Page 219 of The Obedient Lie
Because I knew the clock was ticking. Knew that ina few short weeks, they’d be leaving. Not just from here—but from this phase of our lives entirely.
They’d take their place. Officially.
Crows, crowned in blood and legacy. Kings of their empire.
And I’d still be Emilia Adams. Bound by duty. By image. By a future that had already been mapped for me long before I met them.
So no—I didn’t need them to promise me anything.
Because I already knew the truth.
Still, I looked up at them—these two beautiful, dangerous boys with madness in their eyes and devotion and I gave them the only thing I could.
“Right now is enough.”
Bastion reached out and gently brushed his knuckles along the velvet at my throat.
“For now,” he said, voice like a vow, “we’ll give you that.”
“But don’t forget,” Luca murmured, tilting my chin up, “we already know how the story ends.”
I held his gaze.So do I,I thought.
Me—married off to a tyrant my family deemed a smart alliance.
Them—each with a different wife, carefully chosen to carry on their legacies.
Separate empires. Separate futures.
What we were right now would one day be a memory no one dared to speak aloud.
But I didn’t say any of that.
I just smiled.
Chapter Forty-Eight
BASTION
Luca was one second away from having a breakdown over a hoodie.
Not even a nice one. Just one of Emilia’s ratty, oversized, thread-pulling ones she wore when she wanted to be difficult.
And today? She wanted to be difficult.
“You can’t justshoveit like that,” he muttered, snatching the hoodie from her hands and folding it like he was filing legal documents instead of packing.
Emilia flopped dramatically onto the mattress, the zipper of the duffel bag smacking her wrist as she went. “Why not? Someone else is gonna deal with it when I get back anyway.”
Luca’s jaw twitched. “That’s not the point.”
“It’s literallyexactlythe point,” she said, already reaching for another pile of clothes. She balled up a silk shirt like it was a rag and launched it into the duffel. “Not my job. Not my mess.”
She wasn’t even looking at him now.
That pissed him off more.
“You don’t get it,” he said under his breath.
