he grabbed my upper arm, but I shrugged him off.
“No. I need to speak with you.”
“There’s nothing you could say that I would want to hear.” He paced back and forth, glaring at me.
“I don’t trust the emissary from Florin. He is—”
Xander was shaking, his rage great, his hands clenched into fists. “None of this concerns you.”
“How can you say that when the threat of war concerns all?”
“This is a matter between my father and me. No one else. We will find a way to solve this problem without you. Or should I say despite you.”
“I can help,” I tried to reason with him.
“No thank you! Don’t think I don’t know what a bargain with a daughter of Eville entails. My father made one years ago with your mother, and look what happened. I’m married to you.”
“I am not my mother,” I said, realizing the truth. As much as I strived to be like her, to make her proud, to turn my heart cold, I couldn’t. I did care.
“You are just like your mother.” Xander walked around me, keeping his distance as he looked at the dark veils that hid me. “Swoop in at a time of despair, make promises and then leave, reaping the rewards of our country.”
“Why do you hate me?” I asked.
“I despise everything about you. Just looking upon you makes me sick to my stomach for what your family did to mine.”
His words mirrored those of my mother, and they burned into my gut. I knew now why she became so coldhearted. I couldn’t stay in this marriage or this backward, antiquated country. I couldn’t stay here despite my mother’s orders.
I dug my hands into the folds of my dress and glared up at him. “I know you never wanted me. You made that obvious from the very first moment you spoke to me. You treated me with disdain, had your servants ignore me, did everything in your power to belittle and embarrass me, and I have done nothing to you.”
“I—”
“Let me finish,” I yelled, and Xander looked up at me, shock at my tone evident in his eyes. “I was forced to marry you too. Do you think I wanted to be married to a coldhearted prince who I’ve never seen? I have no more desire to be married to you than you do to me.”
That idea seemed to startle him. It looked like he had thought this was what I’d wanted all along. “But I’m a prince. Everyone wants to mar—”
My laughter burst forth uncontrollably at his confused expression. “Hardly. Not everyone wants to marry into the baggage your kingdom is carrying, and you are not the most congenial of suitors. But I am not unreasonable, nor am I my mother. I’m willing to make a deal with you—or should I say despite you.” I smiled at my own rephrasing of his threat.
“More deals,” he said in exasperation, waving his hands at me.
“No, listen. What do you want right now more than anything?” I asked.
Xander’s chin dropped as he thought. “I want whatever beast that’s plaguing our lands gone, and I want power to protect my kingdom from Florin.”
“Deal,” I agreed confidently. “And when I have succeeded at both, I will leave quietly into the night. After a few months, you can say I’m dead, have our marriage annulled, and be free to marry Yasmin.”
“What if you show up on my doorstep years down the road?”
“I won’t. There is nothing here that I want. Neither crown, nor land, not even you, Prince Xander.” As I spoke the words, I could feel the power behind them. Fate was listening in, and I worried at what I had just spoken into existence.
“And what if you fail?” he asked. “What happens to me?”
“Nothing, for we are already doomed to war. I can’t think of anything worse than war.”
“Death?”
“No, there are worse things than death.”
Xander paced back and forth in front of the cold fireplace. “You sure you’re not going to ask for my firstborn or anything, like your mother?”
“I swear.”
He nodded before unsheathing the gilded dagger from the belt on his hip. It was the same one he’d threatened me with the day of our wedding. Using the edge, he sliced his palm.
I was surprised. He himself was asking for our deal to be sealed in blood.
“You understand what you’re doing?” I asked.
“I know all about blood oaths.” Xander frowned. He handed me the knife, and I took off my bandage. My poor hand was looking quite