Page 53 of Of Bargains & Betrayal

And while I watched on, Maksym set the blade aside and swept his finger through the thickening, iridescent purple mixture.

He took my left hand again and painted a large circle over my palm as he murmured, “This component of the oath mark represents our binding union. And these,” he painted two short, vertical lines intersecting vertically at the top of the circle, “are you and I. Finally,” next came a long, horizontal line right over top of the weeping cut he had made, sweeping across the bottom of the circle, “we have Mina’s dark blessing as the foundation.”

Maksym cast a lingering glance at me, his black and amber eyes assessing, before he released my hand and drew a matching mark in our blood on his own left hand.

I hadn’t realized how long I’d been holding my breath until he looked away, and air came rushing out of my lungs in an inelegant, shaky sigh.

“Almost done, Miss Wynn,” the king chuckled. He turned his attention back to me after dipping his finger in the shimmery blood mixture again. “Last and most important step.”

I stiffened as he reached for me and cradled my chin.

Maksym tipped my face up like he wanted to get a better look before he smeared our blood across my bottom lip.

A protest was clawing its way up the desert of my throat, but it died when the king kissed me. He moved so fast, I hadn’t even processed why he was pulling me closer and angling his face until his lips were pressed against mine.

Why was everything about this dreadful man soft and warm?

As I went to plant my clean hand against the firm plane of his chest and shove him away from me, my marked palm burned something fierce. Against my lips, Maksym muttered, “Alea iacta est.”

The wet graze of his tongue brushed against my bottom lip before he backed off, an all-too-pleased smile curving his blood-stained mouth. He wiped away the traces with his thumb as he said, “There.”

“There?” I squawked back as a new flush crept up my chest. “Was that necessary? Wasn’t it enough to cut me open and⁠—”

I glanced down—my palm was no longer cut open, and our blood was gone.

The pattern Maksym had drawn on me had sunk into my now completely healed skin. A cursory glance told me the king’s mark mirrored my own. That the mark of a blood bargain would seem so literal shouldn’t have come as much of a surprise as it did.

Maksym’s smile only grew, and he did not answer my question.

“Is there anything else you need of me at the moment, Miss Wynn?” He set about cleaning off the ceremonial blade with a cloth his stalwart mage passed over in silence. “Loathe as I am to admit it, it would be in mine and Jasper’s best interest if we tried to salvage the tribal negotiations you saw fit to interrupt with your own personal negotiations.”

The thinly amused glance he slid at me did little to quench the heat of embarrassment pricking away at my skin. “There isn’t, no. And I…I’m sorry. For interrupting.”

Another smile tugged at the king’s mouth, but he didn’t look at me as he set the blade back in the carved box his mage had first retrieved it from. “Oh, no need for apologies. We love unbridled enthusiasm here. Don’t we, Jasper?”

The mage sighed from beside the king but nodded.

Truthfully, I felt a little bad for this man, forced to endure his king’s unpredictable whimsy. At least he would be someone to commiserate with in the future, seeing as I was certain whimsy was the least of what I was about to have to endure from Maksym.

“Oh, and Miss Wynn?” Maksym said as he settled himself back on the edge of the table, the picture of casual grace again. “The Night of Frenzy is in just a couple of days, and you’ll start training shortly after, so please rest while you can.”

I stiffened. “The Night of Frenzy? What is that?”

Maksym swept an expectant hand toward his mage, who seemed incapable of speaking without sighing first.

“It marks the official start of the season of the Agōn Ferr.” Jasper didn’t even look up from the paper he was scrawling away on. “The current Elixia will draw to determine who participates in this round. They will eat and drink unreasonable amounts and wander into Embervale at the crack of dawn to put out a call for participants for the Initium.”

I cast a confused glance at Maksym—at this rate, not only did I need to learn history, but a new language too.

He, at least, tossed me a small smile. “It is the initiation. Happens the night after the feast and ensures only the most strong-willed actually enter the main events.”

“Including me, right?”

He nodded. “Including you. I have the utmost faith you’ll pass it easily and move right into your training.”

As much as I dreaded the idea of a banquet and whatever hell this initiation was, the prospect of moving into training afterward completely superseded that. There was nothing that could fix the state of my head quite like days spent beating the absolute hell out of my body.

Accepting that, I bid the king and his mage a quick goodbye and intended to make haste back to my room to curl back up in bed, but as my fingers brushed the door, I hesitated and turned back. Maksym and Jasper were already fussing over something spread in front of them on the table.