Page 68 of Avaritia
My jaw dropped at the frankly audacious suggestion.
“I dragged myself through hell to get back to you,” I said fiercely, poking him in the chest. “I refuse to live in a world without you in it. If you think you just get to up and die and leave me here, you are very fucking mistaken, Your Grace. You belong to me, and I’m not letting you go.”
He gave me a long look, searching my expression. He was so cocky, that sometimes it was hard to remember there were a lot of insecurities beneath all that bluster.
There was more I wanted to say. Words I wanted to give him.
But not here.
Theon had already given so much of his life, of his privacy, to the realm. I didn’t want him to have to share this too.
That moment was for us.
He nodded once, straightening to survey the Council, his gloriously haughty demeanor firmly back in place.
There we go. Theon, Duke of Lindow, was back and ready to talk some shit. Bolstered by his confidence, I spun—almost keeling over entirely—back around in his arms to face the Councilors, staring them down despite their height advantage.
“What have you to say for yourself then?” one of the Councilors asked with a resigned sigh, glancing nervously around the increasingly agitated crowd.
“Simply, that Theon is mine and I’m his. That he recognized that from the very first night together and claimed me as such, but I knew it earlier. I’m impulsive, sure, but I’ve actually dated pretty cautiously since I arrived in the shadow realm. It took me a while to feel comfortable with any of the Shades here. Ask Rigel—” Theon made a grumbling sound of discontent at my back and I barely held back an affectionate eye roll. “Why was I so comfortable with him? He looked frail, yes, but I knew he wouldn’t always. It was just… him. There was something about Theon that called to me.”
“Perhaps his peculiarities called to yours,” one of the Councilors suggested in such a mild tone that I couldn’t decide if it was meant to be an insult or not.
“Well, I know that’s true,” I conceded. “Though, it was more than that. Perhaps, it was that I felt like I was aimlessly floating around here. I wasn’t needed the way that the other ex-Hunters seemed to be needed in order to make the realm a more hospitable place for our kind, because I had no skills to value. But Theon…” I shrugged, my throat tight. “Theon needed me. And I needed him, I just didn’t realize it right away.”
The crowd’s murmurs grew louder, pointed comments being directed the way of the Councilors that they clearly didn’t appreciate. I narrowed my eyes, considering for the first time that maybe this wasn’t about us necessarily, or even about Theon’s recent actions. This was about power, and Theon’s place within the shadow realm as a whole.
“Here’s the deal,” I began, letting the thoughts flow directly from my brain to my mouth without examining them first. It was a risky strategy. “Is Theon, Duke of Lindow, a little crazy? Hell yes. Wouldn’t you be? He was raised to be one thing most of his life, paraded around in front of you to be loved and adored, then thrown away and forgotten about. I challenge you all to think about one person in your life who disregarded you, and how shitty it made you feel, then imagine that feeling on a realm-wide scale.”
I paused to catch my breath, glaring at all the uncomfortable Shades in the crowd. Good. I hoped they felt bad.
“I don’t think this trial is about me or us at all. I think it’s about him, and I think it’s about you. Because you don’t know what to do with him. You’ve made him into a villain because you need to put him somewhere in your minds—the former prince who you all fawned over, then threw away. It’s such a waste, too. Theon is brilliant. He could have been such an asset to the realm, if you weren’t so shortsighted.”
“You seemed very fond of his suggested punishments for Shades who wronged ex-Hunters,” Allerick agreed wryly. Granted, the king wasn’t super expressive at the best of times, but I relaxed infinitesimally at his calm demeanor. Surely, that meant that he wouldn’t actually let Theon be executed.
“If you’re hoping your words would indemnify the Duke of Lindow—” a Councilor began.
“I’m not done talking yet,” I snapped, gripping Theon’s forearms tightly like someone would snatch him away from my back at any moment. “Theon is the only reason I made it back.”
“Theon has been held at the Pit or under direct supervision the entire time you’ve been gone,” the Councilor shot back, a lot grumpier now. Apparently, he wasn’t a fan of my snippy attitude.
Well, I wasn’t a fan of his obnoxious one either.
I fished the chain of the now purely decorative necklace out from beneath Tallulah’s coat, the cage dangling open as I held it up for the spectators to see.
“It’s empty now, but this cage held a glass ball of the pure essence of the in-between.” Murmurs broke out among the crowd, and I raised my voice so they would be able to hear me over the noise. “Honey, tell them what it was,” I said, elbowing Theon gently.
“Caspite.”
“Right, caspite. Theon created this himself. He found a way to contain the in-between in a tiny ball, and it saved my life when I needed to escape. It operated as a portal all on its own once I smashed it.”
Theon’s arms tightened around me, his voice barely a whisper against the shell of my ear. “My clever mate. I had no idea it would do such a thing.”
I almost preened. I’d been called many things in my life, but I’d never been called clever.
“If you can’t see the potential this has, you’re being willfully ignorant,” I told the Councilors, channeling my inner duchess and looking down my nose at them. “This is the key you’ve been missing. This is the way to circumvent the Hunters Council’s restriction on portals, and allow those who wish to leave the Hunters to come here.”
The noise of the crowd was so loud that I could barely make out a few of the Council’s weak objections over it. They were grasping at straws, claiming that it would allow anyone to come to the shadow realm. That actually it was a bad thing.