Page 80 of Vow to Claim You

“What is it, Eero?” It doesn’t come off as a question, but a demand to get to the point before he ends up thrown through a wall.

The grin fades. Whatever settles over Eero’s face now is the closest to serious I’ve seen him come.

“It’s Vidar,” he says. “He wants to see you. Now.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

Aric

Ileave Ayanna in the office doorway and walk down the corridor toward the old man’s study. The door stands half open, the usual scent of smoke drifting through it. I close it behind me, and Vidar doesn’t look up when I enter.

He sits in the black leather chair, a single lamp carving half his face out of the dark, the oxygen line he refuses to wear coiled beside an ashtray he refuses to empty. My father is dying the way granite dies. Slowly. And certain, to the last, that it’ll outlast anything stupid enough to stand against it.

“You burned it.”

I knew he’d hear about it before the ashes cooled. This house stopped belonging to one man years ago. He has people loyal to him. I have people loyal to me. We’ve both long stopped pretending otherwise.

“I burned a copy.”

“Mm.” He turns a page of something I can’t see, in no hurry at all. “And sent Tassilo for the rest. The lawyers. The archive.” His voice drops another notch. “My safe.”

“I did.”

“You sent men into my study to empty my safe, Aric.” He lifts his eyes at last. The same pale blue I find in the mirror on the nights I stop hiding what I am. “I raised something colder than I meant to.”

“You raised exactly what you meant to.” I crane my neck slightly, studying the man who spent a lifetime sharpening me into a weapon. “You just didn’t account for where I’d point it.”

Something stirs at the corner of his mouth. Not a smile. The ghost of one. The place one used to live before he decided softness was a price too high to pay.

“Sit.”

“I’ll stand.”

“You’ll waste the one hour I’m willing to give this, then.” He sets the page down, squares it to the edge of the desk, and I see my own economy of motion reflected back at me. I hate that I recognize it. That I see myself in him.

“You think the contract was the thing that could kill her.” His voice is devoid of any emotion. “It wasn’t. The contract was only the record of it. The debt was agreed long before any lawyer wrote it down, and it doesn’t stop existing because you’ve decided you don’t like the terms.”

“Then the debt dies too.”

“The debt is a pact between two houses,” he says, low and languid. “You can burn every page in Norway, and it still stands. That heir is the price of ending the war between Almaviris and us, the key to Leandro’s seat on the Council. Ink did not create the bargain. It merely recorded it.” He regards me with detached scrutiny. “You didn’t free her. You removed one prison wall and convicted yourself she’d escaped.”

“Leandro signed his daughter’s death into a contract to buy a chair.” I feel every muscle in my body tighten.

“Leandro would sign her into the ground twice if it bought him the room.” Vidar glances at the cigar, then leaves it where it is. “You’ve seen how he operates. You know exactly what kind of man he is. He handed his own daughter to the people who wanted him dead because it served him. You burned a contract because your conscience got in the way, Aric. Your enemies are counting on exactly that. Sentiment gets men killed.”

There it is. The lesson beneath the lesson. The one he’s been teaching me since before I could hold a gun without dropping it.

“Your princess isn’t the point. She never was. She’s the vessel. The means. The alliance is the point.”

“She’s my wife.”

“She’s an asset.” He says it the way he’s said everything to me my whole life—correcting a child who keeps reaching for the wrong tool. “Don’t make the mistake of confusing the two. I raised you better than that.”

You raised me to be you.

Cold to the core. A man who could write off an innocent life as the cost of doing business.

“Say what you need to say,” I drawl. We’ve never shared the same definition of strength. We aren’t about to start now.