Page 53 of Daughter of the Drowned Empire
“Of course, I still want to marry you.”
“Then do it!”
“I can’t!” he snarled. “I don’t even have the ring.”
I tensed. “Don’t have it anymore…or never had it?”
He lifted his hands up helplessly. “How do you think I got the money together so fast for the Shadow Stronghold?”
Gods, he hadn’t!
“Lyr, I gave the Shadows my mother’s ring. My grandmother won’t forgive me. She’s frozen my accounts over it.” He pushed his fingers through his hair, looking miserable. “If I ran our Ka, I’d have bought you ten rings by now, one for every finger. You’re my love. But I can’t, not yet, not while she’s still in charge. When the Imperator accused you, she got spooked. She’s scared.”
“Scared of me?” I grabbed the covers and pulled them over my breasts. I couldn’t be half naked for this conversation. Even in the dark.
“Scared for me.” He groaned. “I know you don’t have vorakh, but…well, it runs in your family.”
I stiffened. Jules. He meant Jules. Not Meera. Not Morgana.
“We just need to give her some time.” He squeezed my hand. “Just a little. It’s not easy for her—it never has been.”
I stared up at the ceiling. Numbness seeped through me. Lady Romula was terrified of vorakh, but not in the way most Lumerians were trained to hate and fear them. The feelings went deeper for her, for Tristan. There was a reason they hunted vorakh. It was personal.
Tristan had been three when he’d witnessed his parents’ murder. A mage with visions had gone mad and attacked Ka Grey. In their panic to protect Tristan, his parents had been overpowered, ripped to pieces. He’d seen the whole thing.
He never really recovered from the trauma. All Lumerians learned a wretched song about vorakh as children. We’d hold hands and sing, dancing in a circle until the song ended with everyone falling, pretending to drown. Tristan always turned violent at the end, pushing down the others as if they were his parents’ murderers. We quickly learned not to sing that song when he was present.
I, of all people, knew intimately the pain he carried. I’d seen him cry for his parents, had held him in my arms the last two years on the anniversary of their deaths. It was why he couldn’t stand the sight of blood. It brought him back to that night.
“So what?” I said. “We give her time to realize I’m not scary and not going to hurt you?”
Tristan shook his head. “She’s not going to be so easily convinced. Plus, you’re…. How would it look to Bamaria if a lord of Ka Grey married a Lumerian without magic?”
My mouth opened. “A Lumerian without magic? That’s what you think of me?”
“No! Those aren’t my words. They’re….”
“Your grandmother’s? You bound me, gave away my engagement ring, left me alone in prison for a week, and then planned to fuck me.”
“Lyr!” He reddened. “No…no! Gods. I am so sorry. I will forever be sorry. But I didn’t know what to do! And I didn’t come here to sleep with you. I came to see you. To hold you. To make sure you were all right. I came as soon as I found out you were free. I wish….” He groaned. “I wish it were simpler. If I were just some boy, and you were just some girl, none of this would be a second thought. But we are who we are. Our engagement has political ramifications.” He shook his head, brown eyes pleading. “Don’t attack me for the same golden bonds that forced your father, the Arkasva, to leave you behind bars. I know what role I played, but whether I’d been there or not, the outcome was going to be the same, some other mage would have bound you, and you know it. I didn’t cause this. Stop blaming me!”
I looked away, still so angry. Angry at him. Angry he was right. Angry at everything.
His voice softened. “Our stations in life come with privilege, but they also weigh us down with golden chains.”
I glared. “Don’t patronize me. You think I don’t know that? I was imprisoned for those chains. I sat still while my own cousin was taken before me and murdered for those chains.”
Tristan was silent. A moment passed, my words hanging in the air. “Lyr,” he said quietly. He shook his head very slowly, his brown eyes widening with concern. His energy shifted, his aura stilling to an unsettling calm, like the sea, too still just before a storm. Carefully, he leaned forward and took my hand in his. “Jules wasn’t murdered.”
“Yes, she was,” I spat, my blood boiling.
He turned pale, his brown eyes searching mine. “Lyr.”
I slapped his hand away like I’d been burned. “You said you’d protect me if I had vorakh.”
“I’d do anything for you. But that doesn’t change—Lyr, it had to be done. Jules had to be executed.”
There were spots in my vision. My anger was so palpable I could barely see straight. I’d been so fucking stupid. He would have protected me because I was his. He hadn’t changed his mind at all, he hadn’t evolved. If he knew about Meera or Morgana, he’d turn them in, have them arrested, probably bind them, too. And I’d been ready to have sex with him.
