aiming a contented smile to Cassius, shifting it to me, she sauntered to the door and through it.
The instant it closed behind her, Cassius turned to me.
“Elena—”
I looked him right in his eyes and declared, “We will have a son.”
He shut his mouth and his bearded chin jerked into his neck.
“I will give you that,” I told him. “And you will give me a daughter.”
His voice was much changed, lower, softer, when he took a step toward me and said, “Elena.”
I took a step to the side.
He stopped.
I did as well.
“If you have to close your eyes and picture someone else, that will be fine. I will endure,” I announced.
Those eyes he would have to close narrowed again with his heavy brows drawing together over them before he whispered in a sinister manner, “Endure?”
I could imagine many found that expression (and his sinister whisper) most fearsome.
However, I had been trained not to find much fearsome.
And regardless, in that moment, I had to finish what I had to say, somehow manage to get through dinner sitting at his side, and then find a way to get through the next day, and the next, and the next.
Until he had his son.
I had my daughter.
And we were done.
“This will be our bargain, Prince Cassius of Airen,” I proclaimed. “I will be your princess and when the time comes, I will do my duties as your queen. I’ll provide you an heir and you’ll provide me a daughter. I will love and nurture both with all my heart, as I hope you will as well. But we will live separate lives in your black citadel, separate in all things, except where it pertains to our family.”
Feeling I stated my case, I started to move to leave when his words came.
“I don’t agree to this bargain.”
“You don’t have a choice,” I retorted, turned to the door, but again found my elbow seized, my body moving not of its volition, my back against the door, and Cassius’s visage all I could see.
Of all the bloody…
Did all men act in this manner?
I didn’t get the chance to ask.
“You will give me a son,” he growled. “And I will give you a daughter. You will be mother to my motherless daughter and I will be father to your fatherless ward. Then you will give me more sons and I will give you more daughters, however they come to us. You will sit at my side as I reign. You will sleep at my side as I sleep. You will move under me as we make our family. And when you do I will not…” his face got nearer, “close…my…eyes.”
Oh my.
He was not yet finished.
He got even nearer and the whisper he then gave me was a different kind of sinister.
“Also when you do, Elena, you will not endure. I’ll make you enjoy every fucking second of it.”
Oh my.
And still, he was not finished.
But fortunately, he moved away to say his next.
That was, he moved away…minutely.
“Together, we will force the dark out of that bleak place that is night even when it’s day and we’ll do this with the halls ringing with our children’s laughter. We will not live separate lives, Elena. We will be prince and princess then king and queen. And we will be husband and wife in all ways we can be. That is our bargain. And on that, you have no choice.”
“I—” I forced out that one noise through the hammering of my heart that was beating in my throat.
I got no further.
“Now, we eat,” he concluded.
He then pulled me from the door, took my hand and curled my fingers around his elbow.
He wrenched open the door, his hand moved to clamp over mine on his arm, imprisoning it there, and he drew me out into the hall.
For the sake of dignity, if nothing else, with no choice but to walk with him, I lifted my chin to salvage some pride and hissed, “We will speak further of this sometime later.”
“We will not,” he retorted.
“You do not make decisions for the both of us,” I returned.
“I didn’t. Destiny did. And for the first time in a bloody long time, save your sister becoming my sister, and not because she wounded my brother, but because she’s vastly unpleasant, I’m beginning to think the fates don’t loathe me.”
This declaration made me shut my mouth.
Because…
What did that mean?
I would suspect he said his next with careful timing.
This being just moments before we returned to the room he’d dragged