Finally, he releases me.
“For all the training they must’ve given you, I know that you do not know much of my customs. Of my people. Of my empire.”
Not entirely wrong, but also not true. I wait for him to continue.
“We will be wed in a fortnight, as is the appropriate amount of time. Thorne will explain the specifics to you,” he says dismissively.
“Wait,” I say as he starts to turn his attention away from me and to one of the guards at the back of the room.
He pauses, raising an eyebrow. I can feel Thorne seething behind me.
“Yes?” Arion drawls.
“Before we are wed, I want your word,” I say, trying to keep my voice steady. “That there won’t be an attack on the Enduares. Whatever your quarrel with them, you’ll leave them untouched. That’s the only reason I agreed to come.”
Arion regards me from his throne, one hand resting lazily against the carved armrest.
“My word?” he echoes with the faintest hint of amusement. “You think your arrival here came with the right to bargain. You exist at my pleasure, Arlet.”
He rises, and the gold around him bends with his movement. The room feels smaller.
Heat crawls up my throat. “But what of the Enduares?”
He waves the question away, already bored. “I have no interest in waging a war with the trolls at the moment. Now is the time for the rise of the Elven Dominion. Your Enduares are of no consequence to me now that you are here.”
For a moment, relief flickers in me—short-livedand fragile.
Arion tilts his head. “You’ll learn soon enough that the realm runs on priorities, not passion.”
“My priority is my kingdom.” He brushes his hand over his magical throne slowly, gaze sliding over me as if I’m something being measured. “Now that you’ve brought the tracker, your one and only purpose is to be a consort. So far, I’m underwhelmed. You speak without knowing the weight of your words, your silks are wrinkled, and your posture—” He gestures vaguely. “It betrays what you were before I chose you.”
I bite down hard enough on the inside of my cheek to stop myself from answering.
“But it doesn’t matter,” he says smoothly, cutting the silence before it can grow teeth. “You will learn. You’re clever enough, I think, to adapt. And if not…” His mouth curves faintly, a suggestion of a smile that feels more like a bruise. “You’ll at least be better than the others.”
I blink. “The others?”
He studies my face for a heartbeat, as though savoring the confusion there. Then, deliberately, he sits again, arranging one arm along the throne’s edge so that the fabric of his sleeve drapes over the wood.
“You should not consider me a fool, Arlet,” he says. “Nor should you imagine yourself my first experiment in companionship. You will not be the first to be given to me in marriage.”
The words slip out of him casually, like a man remarking on the weather.
My stomach turns. More secrets, more twists in the game we play. “You—what do you mean?”
He smiles, lazy and satisfied. “Oh yes. How little the Enduares know of me and my people now. I’ve been careful to keep my affairs private, but it amuses me to see that even after all these years, our seclusion remains effective.”
He rises again, the light shifting as his body blocks it. “You will be my third wife. The other two failed to obey and were dealt with accordingly.”
My mouth goes dry. “Dealt with?”
“Disposed of,” he says easily, as though explaining a simple trade. “One forgot her place. The other grew tiresome. Neither produced an heir.”
The world seems to narrow to the sound of my own breathing.
“I’ve been trying to secure a successor for decades,” he continues, unconcerned by the silence he’s left in his wake. “Your arrival simply expedites the process. And since you were so obliging in helping me with the one who hides the artifact I need—” He pauses, eyes glinting. “You may yet prove more useful than the rest.”
My mind churns. That’s why he’s desperate enough to take a human as his bride. If I can give him an heir, it would change everything in his favor.