The Girl Who Fell From The Sky - Rebecca Royce Page 0,39

not going to happen on my watch.”

“In repayment for what you did, as is our tradition, I offer you whatever you’d like that I can provide. What would you have of me?”

The two men stared at each other a long time before Nox spoke. “I would like to share your brand with Bianca.”

Torrin turned to look at me, a smirk on his face. He’d known this was going to happen, too. He nodded. “Well then, it is settled. Mattis, you have the tools to brand her now? Proceed.”

“Now hold on,” Astor interjected, raising both hands to indicate a time-out. “When I gave you my jewel, it was in expectation of you having your numbers removed and replaced with mine. Only mine. I wanted to be responsible for her safety.”

Torrin eyed his brother. “And you will be…with us. Or would you deny us the happiness we would never hold back from you?”

Astor’s mouth fell open. “You know what? Fine. It probably makes sense, since I can’t even be counted on to take care of myself in the face of Baron the Idiot and his horde of bandits. How could I possibly take care of Bianca?”

Was that what this was about? I looked between all of them, noticing Nox as he tried to sit up in the bed. He struggled but managed. Mattis turned his back, pretending to be interested in branding equipment.

“You want to do something about that?” Torrin’s voice was low. “You want them to stop bothering you?”

A muscle ticked in Astor’s jaw. “I want to be worthy of the woman who fell from the sky. To be an equal among brothers.”

“Fair enough.” Torrin nodded. From his back pocket, he pulled out a knife. The longest blade I’d ever seen. “Go do something about it. Go let him know that you are the king’s brother and you aren’t to be trifled with. Kill him if you want. Anyone gets in your way, they’ll deal with me. Go do it, and when you’ve finally claimed the honor that should always have been yours, come back and claim Bianca with the rest of us.”

Astor stared at the knife but didn’t reach for it right away. His face looked blank, like he was hiding a lot of emotion, and I could guess at all the things he wasn’t saying. Why am I not worthy already? Will this one thing, the murder of an evil man, truly change that? If I do not perform this task, will I lose her affection?

No. No he wouldn’t.

Maybe this was my day for crashing everybody’s party, because I was not going to let Astor go down that path. It would break everything beautiful about him. I shoved myself between the two brothers and snatched the knife away from Torrin.

“This is ridiculous,” I said. “I comprehend that your ways are different from what I’m used to, and yes, I realize that this isn’t done here, but holies-curse-it, I get a say. I get to say who owns me, who cares for me, and who I care for right back. I’m not a thing to be traded and stuck in a hermetically sealed room and poked at and discussed in hushed voices as if I don’t have a perfectly good voice of my own. You will listen to me! And if I can’t get all of your agreement on this, this one point, I swear to everything sacred in the universe that I will take this knife and…a-and…”

I had no clue how to finish that threat. I wasn’t going to go kill Baron Whatsit, even as satisfying as that sounded. I definitely wasn’t going to kill me, not after going through all I had over the years just to keep this body alive. And I wasn’t going to kill any of them, my beautiful men.

But I needed them to listen, to hear, to accept me. And also to accept Astor just as he was. Because he was already worthy. And maybe I was, too.

I was breathing hard and more furious than I could remember ever being—Torrin did have a way of waking my rage, didn’t he?—and then Mattis did exactly the wrong thing. The wrongest thing any man had ever done in the history of male wrongness.

He laughed.

At me.

A low, indulgent chuckle, really, the kind of laugh that stroked its way down my throat and deep, deep into my belly, and it wasn’t fair on any level. But even as I turned the laser of my fury upon him, he