Page 64 of Caged By Dance and Desire

“You will wish to be composed when you deal with your consort,” the Ninephene said. “I see you did not take my advice. Though I better understand your reluctance after meeting her.”

I stiffened. The advice to kill her, gently. “Nor will I.”

Ashlyun lifted a brow. “You think not? In your current temper, I am almost minded to bet on it. But that would be distasteful, to sport on a young girl’s blood.” He sipped.

The words were more effective than an ice bucket thrown over my head, or a blade shoved in my gut. I bowed, accepted a cushion and a cup of. . .tea.

Ninephenes.

“Good,” he said. “Now, we will discuss a resolution to the insult my people offered us both. And then you will take your Lady home and see to her care. If you will not take my advice, you will see to her caregraciously.She has been punished enough for one night, and shows some understanding of her error, which is almost more than one can hope for in so young a charge.”

I ticked his age up several centuries. He sounded older than my mother, and she’d seen ten centuries. That half indulgent, half impatient impassiveness, the condescension older Fae employed when dealing with those they considered children.

He glanced at her again. “She is. . .charming, Andreien. It does no Lord credit to bruise a flower, even the wild ones not meant for a hothouse.”

I inclined my head, accepting the rebuke, and the oblique advice. Grateful I was in the position toberebuked, rather than hunting down the dead body of my beloved or beginning a Court game ofhostage negotiations while I weakened from her screams in my head and gave them whatever they wanted.

Not that my mother would allow it, which meant we would wind up at each other’s throats.

Taking Hasannah would have been an effective first domino to destroy House Casakraine’s rule from within.

She would have to be punished, which Ashlyun understood, but the thought left ashes in my mouth. I began to distance myself from her mind, and encase myself in steel and ice.

Chapter

Eighteen

HASANNAH

Andrei carried me into his bedroom and laid me down on his bed. I didn't protest. I’d said nothing on the way home.

Neither had he.

After he'd completed his conversation with Ashlyun to his satisfaction—there would be no war, but plenty of blood—he'd taken me from a silent Constin and refused to let me go the entire trip.

Shaken, I'd laid in his arms, soaking up his heat and dreading what would happen next. Well, to say I’d said nothing was inaccurate. I’d freaked out when he’d first approached the coach. They’d had to talk me into it, and even Mathen looked shaken when I’d begun crying. Andrei sat on the curb holding me, and waited until I finally nodded before climbing into the box shaped cage.

I didn’t have the energy to feel ashamed.

Would Andrei decide I wasn’t worth all the trouble and drama? I'd listened to the conversation, to the negotiations. To the names of the people who would die and Ashlyun's explanations, delivered in so softly cold a voice I understood he planned a heinous death for the ones who forced him into such a position.

What the High Fae called politics wasn't true politics, it was people with too much power dancing around the lines of a battlefield. Deciding who would live, who would die. How much pain and destruction were required in order to heal an insult, so more deaths wouldn’t follow.

Taking me? An acknowledged consort—even if so far Andrei had kept me closeted—of a High Lord?

That was an automatic declaration of war, and could plunge both the Low and High Courts into decades of turmoil.

All that death because I'd wanted to take a walk.

Andrei’s fear, his pain, his rage, crawled inside my head as if those emotions were mine. Theyweremine. Along with the enveloping relief, and his fury at his own weakness. His careful mental distancing.

I realized I could handle his anger, his contempt, at my mistake. But distance? It was never until you lost something that you realized its importance.

I watched his face after he laid me down and straightened, avoiding my eyes. He was a courteous man, he'd give me this night before he told me to pack my bags and go.

“Stay here,” he said. Two words, no emotion.

I sat up, removed my slippers and folded my legs, waiting. He returned several minutes later, a plate in his hand, and set it on the bed in front of me.

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