Page 64 of Fragile Oath

“I was,” she said simply.

“Why would you do that?” Wilson phrased the question like an accusation.

She needed to get away from Alexei.

She gave him a bland smile, though I could have sworn I saw a shadow of remorse pass through her eyes. “People do a great many foolish things when they love someone.”

Ah, yes. That must have been the emotion burning furiously from her eyes when she glared at me on our entire journey back from Socair. At least no one could fault her lying skills.

“Like lie to help them avoid a murder conviction?” Wilson pressed.

“I have no need to lie,” she said mildly, turning to face the sniveling laird. “He was with me.”

“Doing what, exactly?” he demanded.

Her cheeks colored, and a white-hot bolt of rage shot through me. Her gaze slid toward my mother, but I was already sitting forward, fighting to keep my fists unclenched.

“She doesn’t have to answer that,” I bit out coldly. “Unless, of course, you’d like to speak about the specifics of what you do behind closed doors with your wife. Or at the brothel, in your case.”

I met Wilson’s gaze, refusing to back down even as his face flushed with anger. It was an intentional reminder of the secrets I held, and it did its job admirably. He sputtered some half-arsed denial.

But he refrained from asking any more unnecessarily invasive questions.

The questions continued mostly in that vein, covering things I had more or less put together by now. It was impossible to say how much of it was true since she seamlessly blended facts with a few scattered lies.

No, I had never seen the man before. I went with him because he threatened Davin and his family. I didn’t have a choice.

Then they got to the letter, which only hours ago, I claimed to have burnt rather than pass over to them.

“You say you only left because of the threats?” MacBay asked Galina.

“That’s right.” She fiddled her hands nervously, pushing back her sleeves to expose her hand along with her empty wrist where her bracelet used to sit.

“Yet you purportedly wrote a very convincing letter to the contrary,” Wilson huffed.

Nice to know the soldiers in the hallway had been feeling talkative.

If I hadn’t been watching her for it, I wouldn’t have noticed the way one blond eyebrow raised the smallest fraction of a millimeter. It was as close to a challenge as she had come.

She looked him straight in the eye. “Not convincing enough, apparently.”

I bit back a scoff.Don’t sell yourself short, Love. It was plenty stars-damned convincing.

“So you didn’t want your betrothed to come after you?” MacBay challenged.

She met his eyes, her expression carefully vulnerable. “I never want Davin to do anything that puts him in danger.”

“Because you love him?” Wilson didn’t bother to keep the sarcasm from his tone.

I would almost imagine he knew that each clarification he insisted on was like slicing open a raw wound and pouring an entire shaker of salt into it, except that Galina was too convincing for them to guess at the truth.

Even now, she nodded. “As I’ve said.”

Her features were earnest, and her tone was utterly devoid of falsehood. Not that it meant anything. It had been impossible to tell that she was lying this entire time, so why would this be any different?

Even if she was telling the truth, the problem with us had never been feelings. If I was being honest, I could admit that I had been drawn to Galina from the moment I saw her, perfectly poised and put together. Standing demurely and silently at her uncle’s side, she still had a presence that drew every eye in the room.

Even then, I had wanted to know what it would be like to watch her unravel. And for all her protests, the endless nights she spent on a rooftop with me in a castle full of men who wanted her told me she felt that pull as well.

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