Page 71 of Of Bargains & Betrayal

Clearly, I’d bargained like a goddess-damned fool.

“Come. Let’s get some fresh air,” Maksym said with such abruptness, my fork clattered against my plate as I tensed. “We could both use it.”

The Umbrite bastard pushed back from the table and strode towards the terrace doors without a glance back.

Fresh air? I nearly squawked back.

What I needed was to not be breathing the same air as him anymore.

Slinging back the remnants of my drink in one go, I stood and took a moment to round up every bit of resolve I could. When I had some confidence in my ability to not immediately lose my shit, I trailed after Maksym.

He’d already pulled open the doors when I got there, letting in a cool and humid night breeze. My blouse and vest were clearly not designed for much warmth, and I had to wrap my arms around myself to stave off some of the cold that lit up goosebumps on my skin. Maksym, of course, seemed unfazed, in his infuriatingly tailored jacket, as he headed over to the side railing and leaned back against the stone, casting his gaze up at the overcast night sky.

I kept a healthy distance as I took up my post at the railing, leaving several paces between us, and it was a damned good thing I did.

Maksym hadn’t even turned his attention down at me when he asked, “What was your life in Odessa like? You always lived at Caenleigh, right?”

My jaw went slack.

After a long beat of silence, he glanced over, confusion flickering over his sharp features. “What?”

I blinked. “You’re serious?”

At that, he looked even more confused. “That’s why I asked.”

The flare of anger I’d barely smothered came roaring back, and I scoffed.

“I was born out of wedlock to a young, foolish king and an equally young and senseless seer who had taken a vow of celibacy, so my life at Caenleigh was fucked from the start, Your Majesty. My father and nursemaids raised me because my mother was apparently incapable, and she returned to her enclave when I was still a child. No fucking idea if she’s alive or not, because I’ve never heard from her. My father married a few years later, but she turned out to be a miserable cunt. Treated me like a plague-bearing rat.”

I was going to burn a hole straight through the patio stones with my pacing.

“And let’s see, what else… Oh! When I was sixteen, my best friend, Kieran, left in the middle of the night. Then, the next year, Troy and Linus left too, and Kala died. The year after that, we lost Bryer and Jax in a rockslide, and then, when I was nineteen, I was assaulted by my General, and…”

I stopped my counting of events on my fingers and looked at Maksym, whose horns were glinting in the sparse moonlight as he shook his head.

“Oh, was that not what you wanted to know about my life in Odessa?” I huffed a dry laugh. “Sorry, let me regale you with a different version. The fortress is lovely, as I’m sure you’ve read in all those books Eilir says you like to read. Bright and airy, full of light. Nothing like Grimm’s Keep. Endless halls for my father to chase me down when I was a child and groves in the lower bailey⁠—”

“I’ve upset you with one innocent question,” Maksym interrupted, his voice laden with disbelief.

“One innocent question?” I barked back. “You upset me a fucking hour ago when you couldn’t handle a joke, accused me of wanting to sabotage this,” I waved my bargain-marked palm at him, “and then you didn’t speak a fucking word to me our entire meal, and you wrap it all up by dragging me out here to ask about my goddess-damned childhood?”

Heat thrummed in my face as the last of my half-shouted tirade tumbled out of my lips, my chill and goosebumps a thing of the distant past.

To his infuriating credit, Maksym sighed and scrubbed his fingers over his brow as he sank back against the stone railing.

After a beat of tense silence, he muttered, “I don’t know what the fuck I’m doing.”

“Clearly,” I scoffed, but I was not done. “So let me lay out something for you, Your Majesty. Or My Liege. Or Max. Or whatever the fuck you want to be called. Okay?”

He shot me a displeased look.

“I realize you know about as little of me as I know of you, but I have a massive, foolish heart, Maksym, and I have a tendency to love with every goddess-damned inch of it, okay? My friends. My family. My lovers. They all get a piece of it, and all I ever ask of them in exchange is to take that little sliver of me that cares about them and looks out for them and treat it with a fraction of respect. That’s it.”

Maksym still looked wary, but he nodded slowly. “Okay…”

“And what I’m struggling to understand is what you are going to do with the piece of me that is inevitably going to want to care for you and look out for you someday. I was going to try to get to know you tonight, you know? See if maybe I could glimpse any of that deep-down goodness Eilir seems to think you have an abundance of.” I sighed and looked out past the railing, to where the Keep’s grounds were nothing but a sea of dark foliage and pathways lit under struggling moonlight. “If this lovely interaction is anything to go off of, though, I think you’re going to eviscerate that part of me.”

Even in my periphery, I could see Maksym tense as he watched me, his eyes a flash of vivid amber that was impossible to miss. “Why would I do that?”