Total pages in book: 138
Estimated words: 137958 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 690(@200wpm)___ 552(@250wpm)___ 460(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 137958 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 690(@200wpm)___ 552(@250wpm)___ 460(@300wpm)
She would do nothing of the sort.
“You won’t do that, Farah,” he stated.
“No one would question it.”
“It would make you visible.”
“And I’m not visible now?”
True felt a burn hit his throat.
For she was.
Even if those who felt her very visible were pretending that she was invisible.
Carrington hadn’t yet acknowledged her.
But that didn’t matter.
His mother, father, Aunt Vanka and Uncle Johan very poorly masked their antipathy to his future wife.
It was beyond rude as to be sickening.
“I’ll have a word with my mother, Farah,” he said gently.
She shook her head. “No, True. We’ve spoken of this.”
They had.
They’d discovered there was very little on which they didn’t agree.
Except that.
“She’ll be your mother-in-law,” he noted.
“It is often the mother-in-law does not like her son being taken away by another woman, no?”
That wasn’t it and they both knew it.
“I’ll be talking to her, Farah.”
“I wish you wouldn’t.”
“Why?”
“Because the only way to make someone who does not like you for reasons that have nothing to do with you, and only to do with their preconceptions, or, I’m so sorry, True, their ignorance, is to prove them wrong.”
He made no response because he didn’t have one.
He would not know.
But he suspected she was right.
“It will not help matters and might hinder them if you waded in,” she carried on. “Regardless, you have enough to occupy your time. That’s the least of your worries.”
He had something to say to that.
“My future wife is not the least of my worries, Farah,” he retorted. “You need to mark that, sweets. You might not have the regard of my mother or my father, and regrettably, that is true. But you have mine. You are beautiful and kind and sage and my wish is to lift the sadness from your eyes and give you at least peace, but I would strive for happiness.”
She gazed up at him, her appealing, puffy lips slightly parted, her eyes like burning topaz.
Yes.
She was falling in love with him.
He felt that look in his groin.
He wanted to taste her and that need grew greater with every moment he shared with her.
He simply would not do it until she knew the man who claimed her mouth, or any part of her, wanted only hers without the loss of the one who fates ripped away fresh on his mind.
He feared she’d get little respect where she was going.
And in truth, outside of Mars, her mother, Silence, Ha-Lah, Elena and her women, she got little respect where she was now.
So she would have his.
In all things.
“I will allow this to carry on, for a time,” he told her. “But, Farah, I’ll stress it will be for a time. You’ve done not one thing to earn this rudeness. I will abide it for your sake at your request. But there will come a time I will not. Do we have an understanding?”
She sighed and said, “I suppose.”
He grinned at her and replied, “My deepest appreciation.”
She cast her eyes to the side briefly in her brand of an eye roll, her lips tipped up at the ends.
“Come,” he said, reaching out and taking her hand to tuck it in his elbow. “We must prepare for dinner. As meetings have concluded, Queen Elpis has decided to do the presentations this evening, rather than tomorrow. We have less time to get ready.”
He led her to and through the door.
The corridor was busy.
“There is much happening,” she said under her breath. “And oddly, I fear it more than the rising of the Beast.”
“It will all work out in the end,” he assured.
She looked up at him just as he turned them to the stairs.
And she trusted him fully in return, gazing at him as he guided her to the stairs, taking his lead without looking where her feet were falling.
There was something gravely affecting in that.
So much, it also made his throat burn.
“How could you know?” she queried.
He folded his hand over hers at his elbow.
“Because in the end, the Beast is rising. No one will think of trade and proclamations and wars and regents. When we defeat him, there will be naught but relief that those who are still breathing are indeed breathing. The rest will fit in place as it should. Good and just.”
They made it to the top landing as she murmured, “This is very true.”
True led her to her door and bent to kiss her cheek.
“Send a servant when you’re ready to be escorted down,” he ordered after he straightened, though he didn’t need to. Since meeting her, if he was at dinner, he’d done the same. “I’ll attend you.”
She gave him her look of shining topaz, budding love glowing in her eyes.
And yes.
She was so very lovely.
She was also his.
And he was hers.
And he wished nothing in that moment but to want to be hers.
Eventually.
34
The Presentations
Lady Silence Mattson
The Throne Room, First Floor, West Corridor, State Wing, Catrame Palace, Fire City