Because she wasn’t free.
“Valrek.” Her voice cracked on his name. “There’s something I need to tell you.”
His expression shifted, wariness creeping into his eyes. He’d heard that tone before, she realized. The tone that preceded betrayal, preceded loss, preceded all the ways the universe could twist happiness into ash.
“What is it?”
She pulled her hand from his grip and drew her knees to her chest, wrapping her arms around them like armor. The light faded from her skin.
“My father is in debt.” The words came out flat, rehearsed. She’d practiced them in her head so many times, and they still felt like swallowing glass. “Serious debt. The kind that can’t be paid off with money or time or favors.”
His brow furrowed. “To whom?”
“His name is Merrick Bane.”
The name dropped between them like a stone. She watched his face, searching for recognition, but found only wary confusion.
“He calls himself a businessman,” she continued, “but that’s a polite fiction. hiding his illegal transactions behind shell companies. He collects debts the way other men collect art, and when people can’t pay…” She swallowed hard. “They become his.”
“Your father owes him money.”
“My father owes him everything.” She couldn’t look at him anymore. Instead, she stared at the sea, at the distant whitecaps that called to her with the promise of escape. “Years ago, when I was a child, I was very ill. My lungs stopped working and there was nothing that conventional medicine would do to save me.”
She felt him go still beside her.
“Merrick offered to fund the experimental procedures that saved my life. But the funding came with strings attached. A contract that my father signed without reading the fine print.” She gave a bitter laugh. “Or maybe he read it and didn’t care. I’ve never been sure.”
“What kind of a contract?”
“The kind that gives Merrick a claim on my father’s research. On his patents, his discoveries, his life’s work.” She finally turned to face him, and the pity in his eyes made her want to scream. “And on me.”
“What?”
The word came out as a snarl, and something behind his eyes changed. Darkened. Became less male and more beast.
“It’s a marriage contract,” she said quickly, forcing the words out before she lost her nerve. “I’m betrothed to Merrick Bane. He plans to marry me in three weeks.”
Silence.
Then he surged to his feet, a sound tearing from his throat that was more roar than word. His hands clenched into fists at his sides, and his golden eyes had gone incandescent, blazing with a fury that made her patches flare in instinctive response.
“No.”
“Valrek—”
“No.” He was pacing now, prowling the cave entrance like a caged predator, his huge body vibrating with barely contained violence. “No human will own you. No contract will claim you. You are not a piece of property to be bought and sold?—”
“I know that!”
“Then why didn’t you tell me?” He spun to face her, and the betrayal in his eyes cut deeper than any blade. “All those days together, all those moments—and you never thought to mention that you belong to someone else?”
“I don’t belong to him!”
“The law says otherwise!”
“The law is wrong!”
They were both shouting now, their voices echoing off the cavern walls. Somewhere in the distance, she heard Lilani’s happy squealing stop, replaced by uncertain silence.
