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  “It’s fine.”

  He let out a breath. “No. It is not.” He pulled out one of the chairs and settled into it. “I should have been more courteous. I was avoiding you.”

  She tried not to let on either her surprise or the fact that the words hurt more than she expected them to, despite the fact that she’d been grateful not to have to face him that morning.

  “It’s of no concern,” she finally said.

  “Shannen.”

  She looked up, met his dark gaze.

  “It is of concern to me. You deserve to be treated well here, and you will be.”

  “What does it matter?” she asked, and it held none of the usual sarcastic bite.

  He stood up and took a few long slow strides toward her. He stood inches from her, that scent enveloping her, his size dwarfing her. “It matters because you are my wife, and I take care of that which is mine.”

  She took a step back. “Like a prized sow? Or a sword?” she spat. She walked to the window and looked down over the scrubby forest beyond the palace.

  “You’re taking it the wrong way,” he said behind her. “That was not what I meant.”

  “Sure,” she said.

  “You are not a possession.”

  “No. Well, I’m not much of anything, am I?” she said quietly, looking out the window but no longer seeing it. “Janara says you’re like a brother to her.”

  “I am.”

  “Nothing else?”

  “You are asking if I have been involved romantically with her?” he asked, and she heard the uncertainty in his voice.

  Shannen shrugged, and continued looking out the window. “Never mind.”

  They stayed silent for a while. Shannen was caught between wanting him to leave and wanting to talk to him, learn more about him. Because knowing the enemy would help her, she told herself. She knew better.

  “I never bedded Janara.”

  “It’s none of my business.”

  “You asked,” he pointed out. “I have never bedded Janara. She is, as she told you, like a sister to me and always has been. If she seemed angry or rude toward you, it is because she worries for me.”

  Shannen didn’t answer.

  “But if this is a concern for you, if it is something you wonder about, you should know that I have been with many of the females of a certain age here in the village. They will probably be more than happy to tell you that, if they think you need to be taken down a peg or two.”

  “How nice for you.”

  “It is what it is. And that part of my life is over.”

  Shannen turned and glared at him. “I am so sorry,” she said in mock sympathy. “You poor, poor male, married to something as disgusting as me. It’s not like you were taken from your home and forced to marry and bed—”

  “Please don’t continue that sentence,” he said in a voice so low she barely heard it. Shannen clamped her mouth shut. “Everyone else, I’m sure, is telling you how miserable you must make me. Until I tell you that myself, you should ignore them for the gossips and fools they are. For the record, I am not miserable. I rather like you, even if I find you to be the most confusing female I’ve ever met.”

  “At least you’re honest,” she grumbled. She heard a few footsteps, and she felt him, his warmth, close behind her.

  “That was something we promised one another yesterday, yes?” he asked in a low voice, his warm breath tickling the shell of her ear. “I meant it, wife.”

  “So did I,” she said quietly.

  “I do not want this to be our life, Shannen. Not this strange awkwardness.”

  “We don’t know each other. And in that time, we have known nothing but awkwardness,” she said.

  “True enough. But yesterday, it felt as if we were awkward together. Not like this. Not this distance.”

  “Before last night,” she said quietly.

  She heard him sigh. “Did I do something wrong?”

  Shannen shook her head. “Can we please forget it happened? Can we try to go back to the way it was before that? Because I agree that it was not horrible, during the wedding and right after.”

  “And the bedding was?”

  “I would rather not talk about that. Please,” she said.

  She stood there and soon he moved a bit, resting his hands on each side of her, gripping the edge of the stone windowsill. She felt him leaning toward her, then his face resting against the top of her head.

  “I did not intend to hurt you, or make it worse for you,” he said. “We will try. I will stop being a coward who avoids his wife. All right?”

  Shannen didn’t answer for a while, her mind nothing but turmoil and distraction due to his closeness. “I will try. And you didn’t hurt me,” she finally said. She studied his large hands resting on the windowsill, their color like flinty stone, so alien and terrifying before the previous day. Large, calloused. The hands of a warrior and a future king. What kind of ruler would he be? It was clear that his father’s days were numbered. He would pass, and then Daarik would be responsible for his people, and by extension, her own.

  “You said you didn’t want children,” she said quietly, needing to understand what was expected of her, really.

  “Because I do not. And neither do you, based on what you told me that first day, and on the herbal mixtures our people found in your trunk.” She wondered if they’d realized what they were. She’d been thrilled to find that they hadn’t been confiscated.

  “What about the throne? If you don’t have children, who will rule when you’re gone?”

  “Am I going somewhere?” he asked, and she could hear the smile in his voice.

  “I hope not,” Shannen answered, and was surprised to find that she meant it. “Humans are pretty well obsessed with questions of succession.”

  “It matters little. If we do not have children, a ruler will be voted in once I am gone.”

  He moved again, settling his large, warm hands on her hips. It felt nearly impossible to breathe. “Is this all right?” he asked her quietly, and she nodded. “I enjoy touching you more than I thought I would. I would suspect some kind of sorcery on your part, but I know better.” He squeezed her hips gently. Her body was in turmoil. Why had he been so good the night before? It made it so much harder, forcing herself not to turn around and offer herself to him. Images of what it could be, her body beneath his, her skin pressed to his, her body exposed to his attentions… she shook her head. Stupid, stupid, stupid. After everything she’d lived through, learned, in her time in her uncle’s home, she was letting her hormones distract her from the fact that the male holding her close could very well be the end of her.

  “Were you in on planning for the betrothal?” she asked.

  “No. I think my father knew I would fight it with every breath I took. I did not know until you were already on your way here, along with the others. Why?”

  Shannen closed her eyes. It was so hard to dislike him. He made her want to trust him, want to rely on him. Want so, so much more. Which was phenomenally stupid.

  Still, it didn’t mean they both had to be miserable.

  “So is it dinner time soon?” she asked.

  “It is. Are you hungry?”

  “Starving. I still haven’t gotten the hang of those utensils,” she said, and he laughed and took her hand.

  “Well, let us go, then. Can’t have you wasting away on me,” Daarik said. He pulled her toward the door, and she let herself be taken along with him.

  For the moment.

  Chapter Six

  Shannen was in the library, as usual, when one of the Maarlai palace attendants rushed into the room.

  “Wife of Daarik,” he said, and Shannen reminded herself again to thank Janara for spreading the word that that was how Shannen preferred to be addressed. “There is someone to see you.”

  Shannen looked at him in confusion. Nobody here asked for her. She’d been mostly forgotten since the wedding, other than a word here and there with Daarik and he
r regular library time with Janara.

  “Who?” she asked.

  “Your human king,” he said in a flat voice.

  Shannen stared at him in surprise, then shook herself out of it and stood up. “Is anyone else with him?”

  “About twenty guards,” the Maarlai said. He turned and went out the door and she followed.

  “Did he say why he was here?”

  “Only that he needed to speak with you.”

  “Does Elrek know he’s here?”

  The Maarlai nodded. “Our ruler gave him permission to enter the village. His men are being watched by our warriors. He has requested a private meeting with you and it has been granted. If he attempts anything toward you, Baerne is stationed right outside the room.”

  “Protecting me?” she asked in surprise.

  He glanced over at her. “Protecting what is Daarik’s.”

  Shannen nodded. “Of course,” she said with a sigh. Likely eavesdropping as well. If her uncle was here, it was for one of two reasons: her aunt had asked him to come, or he wanted something.

  The Maarlai led her to a small reception room, and she entered to see her uncle seated in one of the plush chairs there. The Maarlai gave her a nod and closed the doors, leaving her alone with Edwell. The king rose and held his hand out. Shannen suppressed a sigh, went to him, curtsied, and kissed the ring on his left hand. “Uncle,” she said as she stood. “This is a surprise.”

  Edwell looked around, and Shannen studied him. He was shorter, slimmer than her father had been. His dark hair was now peppered with gray, and he had a disdainful, dismissive expression on his face that Shannen recognized well from the years she’d spent in his house.

  “Did you really think I would not come to check on you, my favorite niece?” he asked.

  “I think that ‘favorite’ niece thing is pushing it a bit,” she said. Edwell sat, and she sat in the chair near his. “Would you like anything to eat or drink?”

  Edwell gave a shudder. “Gods, no.”

  “All right, then,” Shannen said. She did not bother telling him that the food and drink the Maarlai prepared was generally much better than the plain fare they ate at Castle Lyon. She knew the Maarlai would extend him that hospitality, but he did not deserve it. “What can I do for you, uncle?”

  He met her eyes for a moment. “Your aunt wonders how you fare, and I was out this way so I thought I would check on you.” As he said the words, he reached into his coat and took out a small folded piece of parchment. He passed it to her as he continued. “Your cousins miss you.”

  “Sure they do,” she said as she took the parchment.

  “Truly though? How are the barbarians treating you? Your aunt fears that they beat you. She half-expected me to arrive and find you dead already.” He kept talking as Shannen unfolded the paper, and she was aware that he was being abnormally loquacious to cover the sounds of the paper rustling, knowing, as she did, that they were likely being listened to.

  “Well, as you can see, I am not dead. They have been kind to me,” she said. “How go things at your home?” she asked, sending him off into another monologue as she read the parchment.

  It is time to make yourself useful. Share with me everything you possibly can about their defenses, their forces, the weaknesses in their villages. It is very simple: do this one thing, and you will be free to live your life as you want. I will take you out of here once the Maarlai fall. You will be given your own estate where you can live as you wish. Freedom.

  Shannen read it again as the king continued speaking. It was everything she’d ever dreamed of, from the first year after she was moved into the palace by the king. A place of her own, to run as she wanted. To live her life on her own terms, not by her uncle’s rules or under a husband’s thumb.

  She refolded it and tucked it securely into the pocket on her gown. “I am glad my aunt is faring well. Though it does not surprise me. Things are probably much calmer without me there,” she added, and the look of undisguised disgust on his face reminded her, without a doubt, exactly how her uncle felt about her.

  “Well. I don’t doubt that there are plenty who miss you,” he said with a sneer.

  “Ah, yes. Your guardsmen must be in mourning. Be sure to tell them that I miss them, too.”

  Her uncle’s face and neck began turning that particular shade of red that only she seemed to be able to conjure. She continued, unable to help herself.

  “Though I do not miss them as much as I thought I would. Surely Harledon shared the details of my wedding night. That was a pleasant surprise.”

  King Edwell rose. “That will be all, niece,” he said in a tight tone. And then, in barely a whisper: “Consider it. Remember what you have been taught.”

  He stalked out of the room without even a backward glance and Baerne stepped into the doorway, watching him go.

  “Friendly fellow, that one,” Baerne said.

  “For him, that was actually quite congenial,” Shannen told him, and he laughed. As he walked her back to the library, Shannen thought of the paper in her pocket and what it promised:

  Freedom.

  Daarik sat at the long meeting table in his father’s quarters with his father, his father’s foreign relations minister, Jarvik; two of the Maarlai elders, and his grandmother. The meeting had been going on for hours now; most of the morning, and he’d been irritated to find it dragging into the afternoon as well. He knew that Shannen’s uncle had arrived. After receiving him, Elrek and the rest of them had hastened back to the study.

  It was always the same thing, he thought to himself as he listened to the rest of them talk. The humans were testing their boundaries, still chafing under the rule of their hated enemies. The border towns and villages continued to be areas full of strife and constant clashes between the Maarlai and humans. Warnings sent to the human king, Shannen’s uncle, telling him to get his people under control, went unanswered and were not acted upon. One would think, as a ruler, that Edwell of House Lyon would be more concerned with keeping his people alive. The Maarlai had been instructed not to be too rough on the humans when they clashed with them, but it was not uncommon for things to get out of hand. When Elrek had mentioned the incursions to Edwell, he had waved the situation off as if it was of no concern.

  “Increase patrols at the borders,” his father finally said. “And I will send another missive to Lyon, for all the good it will do. Maybe something in writing will sway him when a simple conversation will not. I have given up trying to understand humans.”

  “Perhaps we could have his niece appeal to him?” Daarik’s grandmother said. “Is having this link between our people and theirs not the very reason we decided on this course of action, this marriage, in the first place? She can write thanking him for the visit, and appeal to him for action on the human incursions.”

  “Shannen’s family is not overly close toher, from what I gather. I’m surprised he was here at all,” Daarik said, speaking for the first time in hours. “I do not know how much good it would do.”

  “That is not surprising, considering how many bastards House Lyoncreates,” Daarik’s father grunted. “It is as if they are trying to repopulate the Earth all by themselves.”

  “Which is her father? Of the eight brothers?” Jarvik asked, a look in his eye that made Daarik vaguely uncomfortable. Jarvik was probably his least-favorite of his people, and that was saying something.

  “I do not know. We haven’tspoken much of her family,” Daarik said.

  “How do we even know this woman is of the royal house at all?” one of the elders asked. “They could be duping us, and I would not put it past them.”

  “She looks very like the king in the eyes and nose,” Daarik’s father said. “That, and we have had people watching the human royals rather closely. She has lived at the castle since she was quite young, and is treated just as the other Lyonprincesses are.”

  Daarik had his doubts. Not about his wife’s ancestry, but about whether she’d been treated
the same as her uncle’s own daughters. From what he knew, the three daughters of the current king were paraded about often, showered with praise and adoration, while Shannen had kept to her books and garden. He wondered how much of that was her own choice, and how much was circumstance.

  Of course, he had no idea, because he’d had almost no chance to speak to his wife during the past several days, let alone manage any of the other things he found himself fantasizing about. Constant meetings, patrols. A skirmish with human raiders that had kept him away overnight and late into the next day. All of it was normal for his life, and he had never been resentful of his responsibilities until now, when there was something other than mere duty calling to him.

  The elders and advisors kept talking, and Daarik finally cleared his throat. His father looked at him, raising is shaggy gray eyebrows. “How much longer do you think we’ll be?” Daarik asked.

  Daarik’s grandmother gave him a gentle smile, and his father chuckled. “I think my son is suggesting that we’ve reached the point at which we are only speaking to hear ourselves speak. And I think he is right. We have decided our courseof action, and in regard to the human royals, I will send another missive and I think, even though she is not close with her family, we will ask Daarik’s wife to send one as well.” He finished, looking around at the assembled Maarlai. “Dismissed,” he added, and the elders and advisors started leaving, in twos and threes, all except Jarvik, who was never far from Elrek’s side.

  “Did you want me to speak to Shannen about writing to her family, then, or did you want to do it?” Daarik asked his father as he rose to his feet.

  “Yes, please speak with her,” Elrek said. “The sooner, the better.”

  “Don’t ask her, tell her. We rule them,” Jarvik grumbled.

  “Spoken like a male who has never been wed,” Elrek said with a chuckle.

  “I mean the humans,” Jarvik clarified.

  “I know. And it matters not,” Elrek said, glancing at Daarik. “Go on, son.”

  Daarik nodded, murmured his thanks, and then left, quickly, before anyone else decided to talk his ear off about something. He made his way through the corridors, nodding briefly to those who greeted him in passing. He knew already where he would find Shannen. She rarely left their suite, other than to grab a bite to eat in the kitchens or a book from Janara in the library. She did join everyone for dinner in the evening, but more often than not during their short marriage, he had not been able to join her.