Page 89 of Of Bargains & Betrayal

It was laughable how much blind optimism Maksym held for matters that didn’t involve him directly. If the tables had been turned, and I’d vanished on him, he would have taken a grudge to his grave and well into whatever afterlife awaited him.

“That’s easy for you to say when you know everything that happened. Nora doesn’t know an ounce of the damned truth. And if my king—” I fixed Maksym with a pointed look, “is amenable to the suggestion, I’d like to be the one who decides if and what she learns of the rest of that truth, if she even stays.”

“Of course. You have my word on that. I promise.” After a healthy pause, Maksym sighed and added, “Why are women so difficult?”

“Goddess, Max. They aren’t,” I chuckled. “How would you feel if you were in her place, truly?”

He fixed me with a sharp stare but ceded far faster than I thought he would. “Furious, I suppose. Seems like she’s had an incredibly shite run with life recently.”

As if a shite run with life recently could somehow sum up everything I’d gleaned had happened to Enora. From my understanding, ever since her father’s sudden death not even half a year ago, her entire life had taken a vicious, downhill tumble. When I was still in Odessa, her half-brother Calder was a child but already as easy to endure as the bite of midwinter wind. Clearly, time had done little to change that. Or, at least, I assumed, based on him making his first order of business to send his only sibling off to her death—or to a strategic marriage, if he felt like spinning that lie further and Enora still felt like believing it.

I scoffed. “And now she’s tethered to your incorrigible arse for the rest of her worldly existence. As your wife. Awful doesn’t even scratch the surface of the sentence she was doled out.”

The bit of empathy that had flitted over Maksym’s face sharpened in an instant. “So you seem keen on continuing to remind me, as if I don’t already know that,” he snapped.

A little more quietly, he added, “I’m not exactly thrilled to be marrying someone I met weeks ago either. But it’s not like I had an abundance of say in the matter.”

Oh, we were not touching the abundance of say that he did have with a ten-fucking-foot glaive. We’d argued about this multiple times already. He was our goddess-damned king, of the highest rank and order under the entire banner of united dark fae in Grimmoria, and he could do whatever he wanted, if he just exerted an ounce of his power, bribed a tribe seat or two.

But he always refused.

He was so staunchly terrified of becoming even a shade of the tyrant his father was that he liked to overlook the decades he spent in squalor, barely surviving in the Wastes as he assembled his uprising, fighting tooth and nail to get to the place where he was now.

And I knew the council seats—the nobles had heckled him about marriage since before his father’s body had even grown cold on the floor of the throne room.

They wanted a strategic marriage for their new king, a union to breed prosperity, regardless of what he wanted; regardless of the fact that he could scant bring himself to look at someone with any interest if he didn’t hold some measure of care for them. Maksym had held them at bay admirably, but how long could he go on like that? How long before he’d finally crack under the never-ending pressure and find himself tethered to a power-hungry woman who looked at him as nothing but status and breeding power?

I should’ve seen this all coming the moment Enora crashed into our lives. Maybe I would have, if I hadn’t been so blinded by the utter shock of seeing my oldest friend scratching at death’s doorstep.

What better way to stun the council, the elders, and every gossiping mouth into silence than by a sudden charity marriage on Maksym’s own terms? And what better way to give himself his own peace of mind than to see that union be with someone who had not a lick of interest in any of what he had to offer her?

I was certain Enora wanted as little to do with her future husband as possible, and that boded well for my king’s solitary preferences in life.

Maksym could prattle on all he wanted to about how he didn’t have a say, that his hands were impossibly tied, when really, he was nothing but a strategist in disguise.

“I think that’s all the more reason you should be with her right now and not here with me,” I finally said. “Not only do I think you have a sliver of apologizing to do, but you should use every moment you can to at least try to build some relationship with her before you’re expected to be tolerant of each other in public. And what is it that Olek always says?”

Maksym’s brow pinched together over his amber eyes, and he shot me a look of confusion. “Olek? The drunk fool says a lot of things; you’re going to have to be more specific than that…”

I had really hoped he wouldn’t make me say any of it out loud, because my shoddy attempt at humor was already feeling incredibly in poor taste. “Something to do with sad women…” I said with a heaping amount of insinuation.

Maksym’s lip curled in an instant. “That’s disgusting, Jasper. I will not take advantage of her emotional turmoil to seduce her, you heathen. What has gotten into you?”

I threw my hands up and had no control over the chuckle that slipped out of me. “All I’m saying is, a sad woman may be a little more open to your attempts at civility, even if you are the one responsible for a healthy portion of her woes, so go. Every minute you’re sitting here is a minute she’s wreaking havoc somewhere between here and her quarters, that much I know.”

With an agonizing sigh, Maksym pushed himself up off the bench. “Fine. I’ll go make amends.” He dusted off his pants before he paused and added, “How was her assessment, anyway? Other than the part where I’m confident she would have had you flat out on your ass in the dirt if I hadn’t interrupted.”

“Oh, she was incredible,” I chuckled. As if she could have been anything but. Sure, military service wasn’t even on the cards for her when I’d left Odessa, but her tenacity meant she’d excel at anything she set her sights on. “You don’t need to wait to call the Agōn Ferr. She’s tough, well-trained, and she’ll need that to focus on if we have any hope of her seeing that bargain through with as little incident as possible.”

Maksym scoffed those last few words back at me with a shake of his head.

“I’ve yet to see anything related to that woman take place without some kind of incident.”

I couldn’t help but smirk. “It’s an incredible talent of hers, you know?”

Admittedly, the sixteen-year-old Enora I had known didn’t have quite the flair for dramatics as the one now, but between her knack for always finding trouble and having a poor hold on her emotions, our youth was far from dull.

My king clearly didn’t find it as amusing as I did as he walked away, waving a hand behind him in the usual half-assed goodbye I found myself treated to.