Page 46 of Of Bargains & Betrayal

“What’s so special about Odessa anyway?” Eilir asked after not quite enough silence. I was ready to argue there was an exhausting list of things that made Odessa incredibly special, but the sprite added, “Is there that much for you to go back to?”

A lump built with fury in my throat.

That was something I’d refused to think about since Maksym made his offer, because the answer was no. And not in the sense that there was nothing to go back to. I had Theo—in the loosest sense of the imagination—even though he was probably pretty pissed I didn’t say goodbye. I had the surviving members of my squad. A few casual friends in and around the fortress. Joyce.

But that was it.

I no longer had my father. Or Streja. Or most of my peers. My autonomy. That was arguably the most devastating loss the last six months had brought.

Even if I made it back, I wouldn’t be dispatched on the cavalry assignments I once loved. The ones that sent me to every corner of Odessa for weeks or months at a time. The ones that steeped me in glimmers of life in our most remote villages, in alpine camps. Those days were behind me since the moment my father died and our beautiful crown fell atop my brother’s greasy head.

It would only be a matter of time before he saw fit to marry me off again.

My brother and I were not meant to occupy the same realm of reality; we hadn’t been since he almost killed his own mother coming into existence twenty years ago. He’d spent his entire life just waiting for the moment our father could not advocate for my presence in Odessa.

Maybe I’d find myself half-dead on the border with Elysiel next time, on the way to some pretentious high fae merchant, or bobbing in the chasm between Odessa and the human mainland, lost to the water before whatever mortal lord I’d been bound to got his grubby hands on me.

Bleak. Bleak. Bleak.

Everything that had once made Odessa so special to me was gone.

So much so, that being tethered to the King of Grimmoria—and not the one I’d come to marry—as repentance for a crime I did not commit was looking like a promising notion.

The sudden weight of it all made my chest ache, and the corners of my eyes burned something fierce. But my room was close now, just a short distance down the hall, and I needed that privacy desperately.

“Enora?” came Eilir’s concerned squeak.

I found them watching me with their brow-ridge low, a slight frown on their face.

“Hmm? What did you say?” A sad, desperate attempt to see if the sprite would move on to less stress-inducing topics.

They did not.

“I asked if there was much for you to go back to in Odessa? Seems like that king, or brother, or whatever he is, wanted to get rid of you.”

I swallowed and blatantly lied. “There’s plenty for me to go back to. It’s my home, after all.”

A long, pregnant pause followed before Eilir murmured, “I see.”

That burning in my eyes felt harder to keep at bay, but I was just feet away from having privacy.

“If you don’t mind, Eilir,” I intoned, “I don’t think I’m much in the mood for company.”

“Of course.” The disappointment in the sprite’s voice only made my chest ache more. “If you need anything⁠—”

“Three rings of the bell. I remember.”

The buzz of Eilir’s wings started, and a light breeze gusted my face before the sound traveled away. It grew quieter until I was immersed in such saturating silence, I could hear my heart pounding away as it became even harder to breathe.

The first tears came shortly after that.

A handful, at first, tracking paths down my cheeks just after I’d shut my bedroom door. But they built, stronger and stronger, until ugly noises clawed out of me every time I tried to breathe, and a crushing weight bore down on me.

I was so unfathomably fucked.

PART II

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