Page 56 of A Frozen Pyre
“What about her?”
Tyr closed his eyes. He rested his head against the cool stones, taking a moment to himself before he spoke again. “We can’t sleep together again. And you have her to thank.”
Ophir pushed away fully. She took several steps backward.“What are you saying?”
It took Tyr a while to turn his body. He moved with uncomfortable slowness, each movement pained. His eyes remained closed as his head smacked the midnight stones behind him.
“Tell me!”
When he was able to meet her anxious stare, it was with a well of bottomless sadness. “The woman your father brought with him to the summit? What do you know of her gift?”
Ophir’s jaw cut sharply to the side in a single confused gesture.
“Cybele’s gift is fertility, Ophir.”
Her lips parted.
“Princess—”
“No,” she said, taking a step back.
“I didn’t do this, Firi. I didn’t—”
“My father?” she asked, voice a ghost of horror. She was scarcely able to squeeze the words past her roiling disgust. Her lips curled up in anguish as she looked at him. “He doesn’t just want me to marry Ceneth, he wants to use magic to trick me into bearing heirs? Is that it? He thinks he can…My fatherthinks it’s appropriate…myfather?!”
Ophir scratched at her arms as if trying to scrape a thick film of algae from the surface of a pond. Angry red lines followed the marks of her nails.
“There’s more,” Tyr said.
Ophir ceased her frantic scratching, mouth ajar, eyes wide, frozen in the midst of panic as she looked up at him.
“Yesterday, I took a chance and followed Dwyn. It turned out she was meeting Suley. I know she can hear thoughts, but… She wasn’t Dwyn’s friend. There’s more to Cybele’s power than fertility.”
Ophir’s world spun. “It wouldn’t matter. I won’t sleep with Ceneth. Is that what you’re afraid of, Tyr? Fuck me. Give me a Sulgrave baby. Let’s show Farehold and Raascot exactlyhow willing I am to do my duty to unify the continent.”
He huffed impatiently. “Will you let me finish?”
“What!”
He dragged his fingers slowly through his dark hair. “The rings intended for your wedding? The ones your father is presenting as gifts?”
Ophir rolled her eyes at the memory of the bands with bitter irritation. “They’re meant to strengthen bonds, yes. He wants Ceneth as an ally, should war befall him. There’s no honor in the rings.”
“It’s not just that.” Tyr said each word carefully. “The rings would fuse the two of you together.”
A long silence echoed between them like a hollow word ringing through a cavern.
“What are you saying?”
“I’m saying”—he scrunched his face—“it wouldn’t just strengthen your bond. That wouldn’t be enough to ensure Farehold against a war party from Tarkhany. They’re looking for absolute devotion. They’re looking for certainty. What one wants, the other wants. When one dies, the other dies. They want an heir, yes, but it’s more than that. Farehold needs to know that your minds will become one in the same.”
“I don’t understand,” she said.
“His will would fade into yours. But it’s more than that.”
She gaped at him with horror, asking, “It’s more than what?”
“Clearly, your father knows neither of you want this union. Maybe Eero sees the gift as a kindness. Perhaps he thinks stripping Ceneth’s true free will would help to soften your path. Farehold means to make you…one. There will be no way to know where Ceneth ends and where Ophir begins. If Eero knows that you and Ceneth are both reluctant to take the union, between the fusion and the fertility, you’ll be so intertwined, you won’t have a choice.”
