Page 17 of Sweetling
Dunne nodded. “All right. We can at least manage a handfasting. I’ll tell her tonight, after we close. Come back tomorrow afternoon.”
“Very good.”
Allarion stood, and quick as a viper, Dunne snatched up the coins. A sound of disbelief, close to a laugh, escaped his lips.
“I will return anon.”
Dunne’s graying head bobbed in an absent nod, his attention fully on the sack he weighed in his hands.
Hiding his disgust, Allarion swept from the table. It was time he left, before his triumph got the better of him.
She’s mine.
His woman. Hisazai.
Watching a room full of other males leering at her now would be his undoing.
Before he made the door, his gaze tangled with hers. She stood beside the bar, her curious eyes bouncing between him and where he’d left her uncle. A small line of worry drew between her brows, and it took a millennium of training and control not to cross the room and soothe it away with his thumb.
Soon, she would have no need for worry or want. He would give her everything she could ever desire.
Allarion bowed his head, a farewell and show of respect to his futureazai,as was her due.
Finding her gaze again, his magic reached out despite himself, stretching across the tavern to gently caress her soft cheek. Her lips parted in surprise, and her pulse kicked at her throat.
His fangs ached nearly as badly as his cock.
You’re mine.
4
The numbness that gripped Molly when her uncle told her what had happened tightened with every breath, until she could hardly breathe. She didn’t sleep at all that night, even desperate as she was to wake up the next morning to find it all a bad dream.
“He’s paid for you, dower, everything. Full bride price and more,”Uncle Brom had informed her after the final customer left last night.
Molly didn’t care one whit what the fae paid—just that he’d paidfor her.
Bride price.
It was a very old, very outdated custom. Sort of like a dowry noblewomen sometimes had when married off, but this the groom paid the bride’s family. It was a contract, a deal between a family and a third party to hand over their daughter. The custom gained popularity again in the tumultuous decades of the wars of succession, when everything had been thrown into chaos and question. Now, though, thirty years on, a bride price was seen as blood money, children sold off by desperate parents. It wasn’t strictly legal, especially as Lord Darrow spearheaded the effort to eliminate slaver of all kinds throughout the Darrowlands.
“You got no right,”Molly had growled at him. She’d been of age for years now, and she wasn’t Brom’s child.
“Just think of it, Moll. A fae’s bride. He must have a fortune.”And he’d held up the clinking sack of coins, everything Molly was apparently worth.“And this is only half. He’s bringing the rest tomorrow.”
“He can bring coins made of carrots for all I care. I’m not doing it.”
Brom’s brows drew low in false concern.“It’s unexpected, I grant you. Butthink,Moll. Think what this would mean for us—for the tavern, for the children. I can finally make the repairs this place needs. I can send Merry to the academy in Gleanná. Hells, we can sponsor Bryan’s knighthood. Just think, a Dunne knight.”
His eyes sparkled with a fervent, almost delirious kind of wonder.“This could make us, Moll.”
“Us? Us?”Her voice went so high the windows shuddered.“What about me?”
“Don’t be selfish, Moll. This will change the little ones’ lives—you can make it happen for them. And don’t be daft, either. How many chances like this will come around for you? No one’s come calling for you in years.”
“I don’t want a suitor. I want—”
“I’m not unfeeling, Moll. I got him to agree to a handfasting instead. Just a year and then you could be done. But just think on what you could do in the meantime,”he’d insisted.“A fae, Molly girl, afae.Just think!”
