Forbidden Honor (Dragon Royals #1)(70)

“But I hope you won’t disappoint your stepmother again, that you’re ready to take your responsibilities in the family seriously.”

“What responsibilities would those be?”

“Your stepmother has provided so much for you. Looked after you like a mother, loved you as her own.”

I snorted.

Alis went from red to purple-ish with rage.

But Henrick only smiled more broadly. “You will show us both the appropriate respect. If you don’t, you’ll be punished.”

“Really? That seems extremely unlikely.” I was already in a bit of a murderous funk. If my stepfather pushed me, I might have to ask Calla to help me hide a body. “Why in the world would I let you punish me? I’m a grown woman.”

He might try to make me quit my job, make me dependent on him for money, forbid me to leave the house. But my eyes couldn’t help being drawn to the ridiculous contraption against the wall, its leather bonds hanging open like an invitation.

“You are,” he agreed. “But Hanna is not. Hanna remains under your mother’s guardianship.”

The room went sideways. He’d use Hanna to control me.

He smiled as if he could see my reaction and it thrilled him. I quickly schooled my face to look as if I didn’t care about anything. The less I seemed to care about Hanna, the safer she probably was in this house.

I had to get her away from Alis and Henrick while keeping her inheritance intact.

“I see,” I said icily. “I’m not sure how well that would work for you.”

“We can see right now,” he suggested.

“That’s all right. I’d hate to distract from your engagement.”

He gave me a condescending smile that made me want to transform into a dragon and snap off his head, before he said, “So I thought.”

I went out to their stupid party and smiled as they held hands and announced their engagement. I clapped for them as hard as anyone, and I didn’t meet my sister’s eyes when she made faces behind their backs. I didn’t want to risk her getting in trouble with them.

Things kept changing, and they kept changing in new and horrible ways, and I didn’t know how to stop the rapid spinning from disaster to disaster.

When the announcements were over, I’d seen my sister off to her bed upstairs, although the music of the party kept leaking through the door into her dark room. She’d buried her face in my shoulder and sobbed and I’d wrapped my arms around her.

I didn’t understand the intensity of her feelings. I’d never understood why Father married Alis in the first place, and so her marrying someone else felt like nothing to me, except for worrying about the threat Henrick posed to Hanna. But I patted my sister’s back and murmured comforting words in her ear. She was entitled to her feelings even if I didn’t understand them.

When her hitching sobs finally dropped into a snoring sleep, I smoothed my dress, squared my shoulders, and came back down the stairs.

Talisyn watched me from across the party. I smiled as if I were just so happy for my stepmother. And I didn’t think anyone would be able to read my true feelings. After all, except for my bizarre tendency to blurt out what I was thinking when I was around dragon shifters, I’d spent my life learning to be guarded. If there’s anything a well-off girl learns, it’s to keep her mouth shut.

Talisyn made his way across the party. A few girls stopped him, smiling up at him, their eyes shining as they looked at him. The first time someone stopped him, he made a quick remark and smiled at them, touched a shoulder, and moved on.

When the next girl blocked him, he gently pushed her aside without even stopping. His gaze was fixed on me. He moved across the room toward me as if he were relentless, unstoppable.

It gave me a strange shivery feeling through my stomach. I turned and fled into the garden. I couldn’t stand the way he was looking at me with so much concern when I knew what he’d just done to Lucien. And maybe I shouldn’t take their revenge against Lucien personally. Lucien had wronged them somehow. But I couldn’t help feeling as if Tal had betrayed me.

I needed time, time to process what had happened. But Talisyn wasn’t giving me time. I made my way out into the garden, slipping amongst the blooming night flowers. My stepmother had ordered a large and elaborate night garden planted. It was beautiful. She never came out here. It wasn’t like when my mother had planted so much of the garden herself. I saw my mother normally everywhere when I was in the day garden.

Maybe that was why I so often fled to the night garden. Maybe I would have disappointed my real mother, my father, the ones who had chosen me when I was nine. I was trying my best, but it never seemed to be good enough. I was trying to protect Hanna, but that charge, the most important task in all my life, slipped steadily through my fingers. I wasn’t sure I could protect her from Alis and Henrick.

Talisyn spoke, his voice quiet behind me. “Is everything all right?”

I exhaled a long shaky breath. Given the way we’d danced earlier, I knew I would sound crazy, but that didn’t stop me from blurting out the truth. “I don’t want to talk to you right now.”



“All right.” His warm, commanding presence was closer now, at my elbow, and my heart leapt traitorously in my chest. “We don’t have to talk. But I’ll sit here with you, if you want.”