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Especially her heart, absurd thing that it was. If she needed any more proof that her brain had not decided to accompany her on her journey, she need only look so far as the sun and moon cycles, for what female would anguish so sharply over a male she’d only known for a smattering of days? A week or so at best?
Clara gripped the comb, threw it into the top drawer, and slammed the thing shut. The bang was the closest thing to a curse she’d been able to muster since she’d locked herself in her room. It was the swear that broke the seal, apparently, for a proper curse echoed on its heels through the empty bedchamber with resounding purpose and struck Clara with its directness.
Her back stiffened as she absorbed the shock like a tuning fork.
She hardly needed the reminder that she was hollow, but it seemed the Moon Mother would never stop conspiring to make her aware of all she’d wrought upon herself.
Bronze, her soul bond, had made an oath to another, and it was one he held high above the vow he’d sworn to her. It didn’t matter that his devotion to Polina wasn’t of romantic affection. He’d taken an oath to another female, and up until today, he’d let that promise guide every step he took, despite his mark being branded upon Clara’s skin.
Steps that had him walking all over her to fulfill his one supreme vow, regardless of the vows he’d given her.
Sisterly affection she could have forgiven and would have gladly done so, but not at the sake of her self-respect.
God, she wished she could scratch off the tattoo. Burn it. Score it from her skin with her fangs and claws. Anything so she wouldn’t have to look at the permanent reminder of her ineptitude as a female for having ever trusted him.
A knock at the door had her pulling her sleeve over her wrist. “Yes?”
“Pascal and the other advisors await your judgment regarding the king, lady,” Broderick called through the door, somehow sensing she wasn’t yet ready to talk to anyone face to face.
Judgment. It was perhaps the ultimate insult, asking for her opinion and ruling on a matter of such grave importance after everyone in the kingdom had witnessed her profound failings.
Clara lifted her head and stared at her reflection in the mirror. The headband had been swapped out for a more prominent headwrap, this one a deep fuchsia inlaid with navy forest-like embroidery. The whole thing was a cruel depiction of all she sought to hide: her image, her nature, her new status that she’d set out to obtain, despite the risks.
Strange how, when she started on her journey, she’d done so independently. Yes, she’d sought the aid of a few merchants to get her to the human lands, but it was she who actually intellectualized it all and she who, after some time in Bronze’s company, thought he was different. That perhaps she hadn’t needed to learn how to manipulate him to achieve the seat of the monarchy and help her people alongside him. And she’d been all too eager to drop that farce as soon as he’d begun to fight for her. Actually fight for her. Not win for the sake of winning, as most males did, but put his vote of confidence in her, all while protecting her and helping her parse out her father’s treachery along the way.
So it was fitting how her journey ended where it had begun, in a sense.
As a lone wolf, though worse somehow. Patriarchal male-dominated lycan law still recognized Bronze as a successor to the throne by virtue of winning the Betrothal Games. She could at best serve alongside him, which had been part of their mutually beneficial arrangement, as it was the most she could ever hope for. Her desires for her people would be spoken and enacted through his position. As it stood right now, there was no law she could set forth without his say.
Turned out, the manipulations she’d sought to enact when she originally fled had worked far too well, especially when the universe saw fit to turn them on her.
What a cosmically cruel joke.
Her sallow reflection was a reminder of the toll it took to think oneself part of a devoted pair and what was left behind when one half chose to sever themselves from the whole.
But she’d not shed another tear. She couldn’t afford to. Not when her wolf had yet to cease howling her anguish within. It was one thing to let your pain manifest physically but quite another when you had to hold it all together for the sake of the more primal part of you.
God, she wanted to fall apart. Just collapse on the floor and rail and kick and scream until her vocal cords were abused and swollen and she’d rubbed her skin raw trying to crawl out of it. To throw a tantrum like she’d never been permitted to show, even as a child, even when she grew into womanhood as the only arctic wolf lycan among her people and had no mother to explain why rules were meant for her but not others.
Why there was no such thing as a love match in lycan monarchies.
“Lady? Are you well?”
“Yes, Broderick. I’ll be out momentarily and will meet you downstairs.”
Clara lifted her chin and tried to focus on her father’s situation. No, her situation. The one she’d been put in by that male and all the others who came after him. But her heart . . .
Was affection supposed to hurt this much? Was it supposed to ache with such physical suffering that would soon see her running to the bathroom again?
No, it wasn’t. But betrayal and deception . . . now those things had no shortage of claws to strike with.
As she rose to the door, intending to find Broderick, she steeled her features from the decision she had come to regarding her father’s future. Strange how, once she’d settled on the course of action, it hadn’t filled her with the remorse she thought it might. That had been somewhat of an easy surprise.
What hadn’t been easy was what came after.
Clara stepped from the room and nearly cowered beneath the weight of the final thought that would trail her every step of the way to the first floor.
In all the time spent in her brave warrior’s presence, she’d never once noticed whether his angel’s wings had been tipped with talons. Nor had she conceptualized how the very person she thought would be the key to her independence would instead trap her more tightly within a gilded prison.
