Chapter 8 Trapped
The residential wing of the palace was, mercifully, less golden than the rest of it.
Oh, it was still obscene. The ceilings were still too high. The windows were still too large, letting in entirely too much sunlight. But the walls were paneled in dark wood rather than gilded marble, and the floors were covered in thick rugs of deep blue and silver. Someone had even drawn the curtains in the corridor, casting everything in a dim, soothing twilight.
I exhaled for what felt like the first time in hours.
"The throne room was a lot," I said.
Cardan did not respond.
"Your sister hates me."
Still nothing.
"Cressida hates me more. Adrian might actually like me, which is somehow worse."
Cardan stopped walking. We were in a quieter corridor now, away from the prying eyes of courtiers and servants. The only light came from a few scattered sconces, their flames dancing low.
"Your quarters," he said, gesturing to a set of double doors at the end of the hall. "They've been prepared for you."
I studied him. He was tense, shoulders rigid, jaw tight, that little muscle beneath his eye twitching again. He looked, I realized, exhausted. Not just physically. Something deeper.
"Are you going to come in?" I asked.
"Excuse me?"
"Come in. Sit down. Talk to me like a person instead of a political liability." I pushed open the doors. "Unless you're afraid to be alone with the wicked Princess of Hel?"
His eyes flashed. "I am not afraid of you."
"Then prove it."
I walked inside without waiting for his response.
\---
The quarters were, predictably, magnificent.
A sitting room opened into a bedroom beyond, both decorated in shades of deep blue and silver that were clearly meant to be a concession to my Hel-born sensibilities. The furniture was dark wood. The bed was enormous. The windows, thank the shadows, were hung with heavy curtains that blocked most of the hateful sunlight.
Ash immediately launched himself from my shoulder and claimed the largest cushion, curling into a spiky ball of contentment.
I turned to find Cardan standing in the doorway, looking profoundly uncomfortable.
"Sit," I said.
"I prefer to stand."
"Sit anyway."
He sat.
I took the chair across from him, crossing my legs and folding my hands in my lap. The posture of a princess. The patience of a predator.
"Eighteen years," I said. "No visits. No letters. Nothing but flowers."
"Yes."
"Why?"
He looked at me. Really looked at me, for the first time since I had arrived. His striking eyes were sharp and tired.
"Because I was trying to break the Oath."
I had known this, his letter had said as much, but hearing it aloud was different. Hearing it in his voice, with his face inches from mine, made it real in a way ink on paper could never be.
"Tell me," I said.
He leaned back in his chair. For a moment, he said nothing. Then he began to speak.
"I was only eight years old when the treaty was signed. Eight years old, and my father told me I would marry a girl I had never met from a realm I was unfamiliar with. He told me it was my duty. My honor. My sacrifice for the good of the kingdom." His voice was flat, reciting facts rather than feelings. "I believed him. At first."
"What changed?"
"I grew up." He met my eyes. "I started asking questions. Why Hel? Why you? Why an Oath so binding that breaking it would destroy both our realms? My father refused to answer. My tutors refused to answer. The scholars I consulted found nothing, no loopholes, no exceptions, no way out. The Oath of the Sundered Gate is absolute. It was designed to be inescapable."
"Interesting." I mused.
"Your father and mine. The two kings who hated each other more than they loved their own children." His smile was bitter. "They wanted to ensure we could never escape each other, that we could never break the truce and cause another war. Even if we wanted to. Even if we tried."
I absorbed this. It matched what I knew, what my father had told me before he died, what Eris had pieced together from the palace archives.
"And the flowers?" I asked.
His expression flickered. "What?"
"The flowers. Every year. Nightshade Lilies. Beautiful and poisonous." I leaned forward. "Why send flowers to a bride you were trying to escape?"
He was quiet for a long moment.
"Because I couldn't send nothing," he said finally. "Because every year, the court expected a gesture. A token. Something to prove I hadn't forgotten you existed." He held my gaze. "And because part of me hoped you would hate them. Hate me. Find a way to break the Oath yourself."
I stared at him.
"You wanted me to hate you."
"It would have been easier."
"Easier for whom?"
"For both of us."
I laughed. It was not a kind laugh, it was the laugh of someone who had spent eighteen years being an afterthought and was only now realizing the full shape of the joke.
"You ignored me," I said. "You left me in the dark, waiting, wondering, hoping you would come. And all that time, you were hoping I would hate you enough to fix the problem you couldn't solve?"
"I didn't say it was noble."
"It's pathetic."
"Yes."
The admission hung between us. I studied him, this golden king, this beautiful, exhausted male who had spent years trying to escape me and failed every single time.
"I tried too," I said quietly. "After my father died. Eris and I spent months in the archives. We consulted witches, oracles, ancient beings so old they remember the signing of the Oath." I shook my head. "There is no loophole. No escape clause. No way out that doesn't doom both our realms."
"So we are trapped."
"We are trapped."
The silence that followed was not comfortable. But it was honest.
"I don't want this," Cardan said. "I don't want a wife I didn't choose. I don't want a marriage built on coercion and political necessity."
"Neither do I."
"Then we agree."
"We agree on the problem." I stood, moving toward the window. "What we don't agree on is what comes next."
Through the heavy curtains, I could see a sliver of the world outside, the manicured gardens, the golden fountains, the distant walls that separated the palace from the city beyond. Somewhere out there, people were living their lives. Falling in love. Making choices.
I had never been given a choice. Neither had he.
"Perhaps," I said slowly, "we should stop trying to break the Oath."
I heard him rise from his chair. "What?"
"Perhaps we should focus on surviving it instead." I turned back to face him. "We are bound, you and I. That is not going to change. But we can decide what kind of bound we are."
His silver eyes searched my face. "What are you proposing?"
"I'm proposing a truce." I crossed my arms. "No more scheming behind each other's backs. No more hoping the other will disappear. We are stuck in this cage together. We can either tear each other apart, or we can learn to coexist."
"A truce."
"A truce."