Reject me twice (Kira and Theron) novel Chapter 34

It couldn’t last. I’d known that even as I’d whispered it to myself in the dark, curled against Malik’s chest, breathing in the impossible safety of him.

The court had its own plans for its queen, and they arrived barely a week later with ceremony and smiles and the unmistakable scent of a trap dressed in silk.

Lord Ashworth rose from his seat with that particular smile of his, the one that pretended to be paternal while calculating exactly how much condescension he could layer into a single expression…

They came bearing gifts. That was how Lord Ashworth framed it when he rose from his seat with that particular smile of his.

He announced that representatives from the allied territories had traveled a great distance to honor the twin monarchs with tokens of goodwill and partnership, and that surely the Silver Queen and the Dark King would receive them with the graciousness befitting their station.

I glanced at Damon. Through the bond, I felt the sharp flicker of his irritation, controlled and buried before it could reach his face.

He gave me the barest nod. We’d learned this much in the weeks since taking the thrones—some battles weren’t worth fighting in public.

The delegation filed in with ceremonial precision. Six emissaries from six different territories, each accompanied by attendants carrying velvet-wrapped parcels that they arranged on the council table with the reverence usually reserved for sacred relics.

When the wrappings came away, the gifts revealed themselves for what they truly were.

Portraits. Dozens of them, painted on fine canvas and framed in silver and gold, each one depicting a face I’d never seen attached to a name I’d never heard.

Men, mostly—young lords with sharp jawlines and carefully arranged hair and eyes that stared out from the canvas with the polished emptiness of people who’d been groomed since birth to look exactly what they were—political currency.

“The allied houses wish to express their commitment to the new era of twin rule,”

Lord Ashworth continued, his voice carrying the oiled smoothness of a man who’d rehearsed this moment, “by offering their finest sons and daughters as potential consorts for Your Majesties. A proper match strengthens alliances, secures borders, and demonstrates to the realm that the Silver Queen looks toward the future with wisdom and purpose.”

The emphasis on Silver Queen was deliberate. They were starting with me—the easier target, the one whose position was newer, whose authority they still considered provisional.

The servant girl who’d stumbled onto a throne and hadn’t yet proven she could hold it.

I looked at the portraits spread across the table like a merchant’s wares. Lord Cassius Vane of the Northern Reaches—handsome in a carved, deliberate way, with pale eyes that reminded me of frozen lakes.

Duke Aldric Thornecrest, whose family controlled the eastern trade routes—all faces of strangers.

Men who knew nothing about me except my title and my bloodline, who saw the crown and the throne and the political advantage of warming a queen’s bed, and who would smile and bow and say all the right things while calculating exactly what my body and my power were worth to their families.

I thought of Malik. His warmth against my back in the firelight. The rough honesty of his voice when he’d told me about growing up omega, offering his wounds without expecting anything in return except understanding.

The way he looked at me—not at the crown or the markings or the silver magic that still sometimes frightened me—but at me, as if I were the only thing in any room worth seeing.

My fingers curled beneath the table, nails pressing into my palms.

He echoed my deflection like a mirror, and together we presented a united front of gracious postponement that gave the delegation nothing to work with.

The emissaries exchanged glances. Ashworth’s composure held, but I could see the calculations shifting behind his eyes—they’d expected at least one of us to bend, and our matched resistance was an equation he’d need to recalibrate.

The portraits remained on the table after the session ended, left there deliberately so we’d have to walk past them every time we entered the chamber.

A reminder. A pressure. A slow, patient squeeze designed to make yielding feel like relief rather than surrender.

I paused at the door and looked back at them—all those painted faces staring up at the ceiling with their empty, expectant eyes, waiting to be chosen like prizes at a market stall. My stomach turned with a revulsion so visceral I could taste it.

Somewhere in this palace, Malik was running drills with the guard or reviewing security reports or doing any of the hundred quiet, essential tasks he performed each day without recognition or reward.

And tonight, when the corridors emptied and the court’s eyes turned elsewhere, he would come to my chambers and hold me like I was precious, and I would breathe him in and remember that I was more than a crown to be bartered.

I left the portraits where they lay and walked out without looking back. But the word I’d given the council echoed in my skull with every step—consider.

A word designed to buy time. And time, in a court full of wolves who smelled hesitation the way predators smelled blood, was a currency that ran out faster than anyone ever expected.