“I’m joking, Mostly.”
“You just closed a freight contract half the chamber couldn’t land in five years. You’re twenty. There is nothing about you that screams ‘unmarketable.’”
“You haven’t been in my mother’s drawing room lately.”
He reached up and tipped my chin toward him with two fingers. “Listen to me. You’re not ‘marketable,’ you’reessential. There’s a difference.”
“It’s been quiet,” I hated myself, that I was admitting it out loud.“On the merger front. Nothing concrete. No formal interest. My father keeps… mentioning regions, but no one’s actually put anything in front of us. My mother keeps saying I’ve bullied all the heirs away.”
Atticus’s mouth twisted. “Or they’re scared they can’t handle the woman who yelled at three sovereigns and made them sign anyway.”
“That doesn’t help,”
He watched me, that serious older-brother look he’d perfected over years of growing up side by side at endless summers.
He picked up his tumbler and finished his drink in one mouthful.
“You know what my father told me? He said, ‘if we’re lucky, she’ll get a short merger. Two years. One heir. Then she can divorce and go play diplomacy somewhere that doesn’t threaten our stock.’”
Something in my chest went very still.
“Two years,” I repeated. “One heir. Then out.”
Atticus rolled his eyes. “He thinks that’s generous. Says your talent is wasted in another dynasty. Though he also argues that being a starter wife is beneath you.”
I swallowed around a knot.
“I have to be wanted for even that. Nobody’s knocking on the door yet. It’s starting to feel like maybe she’s right. Maybe I scared them off. Too loud. Too opinionated. Too… everything.”
He squeezed my arm. “Or maybe you haven’t met anyone worthy yet. Have you considered that.”
“I’m not sure dynasties doworthy. They do strategic. And starving.”
“For most daughters, maybe. You’re not most. You’re in there rewriting tariff law at twenty. You don’t get married just for legacy. You get… something else.”
Something else. Perhaps my something else was chambers and negotiations.
I thought of Vince’s hands at my waist, the sound of his voice when he saidmineinto my throat. Four days every month. Two weekends. That was all we stole from the world.
Maybe no one would put a contract on my father’s desk. And I could keep this. Two days of being ruined and worshipped and then twelve nights of being just a voice in someone’s ear.
“Is it wrong,” I asked before I could stop myself, “if part of me is… glad no offers are coming?”
Atticus studied me for a moment. Then his eyes went around the chamber. As if making sure no one was in ears shot. The Veil drone humming away in the distance.
“If nobody wants to tie their crest to mine, if I stay in this… weird, in-between, then maybe this is all it’ll ever be. These chambers. A lot of fights and my wins. My name in the archive and… nothing else. No husband. No heirs. Just me and the work and?—”
And Vince.
Four days a month.
“That sounds lonely,” Atticus said softly.
“It sounds… safe,”
His fingers under my chin firmed. “You deserve more than safe.”
I tried to joke. “I’m not exactly a good advertisement for ‘more. My mother can’t even starve me into being desirable.”
