flynn snapped.
“He won’t,” Sathia said at last. Though her Fae voice was soft and cultured, Bryce didn’t miss the backbone of steel running through it. “It’s either marry here, or go back to Lunathion.”
“So go back,” Flynn ordered his sister.
Sathia slowly shook her head. “It’s not safe.”
“You’ve got your cushy villa,” Ruhn said with unusual harshness. “You’ll be fine.”
Sathia shook her head again, gaze fixing on her brother. “It’s not safe because of you.”
“What?” Flynn blurted.
“Word has spread,” Morven said from his antler-and-shadow throne, “of your assistance in that one’s”—a nod toward Ruhn—“escape. Along with the escape of two other enemies of the empire.” A flick of his cold eyes to Baxian and Hunt, who glared back with impressive menace. “The entire Hawthorne family is now wanted by the Asteri for questioning.”
“They want to kill us to punish you,” Sathia burst out, pointing a damning finger at Flynn. “We had to leave in the middle of the night, when we got an alert that the 33rd was coming to bring us in. These clothes are the only ones I have with me.”
“What a sacrifice for you,” Flynn sneered. But Bryce caught the guilt darkening his eyes. Declan had already pulled out his phone, no doubt to check on his family and Marc—
“There’s no reception here, thanks to the mists,” Sathia said to Declan.
The male’s face paled, and he muttered, “I forgot.”
But Sathia added quietly, “I put in a call to your parents before we left. They said they’d get in touch with your boyfriend, too.”
Flynn gaped at her, but Declan bowed his head in thanks.
“What?” Sathia glared at her brother. “You think I’m that much of a monster?”
Flynn gave her another sneer that said, Yes, and Bryce stepped in to spare everyone from their bickering. “Okay,” she said to Morven, “so you’re insisting that Flynn’s sister marry one of … these creeps?” Bryce gestured to the Murder Twins holding Sathia, making sure that mental wall of starlight was still intact. She wasn’t letting their minds anywhere near hers.
“Seamus and Duncan are lords of the Fae,” Morven snapped at Bryce. “You will address them with a female’s proper tone of deference.”
For fuck’s sake. “You didn’t answer my question,” Bryce said. Sathia’s expression had become downright panicked. “You’re really forcing her into marriage or deporting her to be killed by the Asteri?”
Morven twirled a shadow around one of his long, broad fingers. “Her father has agreed it is in her best interest to wed. And has agreed that should she refuse, she shall be sent back to Lunathion.” He clenched his fist, crushing the shadow within. “For too long, she has refused any males he has presented to her for marriage. Her father’s patience has come to an end, and he has begged me to oversee this matter.”
