Page 145 of Unrivaled
“Unless the apathetic majority like them,” he offered.“Any other time, or any other country, and you’d need to worry about the King, but on this side of the Aza Ranges…his grasp is weak even at his center of power.I’m not saying any of this, Audrey.”
“Neither of us are,” I agreed, my mind spinning.I needed to figure out who these competitors were.I needed to be ready to slap back their grasping hands.
The simplest way for me to do that was to be married.
I resisted the urge to set down the food as my belly churned.
“I’m not asking for marriage,” I told him, and his expression softened, as if I was a wounded doe.Kraken, my lord.I chewed, forcing the life-giving food into my body.
“You can,” he said, the words as smooth as velvet.“I’m not against taking things into our own hands, and you know I’ll always do my best for you and your interests.”A smile quirked his mouth, as he glanced over the bailey and toward the orchard.“However ambitious they are.”
“If we were wed, how do you think this” —I waved a fork toward the alleged queue of men waiting for me on the other side of the wall— “would have worked, Luca?”
His expression fell back into neutral lines.“Do you think I’d ever stop you from doing something both clever and necessary?”
“Yes.”
The flicker of his eyelids was the only sign I’d hurt him.“You think so little of me?”
“I met you as a child,” I told him, identifying a piece of meat rich in fat and juicy with the stuff that would keep my body whole.“I was scared.I was, in fact, utterly helpless.”
“You were nothing to me,” he said, no infliction in the words.“Just a promise for the future.I wentto the Kingto push back our betrothal to protect you.”
My heart hurt.He had indeed.“You let me stand on your feet when we danced.”
“And yet you still don’t trust me?”he asked.“Is that about me, Audrey?”
The blow stung.I didn’t let him see.“You let me stand on your feet.You had me pretend to be someone I wasn’t, Luca, to meet their expectations, rather than tell them it was ridiculous a scared, exhausted child be forced to dance a dance she didn’t know before them all.”
He drew in a breath.“I don’t have the sort of power you apparently think I do.”
“I don’t have the sort of poweranyonein this city thinksIdo,” I shot back.“And yet here I am, Luca, with people waiting for my signature and stamp.”His eyes flickered again.
Please, learn.
I’d given him what I felt I could.He gave me nothing in return.But I’d thought we were done after the perfume debacle and he’d come back from that, given time.
“I’ve work to do,” I told him, turning away.“Thanking you for your visit.Please send in the next waiting as you leave.”
He stood there as I shoveled the food into my mouth and turned back to the desk, reviewing the next few documents I’d laid out precisely to one side.When he did eventually go, it was without a word, his steps hesitating as if he was unsure of the very ground beneath him.
It was, of course, simply as reliable as it ever had been.He just hadn’t acknowledged it.
CHAPTERFIFTY-TWO
CHAY
They have been recovered and the problem has been resolved.They told none.—First Guidelord, Luis in a letter to High Magelord, Bearer of All, Gautier the First
21stDay of Autumn’s Son Moon,
Age of the Locways, Year 272
La’Angi Orchard
Despite the familiarity of Bliksem beneath me, the laughter of my friends around me, and the picnic we carried, there was nothing casual about this ride through the orchard.
Birds were flushed from their nests ahead of us and Naren, who’d inherited his father’s holdings and held to his family’s alliance with Raider’s Ban, mimed drawing a bow and loosing an arrow into the sky.
