Page 6 of Fragile Oath

“Is that so?”

Alexei’s other hand came to my waist, his fingers digging into my ribcage, demolishing the memory of Davin’s patient hands with the sickening sensation of his possessive grip. He loomed over me, lowering his face to mine, and I squeezed my eyes shut, bracing for the forceful collision of his lips on mine.

But what followed was so much worse. His mouth pressed against mine slowly, like he was savoring the taste of me. He kissed first my top lip, then my bottom, while I stood frozen against the door.

His tongue darted out, pushing at the seam of my lips. When I still didn’t respond, he moved his thumb from Davin’s mark up to my neck, squeezing lightly until my lips parted. Then he was invading my mouth, suffocating me from the inside out.

Finally, he backed away, and the disgust flooding my veins turned inward. Shame prickled through me, stabbing at the backs of my eyes and pooling in my gut. The kiss had lasted less than a minute, but that was enough to stake his claim.

Enough to make me feel like I had betrayed Davin even more thoroughly than when I had penned a letter designed to break him.

“Don’t worry,Radnaya,” he said. “I am not one of these Lochlannian beasts. I can be patient until our wedding, as long as you remember who you belong to.”

It took everything I had not to wipe away the taste of him, nodding submissively instead. He was giving me a small stay of execution. There was no sense in provoking him to change his mind.

But that wasn’t enough.

“Say it, Galina,” he demanded, squeezing his fingers around my neck once more.

I blinked, long enough to imagine a different room, a different set of hands on my skin, a different future than the one I had damned myself to.

Yours. Always yours. Only yours.

Then I opened my eyes, resigning myself to my fate all over again. After all, what was one more lie in a sea of them at this point?

“I belong to you, My Lord.”

The worst part was, it didn’t feel like a lie at all.

ChapterFour

DAVIN

“Forgive me,my laird, but you say you were not in Laird Tavish’s rooms at any point after your threats at the festival?” The Magistrate’s obsequious tone grated on what was left of my patience.

I already didn’t want to think about last night. About the way that Tavish had threatened Galina or what had happened after we returned to my rooms, and whether all of this mess was part of what pushed her out the door, the politics and the prejudice and the constant threats.

As pleasant as it should have been that my least favorite cousin was no longer breathing, I didn’t want to think about his death, either. Though I couldn’t dredge up any real sorrow at his passing, a man had still been murdered under my roof on a day that was supposed to be a celebration for our people.

“Correct.” I answered the Magistrate’s question for at least the twelfth time since my uncle and I came to the study. “I was not in his room, not before or after threatening him.”

The casual setting was a flimsy façade for what was quickly turning into an outright interrogation, one Master Ward was enjoying every minute of. The Magistrate had been in Tavish’s pocket before, but the death of my cousin, his benefactor, didn’t seem to evoke any strong emotion in him. At least, nothing like the joy I was apparently bringing him by appearing guilty of murder.

Every time my temper flared, Uncle Finn would shoot me a warning look, a reminder that my cooperation was necessary to appease the masses. It was the same reason that only the three of us were in this small, tucked-away room. The last thing we needed was the assembly claiming that my family intimidated the man from doing his job.

But I was quickly approaching the end of my rope.

Instead of being cowed, the Magistrate leaned forward with thinly veiled satisfaction.

“Then why was this found near his body?” Reaching into his pocket, he pulled out a small linen bag, turning it upside down over the antique birch wood desk.

The quiet clink of the silver against wood echoed through the room. I looked from Ward's smarmy smile to the bloodstains crusted in the groove of the intricately engraved D on the familiar cufflink.

That is rather unfortunate.

My uncle cursed under his breath, his golden eyes darting from me to the cufflink in question. Not accusation, but rather a giantwhat-the-actual-hellwas practically imprinted on his face.

If there had been a single doubt in my mind that someone wanted to frame me for what happened to my cousin, it was gone now. Really, though, I shouldn’t have been too surprised that Tavish would manage to make me suffer, even in death.

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