The room delved into an ugly, expectant silence.
Her, sitting there, watching me.
Me, trying to anticipate her next move.
Like two predators waiting for the other to strike first.
But stalling the discussion would only make it worse.
“We can’t dance around the subject all night while you play with that blade as if you’d rather stick it in me,” I said.
She batted her eyelashes, the perfect picture of perverted innocence. “What subject?”
The room, the meal, her dress, everything was a carefully orchestrated evening of punishment.
A contortion of a nice dinner spent alone with my future wife, who looked like she too had murder on her mind.
“What happened at the wedding,” I said.
“How was it? You had a front row seat, after all.” Her eyes went wide, faking true interest. But in those green orbs of hers, I saw the storm she barely kept leashed.
“Same as almost all Blood Brotherhood weddings,” I said curtly. “Necessary."
I only became aware of my mistake when a flash of hurt darkened her gaze.
I leaned forward. “I didn’t mean ours–”
“It was eventful, too,” she said, looking down at the wood shavings the dagger gouged from the table which had seated countless of my ancestors, like she wanted to carve out my heart itself. “Life-altering, one might say.”
“Aren’t all weddings?”
“For the bride and groom, usually. But Evie’s weddings have a way of upending everything around them. Curiously, through no fault of her own.”
That, nobody could deny.
The Lost Daughter, a slip of a being, had been thrust into this Clan world without the basic skills of surviving political machinations, and now she lived in a city where Banu and Valuta ruled more than anyone wanted to admit.
It wasn’t just unfair. It bordered on criminal.
But this wedding had protected her, whether she or Allie wanted to believe it. Banu and Valuta’s gazes would no longer be trained on her, enough to guarantee her survival until we rid Malhaven of them.
And I still didn’t fully trust the Lost Daughter.
She’d been remarkably righteous andkind, of all things, but her appearance was orchestrated to cause mayhem. Whether by her own hand or someone else’s, that remained to be seen.
“So what happened?” Allie’s voice pierced the silence once more.
My blood pumped so hard through my veins, it roared in my ears.
I fisted my palm, my power gliding through me to even it out.
There was enough rage in this room.
“You already know,” I said, as if not speaking the words could take some of the sting of what had happened.
Her gaze narrowed. “Nothing like a good witness to transport me to that blessed event.”
Thunder clung in the air. Only the crackle of the embers dared to break the stillness.
