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Ren exhaled slowly, still not taking his eyes off Starling. “She’ll have whatever she wants.”
“You on your knees, I expect,” Lilia mused. She and Zovisasha gazed at Ren, evidently imagining what that would look like, for their faces cracked into identical expressions of delight. I wasn’t sure if it was the sexual or political implications that pleased them more, but I didn’t dare interrupt the Quarehians’ conversation, which was probably the most civil I’d ever seen them be with each other.
“When I do,” Ren murmured to the healer, “will you return with us? To Quareh?”
“Is that an order or a request, Your Highness?” Starling asked in their language, glancing down at her feet before meeting the prince’s gaze once more.
“A request.” He shook his head. “No. A favour.Por favor.”
Fuck me.Ren saying please…toStarling, no less? The woman he and his family had all but owned, whose magic he had once considered belonged to him?
“I will not be caged again,” she spat. “No more forced servitude.”
Another head shake. “A job opportunity. I’ll pay you a fair salary to work as the palace’s healer in Máros.”
Starling narrowed her eyes. She didn’t answer for nearly a minute, and in that time I swore neither of them even blinked. “Double whatever you consider fair…”
“Done.”
She inclined her head slightly in acknowledgement. “…and I will reside in Máros forhalfof each year.”
“And the other half?” asked Ren.
“Here,” she said simply. “I’ve been doing some good in Stavroyarsk, and there are many more people who need my help. I will not abandon them.”
“Yeah,” said Ren, but he was looking at me. A fond smile graced his lips, and he brushed the back of his fingers over my jaw. “I understand.”
“Ah,” Starling muttered. “Maybe I was more than minusculely wrong after all, Mathias.”
-
“This is where we leave you.”
With those words, Lilia abruptly stilled in the middle of the corridor, the flames of the wall torches highlighting the glossy bronze strands in her red hair. She cast a glance back at me and Ren, her eyebrows furrowed.
“Coward. We can go further,” Zovisasha declared, trying to shoo her friend out of the way.
Lilia folded her arms. “This is practically treason,” she hissed back, and they began to bicker in hushed tones.
“We mean your regent no harm,” Ren assured them but neither woman seemed to hear him, too intent on winning an argument that didn’t need to be had.
“You’ve done more than enough,” I interjected, tugging at Zovisasha’s arm as she tried to drag Lilia further along the corridor. “You got us in. Please return home before someone sees you.”
Zovisasha deflated beneath my hold. “We have to leave,” she insisted, even as Lilia began to draw away...deeperinto the castle.
“Just a little longer,” Lilia taunted, “unless you’re scared?”
I blew out an exasperated breath. Now was not the fucking time for this.
“Go. Home,” I ordered, attempting to lace my voice with that indisputable dominance Ren did so well. The prince’s shoulders shook with silent laughter at my side, but it was the unimpressed expressions of the two women that hit my ego the hardest.
“Are you trying to boss us around,Nathanael?”
“I think he’s trying to pull rank-”
“Poor, delusional Temarian-”
“Someone should really tell him-”
