“Good day, Lady Talfayen.” That was a slight straightaway, tacit refusal to acknowledge her royal claim. “It has reached my ears that you are experiencing some difficulty uniting the other houses. By now, House Manwaring will have declared against you. I will give you one opportunity to make good the promise your father made to mine.”
She set her jaw, glaring at the message unit. I’ll marry you when all the seas freeze, and I can walk across them.
“If you choose to break our old bonds of allyship, I will take it…poorly. Manwaring will come to me, and I’ve already sent enticements to House Vesavis. I doubt your little resistance can stand against the collective might of all three houses. I will give you one day to decide, so choose wisely, lest you drive your own people to extinction through delusions of grandeur. You are no queen, but you could be my consort. Think well.”
A cold shudder crawled down her spine, and she controlled the urge to fling the comm pad against the far wall. For long moments, she controlled her breathing along with the fury racing like wildfire in her veins. Sometimes she wanted to scream until her throat ached, until she couldn’t breathe for the uncontained fervor.
“Bad news?” Raff asked quietly.
She hadn’t realized he was awake. This morning, he looked much better, good color in his cheeks, eyes bright as chips of golden agate framed by truly disarming dark lashes. His skin was burnished brown against the pale gauze wrapping his shoulder. His restless hands tapped endlessly against the white sheets, as if he were searching for something. With a whimsy quite unlike her, Thalia wondered what that might be.
“More of a nuisance.” She hesitated. Ordinarily, she would delete the message and share the worry with no one, but for the duration of their marital contract, her enemies would become his, so he should be fully informed. “See for yourself.”
At the end of the playback, Raff tossed the unit onto the foot of his bed. “What an ass. Should I kill him?”
That casual tone almost made her laugh, but the wolf lord’s expression suggested that he might not be joking. “Are you serious?”
“He’s threatening you. I have a zero-tolerance policy for aggression against my own.”
“Am I, though?”
“What?”
“Your own.”
“We’ve come to terms. Unless you change your mind, yes. That means if you say the word, he’s done.”
Thalia tried not to show the ripple of pleasure she felt at that simple statement. “You make yourself sound like a sword in my hand. I aim, you strike.”
“That’s not a bad description, Lady Silver. Your grasp of the big picture is likely better than mine. My old man called me a hotheaded fool more than once, and…” Here, his words trailed off, his eyes going distant.
“And?” she prompted, curious what might make him look so.
“I only lead Pine Ridge because my older brother died young.”
“I thought rulership wasn’t dynastic among your people.”
Raff shrugged. “We say it’s not, but it takes some damn serious incompetence to get passed over, once a family takes power.”
“We always strive to keep what we hold. This is true among my people, too.”
“Then maybe you know how much it sucks having a legacy to live up to.”
Thalia considered. “Not as such. I’d already destroyed all my father’s hopes for me, long before he turned traitor.”
“Can’t have been easy.” Such a gentle tone, as if he cared.
She couldn’t let herself get pulled into his charm. From what she’d seen at Ash Valley, Raff offered that same warmth indiscriminately. To him, women were like a field of wildflowers waiting for the sun. It would be a severe tactical error to mistake his charisma for personal interest.
Time to change the subject.
“While you were sleeping, the clerk brought the transcription of our conditions. Would you like to look them over?”
“I trust you,” he said at once.
That…was odd. He didn’t even want to glance at the documents? Mentally, Thalia shrugged.
“Then we just need to sign and get ready for the ceremony. Under the circumstances, it seems best to hold a simple wedding and then get down to business.”
Raff smiled. “The business of crushing your enemies?”
“I wouldn’t have put it quite that way, but…yes.” Even to her own ears, she sounded prim. “If the doctor allows it, I think you can leave the infirmary this afternoon. You must have preparations to make.”
“I do feel like I’m growing moss,” he admitted with a roguish grin. “But…not sure what you mean by preparations?”
“There’s no one you want to invite from Pine Ridge?”
“I wish Korin could be here, but she shouldn’t leave the hold while I’m away, unless it’s an absolute emergency.”
“Korin is your second. Is she…special to you?” Thalia couldn’t believe she’d asked the question. It just sort of popped out.
How humiliating.
Raff cocked his head, all wolfish curiosity. “What does that mean?”
“Never mind.”
“Korin’s my second. I’m not sure how else to explain who she is to me, so I’ll say this. When I was a pup, my father dragged her in and said, ‘this girl will save your ass someday, boy. She’s as clever as you are stupid, so keep her close.’”
That information was both blunt and startling. She hadn’t much liked her own father, but even so, he had never denigrated her. Well. Not until she stood against him. After that, they stopped talking entirely and he had her confined to Riverwind under heavy guard ‘until she saw reason’. She had heard of the things he said about her, however.
“You’re not stupid,” she said.
“That’s sweet, Lady Silver, but you don’t know me. In time, you’ll wish you could eat those words.”
She narrowed her eyes, controlling the impulse to
