Page 4 of Of Bargains & Betrayal

I stiffened, and it wasn’t because my robe was wide open and I’d just made eye contact with a gardener a dozen paces outside my window. Being shipped off to get married wasn’t something I thought I’d ever deal with either.

“We’re not going there, Theo,” I said through a clenched jaw.

We had an agreement, just like I had with anyone I considered a friend who hadn’t up and abandoned me these last few months. An agreement to not, under any circumstances, discuss my unfathomably fucked-up life events.

The worst part was, for most of my adult years, my father had joked about marrying me off for a trade deal whenever I’d do something that tested his endless reserves of patience for me—though he was quick to remind us both that it would be more of a punishment for the provincial lords than anyone else.

But it was always a joke, nothing more.

He knew the unease that kind of attachment brought me after a lifetime of being abandoned at every turn, and he vowed never to force my hand so long as he drew breath.

But six months ago, my life underwent upheaval.

The King of Odessa died.

My structure and stability.

My father.

Gone.

Wiped from the face of our corporeal realm by something as sublunary as an illness of his heart. It was brutal in its swiftness, and I still struggled to rationalize how I’d had breakfast with him that morning, only to be minutes late to his deathbed that evening.

Nothing had been the same since.

It only took my younger half-brother a few months to undo every promise my father had ever made to me and a sizeable portion of the ones he’d made to our people. The boy tyrant, many called him, and I wholeheartedly agreed.

I glanced back just as Theo rose from bed and yielded to a full-bodied stretch, every nude, bronzed inch of his sculpture-like physique on display. Regrettably, I forced my attention away and tied my silk robe as if it caused my plight.

“Can’t ignore it anymore, sweets. I mean, Queen Enora…” Theo’s tone took on mocking grandeur from behind me as he sorted through his discarded clothing. “It’s got a bit of a ring to it.”

“Queen?” I scoffed and grabbed a brush from my dressing table. “I’ll be lucky if I’m a consort. Probably part of a fucking gaggle of miserable women, all relegated to fawning and child-rearing with anyone else who makes the old bastard’s cock twitch.”

A beat of anger bubbled up in me at that thought, and I took it out directly on the knotted ends of my hair. I was positive I’d worn it in a braid last night, but the mess in my hands was nothing of the sort. My father always said my hair was like corn-silk in its color and texture, just like my mother, but I’d beg to argue it was more like a burlap sack forgotten out on the plains.

“Oh, come on, Nor,” Theo said with a pitying chuckle.

He came up behind me, shirt unbuttoned and trousers barely tied, and fought the brush from my grip. We traded barbed looks in the mirror, but I relented. He swept my hair back, letting it roll down to my waist, and worked at the ends with gentleness that belied his stature.

“One…” Theo finally said. “Those dark fae bastards don’t know what’s about to hit them. Their king’s old cock won’t be the only one twitching in your presence, if you know what I mean.”

The corners of my mouth curled into an involuntary smile. “You can’t say that and speak so plainly.”

His rich russet eyes flickered up in the mirror, framed by dark brows, and he had the audacity to scoff at me before he returned to brushing my hair. “Says who?”

“Me. The pantheon. Whichever decrepit scholar decided on our laws of grammar. My first tutor, I bet. She was a real⁠—”

“Two,” Theo boomed overtop of me.

I rolled my eyes. “Two…”

He hesitated—shocking, for someone who had little verbal filter.

“Things aren’t great here, Nor. Not anymore.” The sudden graveness in Theo’s voice pulled an unwelcome band of tension through my spine. “He clipped your wings. We can all see it. But maybe this’ll get a little wind under them again, even if it’s over a different landscape.”

He.

My half-brother, Calder—our newly crowned king.