“Cassy,” she hissed through clenched teeth. He needed to stop calling her that. And considering the fact that he’d killed his own mother, she had no interest in duplicating the woman’s “luck.”
She crumpled the note and threw it into the fireplace as her cheeks burned with anger. Where was her support? Where were the troops to help her with this mission? She’d never felt so alone. Every single person in her life had abandoned her, even her parents and her closest friends. Why wasn’t anyone trying to find her—and where was Kane when she needed him?
Kane.
An imaginary band squeezed her chest. Just when she thought she couldn’t miss him more, she pictured his face and lost another piece of her soul. She hadn’t meant to blame him for staying away. That was what she’d wanted, for him to disappear and be safe. But she would give anything to have him with her, to feel his long fingers in her hair and to listen to the low murmur of his voice in her ear.
If he were here, this time she wouldn’t pull away or make him stop. She would give him what he’d always wanted, what she’d secretly wanted him to have: her whole heart, all in. She wouldn’t care about political marriages or royal bloodlines. She would be brave and let herself love him.
But it was too late; she was out of time.
Tears blurred her vision as she drifted into the washroom. If Kane could see her now, he would tell her to stop brooding and rescue herself, then add a teasing insult to get a rise out of her. She would yell at him for some silly reason or another, and then they would bicker until one of them kissed the other one silent. She couldn’t believe those days were gone.
She was still smiling through her tears when she glanced at the sink basin and noticed something she’d overlooked before. There beside the soap rested a shiny new laser blade, much like the one she’d left on the Banshee, the one Kane was probably using right now.
A possibility occurred to her.
The idea seemed far-fetched at first, but by gradual degrees it bloomed into a plan, and in the span of a few minutes she knew what she had to do.
“Thank you, Kane,” she whispered to herself.
Then she put him out of her mind and set to work.
“Do you swear to honor His Royal Colonial Highness, Marius Edwin Durango, in your thoughts, words, and deeds?” the cleric asked Cassia through a long gray beard that puffed at the lips when he spoke.
“Yes.” She held her hand, palm up, toward the man. “I swear it.”
He pricked her index finger with a ceremonial knife and squeezed the wound until a fat droplet of blood rose to the surface. He guided her finger to a glass disk about the size of a walnut, etched with interlocking swirls, half of which already ran red with Marius’s blood. With one touch of her finger, the glass absorbed her life force and sent it rushing through the empty channels, where it completed the pattern and marked the joining of two families.
It was official. They were wed.
In a rare display of decorum, Marius cupped her chin and tipped her face toward his for a kiss. Cassia closed her eyes and held her breath. She felt a brush of contact at her lips, warm and soft, but beneath it lurked a wicked smile, one that promised he would make her pay once they left the sanctuary of the temple.
From behind, a row of girls sighed dreamily. They knelt on the floor, seeing only what they wanted to see—a blindingly gorgeous young king offering a second chance to the princess who had jilted him. None of them knew what awaited her later in his chambers. None of them knew what their king was capable of.
But she knew.
So she kept her head down during the wedding feast, lifting her gaze and her cup only when a toast called for it. She didn’t bother looking for a friendly face in the banquet hall. She had no friends here. While the court laughed and chattered among themselves, she sat obediently by her husband’s side until the sun’s last rays sliced through the windows and announced it was time to go wait in his suite. Then she stood and exited the room to the sound of whistles, leaving her dignity somewhere behind.