Page 120 of A Reign of Roses
Though my eyes hadn’t left Aleksander’s pale, chiseled face, I knew Kane had come to stand beside me, his cedar and leather scent heightened by the winter snow, both calming and fortifying at once.
“She still could have killed me,” I pressed.
“No,” he said, eyes brightening to an even more vibrant shade of crimson as they held mine. “She couldn’t have. I told her that as well.”
“Why not?”
Aleksander sighed, plunging his hands into his pockets and looking around the lively square. Citizens bundled in dyed furs and sheepskin gloves were hurrying in and out of a nearby tented market that pumped nutmeg and coffee-scented steam into the night air. His eyes were stark with how much he despised it all. “You ask a lot of questions.”
Kane released a warning growl beside me. “Answer her.”
Aleksander’s face contorted, as if Kane’s protection of me sickened him.
In the end, he said, “We made a blood oath, Ethera and I. Fifty years ago. They’re similar to spells, presided over by powerful sorcerers to ensure their binding ability. But, unlike a common spell, every blood oath requires…” He fished for the right words. “An escape clause for both parties—a way out, should either of us need one. Ethera thought killing you would destroymyway out, leaving me bound to our deal for eternity. But Ethera is impulsive and uninformed: One cannot affect their own oath. The sorcerer’s magic won’t let you. Ethera just didn’t know.”
“So by killing me, Ethera would ensure Kane and I never bore children…” I worked the ramifications over in my mind. “How does our future child have anything to do with your ‘way out’ of a decades-old blood oath?”
If Kane was startled by my words, he didn’t give anything away. He hardly bristled at my side.
“It doesn’t,” Aleksander said to me, and then again to Kane, more emphatically, “Itdoesn’t.Like I just told you, she was wrong. She’s not right in the head, if you can’t tell.”
Kane chewed through the words as he said, “What was the nature of your oath?”
“I pledged my people to her cause against the south. The last war they’d ever fight for someone else.”
“And in return?”
Aleksander’s eyes flashed. “Any Hemolich would be permitted to reside within her kingdom. As free men.”
Kane’s brows rose with interest. “You’re saying your people face no persecution here in Rose?”
“Of course not.” His tone told me continued discrimination toward himself, toward his people, had wounded him so thoroughly he was numb to it now. “But they aren’t in chains.”
“That was fifty years ago,” I said. The queen had dropped her entire plot to kill me tonight at his behest. “Why do you still have such power over her?”
“We talk.” Aleksander couldn’t hide the way whatever he was leaving out soured on his tongue. “Occasionally.”
I wouldn’t get more information out of Aleksander. He was a vault. I spun on my heel to be rid of his lethal eyes and their punishing glare.
“Your people,” I heard Kane say. And I wanted to stop him. To tell him I’d already tried and nearly had my head bitten off, but—
“I won’t ask them to fight someone else’s battle. I don’t wish to purchase or force them. Butthiswar…it is all of ours to fight. We’ve likely only got a fortnight before we leave for Lumera. Come with us.”
Any exhaustion or revulsion eddied from my mind, replaced by surprise. Kane had all but sworn not to ask Aleksander for his army. He was too angry, too proud.
“I can’t,” Aleksander seethed at Kane.
“There is no price we could pay?” I asked. “Nothing at all we could offer you?”
“You have nothing of value to me,” Aleksander snarled.
“Defeating the man who enslaved your people isn’t of value? Saving the human lands that housed you and all other Hemolichs for half a century, after yousworeto fight Lazarus alongside Kane and the rest of them and thenliedto flee Lumera like acowardisn’t payment enough?”
“Arwen.”A note of caution.
“No,” the Blood Fae hissed. “It’s not.”
It wasn’t anger that filtered through my body, but something else. Something more sorrowful that fueled me as I said to him, “They’re wrong to assume you’re a monster. Theyare. But if you continue to behave as one…why should they ever stop?”
