“It would, but…”
“But what?”
“As much as I would love to be yours, Sovian marriage is not paperwork and promises. It’s a surgical procedure. One you might think of as mutilation. One I don’t know if you’d survive.”
“And I definitely won’t,” Mooralan says, squeezing my hand. “So that’s off the table.”
“What then? What can we do?”
“I have to leave.” Ferrok says again. “I don’t think there’s any other option.”
“There has to be.”
Ferrok takes my head in his hand and brushes his beak across my lips. “I wish you were right.”
CHAPTER 3
I’m not willing to accept that.
So, when Ferrok and Mooralan start arguing in a language I don’t understand, I slip away.
I don’t even put on shoes.
Honestly, I don’t care what I step in, and when the elevator flashes with a “temporarily out of order” message, I do something that feels a little crazy.
“I know you listen and watch and if you are right now, you better get me to your office, or else I am going to scream.”
A hole opens in the floor beneath me and I drop into a chair that feels like it’s made of jelly covered in cloth.
I hate that, but it solidifies a minute later, thank God.
“I don’t always listen or watch. And never inside your private homes.” Phantom’s head tips to the side. “I promise.”
“That’s fine. There are cameras everywhere too.”
“And it’s become convenient for you.”
I ignore that. “The Sovian king died.”
“I am aware.”
“And now he’s hunting down bastards.”
“And you are worried about your bastard.”
“Yes.”
Phantom looks at me with a soft buzz flickering around their head. “You want to protect him, and that is admirable. But with some cultural elements, I simply cannot interfere.”
“I’m not asking you to make him king. I’m not even asking you to get involved. I just want to know how we can get out of this. There have to be options. I refuse to believe there aren’tanyoptions.”
Phantom sighs… or at least makes a mimicry of it. “Marriage won’t work.”
“I know. He told me I might not survive.”
“Good, I’m glad he wasn’t willing to risk it.”
Blue symbols scroll down their face as if they’re reflections on glass.
