She raised an eyebrow.
He sighed. “Anything that wasn’t strictly necessary to save my people.”
“I trust you won’t. Less because of any honor I think you have, but because you’ve already made it very clear this was a mercenary arrangement for you. And why wouldn’t you? You think of me as a monster and a necessary evil. You’re young. After I die, you’ll have plenty of time to have a real marriage and everything that entails. You just have to be patient. Or poison me after I save your people.”
But Taiyo wasn’t laughing along with her.
He stopped in his tracks. “I would never do such a thing.”
“It was a joke. And even so, to be fair, Your Majesty, I don’t even know you. I don’t know what you might do to me once my usefulness runs out.”
Taiyo stared at the ground. Hellebore had no idea what he was thinking; she pushed off the dresser and took a step closer.
His head snapped up. “As for you, you won’t cause any trouble? Your cooperation isn’t some elaborate ruse and you have no intentions of following through? How can I be certain I can trust you?”
Hellebore gestured to her room. “This was an awful lot of trouble to go to if you aren’t even certain you can trust me to do the one thing you brought me here for.”
“That doesn’t answer my question.”
Hellebore grabbed the letter from her father on her nightstand and held it out to him. When he didn’t immediately take it, she rustled the pages until he did.
Taiyo kept one eye on her even as he read.
She said, “What would be the point? I can’t go back to Chymes, and if I’m going to be stuck here, I’m not so stubborn and prideful that I would sabotage myself in the process. Getting any kind of revenge on you does me no good. Even if I wanted it.”
Taiyo’s expression shifted as he looked up from the letter. “Do you?”
“I want to be a King’s Alchemist. Give me that and I’ll have no reason to want revenge.”
He folded up the letter and passed it back to her, the discomfort that had overtaken him while reading it still lingering in his eyes. “I want to trust you.”
“But you don’t.” Hellebore set the letter back down and took a closer look at him. “And yet, you don’t have a choice in the matter. You have to.”
Taiyo moved to take a seat on a chair, the same one he’d sat in the day before. “I do.”
Hellebore took her seat on the sofa across from him. “Clearly, that’s not an easy task. I know, elves have longer memories, but you don’t really have any other option. You can’t hold the actions of others against me if you want me to save your kingdom.”
Taiyo’s eyes narrowed. “Elves know the nature of alchemists. Of your family.”
Wait…
“Is this about my aunt? I don’t know what happened when the two of you met twenty-five years ago. I mean, I know my aunt doesn’t like you, but she never said why. Surely you can let go of that if my father was able to and was still willing to negotiate with you.”
Taiyo took a deep breath. “Your aunt and I did not get along, and that’s all that needs to be said on the matter. There will be no prying into the past. You are correct, though, I have been looking at you and seeing her, and that’s not fair to you. We will add that to the rules. I can’t promise to do it perfectly, but I will do my best not to hold the bad blood between your family and mine against you.”
“Thank you. And as a gesture of good faith, I’ll add that I won’t hold you forcing this whole marriage against you.” At the shock in his eyes, she added, “I’m going to at least try. The whole affair was instigated by you, but as you saw in my father’s letter, he was looking for an excuse to oust me, so if it hadn’t been you, it could have been someone else.”
Taiyo looked down at his hands again, letting his hair fall into his face to hide his expression. Although Hellebore wasn’t sure why.
When he looked up, there was a strange glint in his eyes. “Thank you. You don’t know how grateful I am.”
Hellebore didn’t like the way he was looking at her, sitting so close their knees were brushing on their wedding night. They’d just established where they stood on that matter, so she knew it couldn’t mean what she feared it meant, but just to be safe, she pushed herself out of her seat and headed for her wardrobe.
“Well, I think we’ve laid down some great rules to start with. Unless there’s anything else you think I need to know before the morning, we should both get some sleep—” Hellebore was opening the wardrobe door, hoping to be able to tell the nightgowns from the day dresses, when a hand brushing the small of her back had her slamming into the wardrobe as she whipped around.
Taiyo shifted back, lifting his hands up in a harmless gesture. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you. I just… Do you need any help before I go?”
She’d sooner cut the dress off her than let him help her out of it.
