Page 72 of Settle Down, Princess

And I knew just how to do that.

“Blame me.” I was moving forward, my lips forming the words before I’d even thought them through. “If you’ve anything to complain about, lay that at my feet.”

She didn’t want to talk to me or even look at me. I saw that in the way her knuckles clenched white. But she needed not to react to me if she sought to avoid my attention. That perfect mask cracked, just for a second, as her gaze met mine.

“I’m the commander of this unit. I chose to follow my king’s orders. I knew who you were when I ‘rescued’ you in the hallway. I brought you to the bar and ordered my men to come and meet us. I’m the one who took you to our inn, knowing who you were, what you were, and I did it anyway.”

I straightened to my full height, not looking away for a moment.

“If you’re angry with how you were treated, put that on me.” I stabbed a finger into my chest. “Put that on me.” I had their full attention, but for once I didn’t really want it. “I gave the orders. I told them what to do. I decided we’d take you to the capital and present you to the king, because…”

My gaze dropped from hers, though, strangely, not from shame. It seemed as if, in admitting my wrongdoing, I was finally free to see a way forward. I paused, for longer than I should have done amid owning my guilt, staring at the ground, my eyes flickering back and forth with my thoughts. And when I finished what I needed to say, my tone was filled with neither remorse nor self-loathing, but with a sense of hopeful possibility.

“Because I didn’t have the balls to imagine a world where I could refuse that order.”

But now, it seemed, I did. My mind raced, cataloguing every connection, every alliance we’d made since the moment my father had been murdered by my brother. I would need to call upon each one to do the thing that people had urged me to, over and over, in whispered conversations in ballrooms, inns, or the army barracks.

For Jessalyn Pearl Yasmina Tennesley, I’d need to bring down my brother and take the throne of Khean.

Chapter 41

“Blame me,” Arik said, the arrogant bastard just staring at me like he had a right to. I heard his litany of sins, his heartfelt admission and felt…

… a need to add to them, to catalogue all the slights, big or small, that he’d imposed upon me; to make clear all the ways he’d embarrassed me, shamed me.

Hurt me.

I vigorously elbowed that thought aside, not wanting to give Arik even that small amount of power. Instead, I stood tall, not that it made much of a difference in the fact of their towering height and stared them all down.

“You’re safe here,” Saffron had said earlier this morning after her brows had creased more and more while, along with the three other women, she had listened, shaken her head, and widened her eyes.

I’d told them my story. Well, most of it. The words had come out in fits and starts, scalding my throat just like the strong herbal tea Hazel had poured for me. I’d dimly heard a screeching voice in my head warning me that telling Creed’s family and Marian of his exploits was unwise. But in the face of such gentle, uncritical attention, it’d all came rushing out, like the poison from a lanced boil.

“No matter what you decide, mind,” Hazel added, much more firmly. “So don’t go thinking that you need to accept my grandson’s suit just to find safety. No wolf shifter worth his salt…” She let out a small growl, the animal sound completely at odds with her grandmotherly facade. “…would allow a woman to be dragged from packlands to—”

“He kills his wives?” Fern broke in, bewildered, as she glanced at the other women. “For what purpose? Why would he take a mate just to kill her?”

“Human beings get mental diseases that do not plague our kind.” Saffron shot me an apologetic look. “I’m sorry, Jessalyn, but human men—”

“Are bastards?”

I finished her sentence, and they all snorted, staring at each other, then me with smiles forming where there was no reason to be.

“Human men are bastards,” Saffron confirmed with a nod, which we all mirrored.

And I still felt the truth of those words as I stood at Marian’s front door, facing off all four of them. The crisp scent of crushed greenery wafted upwards as I clasped the flowers to my chest and took a deep breath in. And then, for once, I said my piece without editing my response.

“You did all of those things,” I said, acknowledging Arik with a nod. “All of them. Some I still can’t make sense of.”

I closed my eyes, and, for a moment, I was there in that room down by the docks when he’d pushed me towards Creed. Had Arik known what I was then to Creed? Were there any limits to his depravity? I shook my head, trying to dislodge that thought as Arik pulled in a breath, ready to tell me.

But I didn’t want that.

Not his excuses or his explanations, regardless of how very complicated they might be, because there wasn’t one thing that he could say that would make a difference. They’d brought me to Khean, carting me closer to the king who had summoned me from beneath my father’s roof just to kill me. Roan might’ve protected me from a catamount, but I was only there for the cat to attack because they’d taken me out into the wilds in the first place. Every indignity, every moment of fear could be laid at their feet. And yet, when I replied, I didn’t dwell on any of that. I was pointed and clear.

“I don’t want to blame you,” I told Arik, seeing that brief spark of relief there, one I was about to smother. “I don’t want to point the finger at anyone. It seems to me a terribly childish impulse to indulge in, and I am no child.”

I drew in a breath, remembering Hazel’s words, and I paraphrased them.

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