“It would be a real betrothal. A real nuptial. You’d get to be queen.” He waits for this to register, as though he thinks he’s found a winning argument. “Your father just got his throne back. I doubt he’ll be relinquishing it anytime soon.”
My lashes feel glued to my brow bone. “I have absolutely no interest in being queen. I’m too young, too sane, and still immensely hopeful to find my true mate—which cannot possibly be you, given that you dislike me and the very ground I fly over. Besides, I wouldn’t want to deprive a Glacin of the honor of youresteemed regard.” I take a breath. “Who am I to stand in some ambitious Faerie’s way? Just show me the ring, and I’ll get out of your hair.” Since Konstantin seems on the verge of a nervous collapse, I nod to his desk. “Should I just seek it out myself?”
His catatonic state perseveres, so I stalk toward his desk. Sure enough, he doesn’t stop me when I paint key sigil after key sigil on his drawers.
After checking all of them and coming up empty, I pop my hip and cross my arms. “Did you move it so I wouldn’t steal it, or has it already been stolen?”
He finally blinks, snapping himself out of his odd trance, and plays coy. “Whatever are you looking for?”
I suck my teeth. The talisman must’ve stripped him of his sound judgment, along with his porosity to iron, because few things are more ill-advised than provoking an already pissed-off Crow.
“Thefuckingring.” I eye his jacket for a bulge, find none. Eye his pants next. The only bulge I find is between his legs—not my ring box. “Where the bloody underworld is it?”
Konstantin scoots his chair back and stands, and then he cages me against his desk. “If you want the ring, you’ll need to accept my marriage proposal, Miss Ríhbiadh.”
“Threaten me with marriage one more time, and?—”
“I’ll throw in a bargain.”
“A bargain?” I snort. “Konstantin Korol, there’s nothingyoucan offer me that I can’t get on my own.”
“I’m a king.”
“We’ve been over this. So is my father.”
His lips thin. “Everyone wants something.”
“I want a mate. Can you snap your fingers and reveal his identity so I don’t waste months of my life looking for him?”
“No, but if you do meet him while we’re engaged—or once we’re married?—”
There he goes again with his fixation on marriage… Has he met my family? No charm or Cauldric intervention will protect him from their wrath if he so much as attempts to force a ring on my finger.
“—then you can use the bargain to dissolve our union.”
“That’s surely theworstuse of a bargain ever.”
“Look, I didn’t see the ring on your finger; the Cauldron did.”
“Tell me something… When you spoke to Aodhan, did you reveal your intentions?”
“Yes. He called me mad and insisted you’d never agree.”
“Yet you still went through with it,” I muse. “Why?”
“Because…because…because my kingdom is in fucking shambles, and I thought marrying a Crow would be a quick fix.” Konstantin straightens and takes a step back, lifting a hand to his nape. He rubs. And rubs. “I handled this all wrong, didn’t I?”
His sudden flailing defuses my temper. “I’m sure threatening a woman with marriage must work in certain cultures.”
He lifts his other hand to his nape and links his fingers together, bearing down on his head, angling it downward. “Fuck. I’m not usually like this.”
“Definelike this?”
“Demanding. Out of control. I just thought that since the Cauldron saw the ring on your finger, you’d go along with it.”
“If you’d have been my mate, I would’vegone along with it.”
He peeks up at me, slowly straightening his neck. His arms stay lifted a beat, and then he lets them plummet back along his sides. Never in a thousand years would I have thought the Ice King so multifaceted. Which makes me realize that Konstantin Korol is an excellent showman, for in public, everything about him screams poise and arrogance.
