After everything with Sigvid, she longs for something to aid in her deep denial of her feelings.
What am I to the violent Salt Prince? Vengeance for the warheinitiated?
Certainly not to relish my thick body.
To think he could have easily killed me on the grimy floor of his dank cell had the guards not intervened. I was so stupid and drunk on wine!
She winces at the haunting memory.
At one time, a mysterious Salt warrior expressed her incomparable beauty. Her gut squirms at the icy truth that she is nothing more than a conquest forSigvid.
Rendel ensured she knew her place among his mistresses.‘Men do not marry you, Avina,’her late husband told her,‘they use you to get their throne and then fuck their mistresses.’
Like Rendel, Sigvid likely has a collection of gorgeous women who are curvy ‘in the right way.’
No matter. The Arena has officially requested I keep my distance. I doubt Sigvid will be alive the next time I see him.
She intends to return to her miserable life after toasting champagne to this upcoming achievement.
Just not now.
And probably not tomorrow.
“Thank you again, Your Highness. This sanctuary will help heal many of our displaced dogs and cats.” One of the young staff gushes with a wiggly puppy in her arms. Unlike the healthy royal pups, this one has a nub of a leg where its back right should have been.
Avina scratches the tiny creature behind its ears, earning sloppy kisses on her hands. “I witnessed too many kittens fed to ravenous hunting dogs. Puppies sold to the dog fighting rings of the Arena…” She presses a kiss on the creature’s cold nose. “No longer.” She says in a baby-talk voice.
“Well, the Scarwood Animal Protection Society thanks you, ma’am.”
A large wooden sign bearing the words ‘Animal Sanctuary’ creaks over the building front where the young woman and the cheerful creature return.
After two winters as Queen, she has finally accomplished something tangible beyond her education initiatives. When the Council refused to pass her last animal protection act, she went behind their backs and funded the construction and staffing of an animal sanctuary anyway.
“I heard I might find you here.”
Her happiness falters as Duke Samson Manchineel sways through the sanctuary's oak double doors. His pristine charcoal doublet and matching pants would have made Rendel green with envy. In moments like these, she can see the similarities between the cousins.
Which only elevates her despise for the entire Manchineel line.Atleast if she can never produce an heir for Timber and the Ridge, her future daughters may be saved from these men.
“You found me.” She turns away to gather a stack of linens in her arms.
“You have been dodging me for over a month, Your Highness. Was my marriage proposal unacceptable to you and King Ceowald?”
She spins on him, accidentally scattering the fabric to the floor. “What does my father have to do with this?”
Samson chuckles, making no move to assist her in picking them off the floor. “I wrote to him two days after Rendel’s death, and he replied, ‘No.’ Allegedly, he has an arrangement with someone else.”
Who?
She remains crouched on the floor with towels in her arms. Why has she not been told? And her father had another man in line when Rendel’s body was still warm.
She feels the familiar tightening in her throat as the sensation of vomiting her morning meal roughly seizes her.
“Did he mention who?” she asks as she sets the towels on the shelf where they belong.
Samson shrugs. “Does it matter?”
All she can dwell on is who her father is whoring her womb out to now. Her hands shake from the lack of control she possesses in her sad, miserable life.
