Total pages in book: 162
Estimated words: 165618 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 828(@200wpm)___ 662(@250wpm)___ 552(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 165618 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 828(@200wpm)___ 662(@250wpm)___ 552(@300wpm)
No, when he approached my father to negotiate, then signed the betrothal agreement that would, if we got through the compatibility trial, tie me to him for the rest of my life.
(And just to say, it was the male who determined if the trial was a success or a failure, so I was screwed on that score too, unless I could convince him during that weekend I was not the queen for him, something I fully intended to do.)
Of course, there was no actual law that said I, who had not signed a betrothal agreement, had to adhere to said agreement.
At least there wasn’t a law in Night’s Fall, where I lived.
However, if I didn’t, I could kiss my mother and father goodbye indefinitely, even eternally.
Although Dad and I could cross horns, I loved him. I loved both of them. I did this with all my heart. I did not want to lose them, even if this whole business was crazy archaic.
Just the concept of being disowned by them terrified me.
Mom, as a human, could, and probably would, defy this demonic edict.
Dad never would.
Never.
If we made it through the trial and I didn’t marry Tanyn, I’d lose Dad forever, and I couldn’t even think about that without feeling sick to my stomach.
Tanyn conceded my point by inclining his annoyingly attractive head, a movement that was annoyingly attractive.
“Sweetheart,” Dad called me, all loving and kind now, of course.
I turned to him, and I knew my face was not loving or kind but carefully bland.
Dad sallied forth anyway.
“Tanyn wishes for you both to be coronated together,” he announced.
Bully for Tanyn.
“As such, and with Aleksei and Laura’s engagement party coming closer, we really don’t have time to delay,” he went on.
I said nothing.
“Sweetheart,” Dad whispered, the word this time dripping with remorse.
Farg his remorse.
Sure, he was a male. He didn’t have to put up with this nonsense. In real terms, he could not get how this felt.
But he was living with me and Mom and the rest of the world in these modern times. He had to know how much he was asking of me, how totally antiquated this expectation was of female demons being married so damned young. He had to have some understanding of what this was going to cost me.
And he’d had a hand in making me. He knew me. He knew how I’d react to him doing something like this.
Even so, he laid me out right in front of Tanyn like I was not behaving like a female who’d had her options and free will torn from her, but instead, like I was a disobedient child.
So…oh yeah.
Farg his remorse.
“Will your beings arrange transport, or shall I?” I asked Tanyn.
“I’d prefer you have a detail,” Tanyn replied.
“I know. They escorted me here,” I reminded him, leaving off and everywhere else for the last week. “Unnecessarily, since no one knows anything about us.”
“And it was thought no one knew Laura was Aleksei’s mate, and she was attacked months before she even met him, because she was Aleksei’s mate,” Tanyn rejoined.
He had me there.
“We’re not mates,” I rejoined.
“Yes, we are,” he returned. “Or we will be, shortly, when I put a ring on your finger and a crown on your head.”
Bah!
“Right,” I conceded. “Will your beings tell my beings when I need to be ready? I can assure you,”—my eyes slid to my father before they went back to the king—“I won’t be late.”
Did Tanyn’s mouth tighten ever so slightly because Dad botched this? Or was I seeing things?
“My beings will be in touch with your beings,” Tanyn agreed.
“Excellent. Shall we cease wasting Mira’s time now?” I suggested.
Dad sighed.
Mom made a displeased pip.
“Of course,” Tanyn said.
“Engage holo with Mira Loreling,” Dad ordered his desk comm.
There were some beeps indicating this Mira female was being hailed before the demon herself, sitting behind a desk, blinked into the room.
She stood and curtsied to Tanyn.
I fought rolling my eyes.
“Your Majesty,” she greeted.
“Mira. Allow me to introduce my fiancée, Catla Truelock,” Tanyn said.
Now did I detect a minor sneer on her lips?
“Miss Truelock, a pleasure,” she said to me, sounding like she meant it, while totally not meaning it.
“And Mammon and Freya Truelock, my future in-laws,” Tanyn continued.
“Sir. Madam,” Mira addressed them.
“The compatibility trial is set,” Tanyn told her. “So please go over your preliminary plan.”
“Of course, sire,” she replied.
Sire?
Yuck.
“Naturally, it all depends on the results of the compatibility trial,” she was sure to add (oh yeah, evidence was suggesting with this one interaction, the demons of Sky’s Edge were not going to open their arms to their future queen being of a First Family of demons to bend a knee to the shifter monarch of Night’s Fall a handful of centuries ago). “But obviously, momentous news like this, especially considering all Sky’s Edge endured under the reign of Arnaud, the terrifying way that ended, and the resulting but sudden shift in leadership, this needs to be handled with care. In other words, we can’t spring it on the citizens of Sky’s Edge.”