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Dade
“The bird is just using you,” Fang declared from the corner of the war room as he dropped into a chair. “It’s a trap.”
Scythe rumbled his agreement and thrust his hand toward the door, the other at his hip as he circled the large table. “Wouldn’t surprise me if this was her plan all along.”
I said through my teeth, “To marry me?”
“To bring you to your fucking knees, moron, via her cunt.”
“Fucking watch it,” I growled at Scythe.
“No,” he snapped, and my hackles rose when he stopped and stabbed a finger at the map now spread over the wall. “First your uncle, now this?” His upper lip curled. “She’s hypnotized you.” His fingers flicked and fluttered at me. “Put some voodoo witch spell on you.”
“They’re mates,” Fang needlessly reminded him. “Of course he wants to please her.”
“You shut the fuck up. Since when does being someone’s mate mean handing over the keys to your fucking kingdom?”
Fang pressed his lips together.
I rubbed my brow. “Since I killed her father, and she will never forget it.”
“We know,” Scythe said, gri
“Enough,” Fang said, sensing my patience was at its end. “So this war ends.” He nodded. “Fine. Okay.” He shrugged. “Good. It grows dull anyway.”
“We’ve other potential problems to worry about now the humans appear to have made ties across the sea,” I reminded them. “War never ends, even when the battle stops.” I downed the ale in the tankard before me. “History says that best.”
Though our history suggested otherwise, tension had always brewed between the two ruling families of Nodoya. Hatred, greed, envy, and lust for power was a song in all of our veins, and given the right means—of which I’d been handed in the untimely death of my parents—no one was above destroying things to get what they wanted.
The difference between me and history was that I did not deceive and trust in shadows to veil my actions in the form of assassinating, bedding, robbing, and other less tasteful tasks of sabotage to have my revenge.
I trained, I waited, and then I openly declared war.
“What of the queen?” Scythe asked, staring at Castle Gracewood upon the map. “She will be an issue, no matter if you marry her daughter. We killed her mate.”
“We could kill her daughter too, yet we have not,” Fang added.
I gnashed my teeth at just hearing kill in the same sentence as Opal.
“Give her Serrin’s head,” Scythe suggested as he took a seat. “That should do it.”
My uncle rotted in the dungeon beyond the war room door. He’d been permitted one meal a day of bread and stew and was forced to clean up his own filth at the end of each day. I’d made sure he was given nothing to relieve himself in.
It wasn’t enough. His death would not be enough. But die he would. “Not yet,” I stated with heavy reluctance. “He needs more time with his demons first.” Not to mention my fist in his face until his eyeballs leaked through his nostrils.
“It is indeed a trap,” Fang said again, staring at the map on the wall.
“You think I do not know that?” I’d written Nikaya as soon as we’d arrived home from the gallery three days ago, and her response had been swift, her penmanship steady even though every word had indented the parchment with her longing to see me suffer and her daughter’s safe return.
I hadn’t been sure what to expect. I did not know the female. But I did know that she’d been presented with little choice wherever it concerned me for nearly four years.
She would give me her daughter. How remained to be seen until the letter had arrived this morning. Permission to wed, permission I did not necessarily need, had been granted. Her only request being that the wedding be a private ceremony.
A private ceremony at Castle Gracewood.
“We take two legions,” Scythe said. “Leave one to protect Vordane, hide two amongst the Gracewood forests, and legion three at the base of the Polinphe Mountains.” He nodded as though satisfied this could work. “They can fly across the Spring Forest at the first sign of trouble.”
Legion three, usually under my uncle’s command, was now split between Scythe and Fang if I were busy, but otherwise, it was under my command.
“Who would signal this trouble?” I asked, staring at the varnished wood of the table leg, not seeing anything but all the many ways in which this could go disastrously wrong.
“Release that mighty roar.” Scythe laced his hands behind his head. “As per dramatically usual.”
I gave him a bland look that Fang caught. He swung his legs up onto the table, dried mud crusting the bottom of his boots. “We can also collect some trusted golden Fae, have them ready to send up a flare.”
“It’s a private ceremony,” I reminded them through gritted teeth, an opportune time to leash and slay a beast.
I knew, though, that I was too far gone to turn down this opportunity. I would make my mate my queen—no matter the cost. We would make it work.
We discussed it until we hit yet more snags, and then I shelved it. “We’ll reconvene tomorrow. I’ve a swan to find.”
Scythe scoffed but said, “Sure, allow her to continuously lead you to your doom.” Yet the tail end of his sentence lost its bite, and he slumped back in the chair against the wall. “Does she know of her mother’s response?”
“Not yet,” I said, and waded to the door.
Fang’s laughter stiffened my spine. “May we come and gauge her expression, then? You know, just to let you know if we think she is truly wishing for your demise.”
“Follow me and die.”
Their howling laughter had me itching to turn back and thump their heads together, but I pressed on.
Fang was right. It was time to see how my swan reacted to the idea of her unwanted mate landing in a trap.