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“No. I’m a fucking body.”

“You are the only daughter of the Laveau bloodline,” he said firmly. “Your brothers carry the name forward in power. You carry it forward in permanence.”

The way he said it told me this conversation had happened without me plenty of times. They had planned my future while I was somewhere living a life I thought belonged to me.

“You bred me for this.” My voice shook no matter how hard I tried to control it. “You let me grow up thinking I had choices. Y’all are more full of shit than I already thought.”

“That’s enough,” my grandfather snapped.

“No, it’s not. You don’t get to package this shit like it’s noble.”

“It is noble. Do you think the Delacroix son has a choice? Do you think their heir asked to inherit blood? This is not a fairy tale, Azaria. Empires do not survive on feelings.”

“What happens if I refuse?”

Nobody answered right away.

That told me enough.

My father finally spoke. “You won’t.”

“Oh, I will.”

“If you refuse, you’re not only refusing a man. You’re destabilizing two networks. You would be inviting war back into neighborhoods that have remained quiet because negotiations are already in place.”

“So now you’re threatening me with bodies?”

“I’m telling you the truth.”

My hands started shaking, and I hated knowing everybody in that room could see it.

“What exactly does marrying a Delacroix give you?”

“Access,” my uncle answered. “Port control, European legitimacy, federal insulation, and a global alliance that makes it very expensive for anyone to challenge us.”

“What does it give them?”

“A foothold in American territory without resistance,” my grandfather said. “They gain protection here. We gain expansion there.”

I laughed, but there wasn’t anything funny about what I had been told.

My father finally cut through the back and forth.

“Enough. You have to marry, and it’s final. You will go to Marseille in a week and meet him formally.”

“I’m not marrying anybody.”

“This is bigger than you.”

That did it.

I headed for the door before my emotions betrayed me any more than they already had. I refused to let those men watch me cry or see how scared I really was. The worst part was that somewhere underneath all my anger, I understood how serious they were, and that scared me more than anything they had said in that room.

I barely made it three steps outside before Zay caught me.

“Move.”

He stayed in front of me.