Page 180 of Onyx Cage: Volume II

“You were unarmed all day?” I demanded.

She wiggled impatiently underneath me, huffing out a sigh. “By necessity, yes. And a few more minutes won’t make a stars-damned difference.”

Der’mo.

Her dagger was not an issue I planned on ignoring, but the demand in her tone reminded me that I wasn’t the only one who could use a reprieve after a day of all the tensions in this storms-forsaken palace.

Not to mention that I still hadn’t forgotten the niggling feeling from a moment ago, the urgent need to touch her and remind myself that we hadn’t lost each other, hadn’t lostthis.

“You would think that I had been neglecting you.” I lowered my lips to hers once more, willing the coincidental timing of her missing dagger from my head, if only for long enough to enjoy my wife.

You would think that we didn’t have ample reason to suspect we had knocked your dagger behind the dresser this very morning, Lemmikki.

She nodded with mock seriousness. “I feel very, very neglected. It has been…eight whole hours since you showered me with any sort of attention.”

“Well, we can’t have that.” I wished I had only been teasing her, that I didn’t have an ominous feeling that the day would come soon when we would regret not taking every opportunity we could to lose ourselves in one another.

I had never been prone to regret, and I didn’t intend to start now.

Once I was finished making sure my wife felt thoroughlyun-neglected, I did, in fact, return to the issue of her dagger. After moving the furniture around the room and scouring every possible place it could have hidden, I was finally forced to admit what I had suspected from the moment I skimmed my hand along her very bare thigh.

Even if a maid would have risked stealing under the authority of the new king, no one would have stolen the dagger when there were far more valuable, less recognizable things in this room.

Rage pulsed through my veins at all of the reasons someone might want to specifically deprive my wife of her only means of defense in this den of vipers.

Her very recognizable means of defense.

“So, they wanted your dagger specifically,” I growled, something about that niggling at me.

“So I would be unarmed?” she guessed, her voice wobbling a bit on the last word.

It was a reasonable assumption, but it didn’t quite add up. Anyone who wanted to harm her would have to know that we would replace the weapon. It made little sense to put her on the alert first, unless they were only trying to scare her.

Even then, there were surely more effective means.

“Perhaps,” I answered, not sure I believed my own assurance. I returned to her side, running both of my hands along her arms. “I’ll make sure you have a replacement by tomorrow. In the meantime, you don’t leave my side.”

I reminded myself that we had known coming here was dangerous. We had prepared for the possibility. She could just assoon fight with a different dagger, and I would slice the throat of anyone who looked at her sideways anyway.

Even Iiro.

There was something almost unhinged in the way he despised her, hinting at the cruelty he usually saved for the darker parts of his dungeons. For a man who had shown nothing but control in the time that I had known him, he had let her affect his judgment on more than one occasion now.

Which made sense. He cared for nothing more than his pride and his family, and in his eyes, she was a threat to both. She had hurt Korhonan by denying him, had hurt their family’s pride when it was made public, and her very outspoken existence challenged every tradition he was trying so desperately to claw his way back toward.

She met my eyes, not giving voice to the fears that churned in her own. She leaned into my touch, bringing one hand up to my heart and holding it there.

Instead of objecting the way I expected her to, she only nodded, pressing her lips against my chest.

“I won’t.”

Her easy acquiescence should have been comforting, but seeing the bravest woman I knew cowed by a man like Iiro only fanned the flames of my rage further.

I vowed then and there that I would use those flames to burn us both to the ground along with the whole of Socair before I let him lay a single hand on my lemmikki.

CHAPTER SEVENTY-FIVE

It took a considerable amount of self-control for me to refrain from commenting on the vast amounts of food Iiro was willing to waste mere hours after accusing me of letting him starve to death.

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