Page 52 of Sweetling
“All this…” she breathed. “No wonder you could afford to buy me.” Another unnerving laugh split her lips. “Uncle Brom should’ve asked for double.”
Allarion’s chest went cold and tight at her words. He stared at her, trying to glean any meaning from her ramblings and fidgety movements, but Molly had worked herself into a state.
“Molly, you are myazai.I would have paid any price for you.”
Her curls bounced as she shook her head, her eyes glassy and dazed. Did the air in here affect her? The magic?
Frustration roiled through him. Somehow, despite his best intentions, he seemed to have erred again. Twins take him, why could he do nothing right—with his ownazai?
Suddenly, she turned on him. She bared her teeth in a sneer, her face an ugly contortion of rage.
“You may have bought me, but you won’t own me! You’llneverown me.”
The cold grip of panic wrapped its fingers around Allarion.
She…
She truly thought…
Horror opened its black maw inside him, sucking at his innards.By all that is good and beautiful, let her not think…
“I didn’t—” It was him who choked, the words clogging in his throat. “I paid your indenture. And a dower. I never—”
Disgust burned his throat. This was what she thought of him? That he considered her as easily bought as thethingsthey procured that very day?
Every odd thing she’d said, every wary glance and awkward silence…it was because of this? Because she thought he’d tried tobuyher?
“Indenture?” she repeated. “I’m not indentured.”
They stared at one another, the truth seeming to dawn on them in the same moment.
Brom Dunne had had the better of both of them.
Rage like Allarion had never known licked up his neck. “I would never,neverbuy someone,” he hissed. “And never my ownazai.My fated one, my heart. I cannot—”
He bit back the words, as they grew in volume and ferocity, and the balls of blue light trembled with his anger. It wasn’t her he was angry with, but her uncle.
No, that wasn’t entirely true. His frustration burned alongside his rage—that she would think him capable of such cruelty and degradation, of thinking so little of her and another’s life and dignity. His honor recoiled at the thought.
“How could he…” Another tear rolled down Molly’s face, piercing Allarion’s very soul. Her face contorted again around an angry grimace. “No, of course he did. Just to be cruel. He told me you’d paid a bride price.”
“I did only as I thought proper. I was told you had an indenture, so I paid it.”
That horrified glare fixed on him. “Youbought me!”
“No,” he insisted, “I spoke to your elder, the head of your house. It is your kind’s way.” At least, so he’d believed. Or wanted to believe.
“You should’ve talked to me—askedme!Instead, you went behind my back and forced my hand!”
Allarion’s spine stiffened, a curiously nauseous feeling rising in his gullet. “I forced nothing,” he said through numb lips. “You agreed to the handfasting.”
“Because I thought you’d rescind the offer! That you’d take the money away. I didn’t think I had a choice!”
“You came willingly.” Even to his own ears, his voice sounded faraway.
“As willingly as a prisoner being led to the gallows,” she spat.
She may as well have sunk a dagger into his chest, the pain of her words radiating out as devastating as a quake, shaking all in its path.
