“By the way,” the Queen said to Ronan as he tugged up his pants, “I've arranged a marriage for you.”

Her words took a moment to settle in.

He turned to her, confusion in his tone when he asked, “What?”

“I've found a wife for you. The wedding will be in a week's time.”

Maeve lay naked across the bed, sated, her pale skin a sharp contrast to the red silk sheets. She was beautiful and always had been. She looked to Ronan like a delicate porcelain doll. But it was only a deception.

Instead of responding to her he laced up his pants in silence, focusing his gaze on the cold marble of her bedroom floor. He could ask her questions regarding his sudden upcoming union, but he found asking questions to which he could already guess the answers tedious. She needed him to wed in order to take advantage of someone. Her dominion over his actions would be shared with any wife he took. The fact that she seemed so nonchalant about handing him off to another woman did sting, but only for a moment. The two of them had never loved one another at the same time, and by now those dalliances of infatuation were long over. Maeve used him for sex and law enforcement only, plain and simple.

He glanced at her again after pulling his tunic over his head. She looked smug, her head propped up on her hand, her dark hair spilling across the pillows. “Who is it?”

“Your betrothed?” asked the Queen.

He nodded.

“Elizabeth Cavanagh. Spawn of Fianna. Hopefully she's nothing like her leech of a mother, for your sake.”

Ronan clipped his weapons belt around his waist, trying to put a face to the name he'd been given. A girl came to mind, no more than twelve or thirteen. Running the halls of the Unseelie palace with the servants' children, causing mischief. That was years ago now. He supposed she'd probably grown up.

“I expect you to obtain her for the wedding, of course,” Maeve went on.

He raised an eyebrow at her and sat down at the end of the bed. “Why doesn't she live here? She's a courtier, is she not?”

“She and her mother are estranged or something. You'll have to talk to the Steward of the Gate.”

He nodded, mulling that over. If she was Fianna's daughter then Rose, the Steward, would be her aunt. It wouldn't be hard to seek her out. “And once she is my wife, I can have sex with her?” The question was more of a jab at Maeve than anything else. Sex wasn't something usually at the forefront of Ronan's mind.

The Queen's lips thinned. “You can do what you want as long as she does what I want.”

Ronan fought the urge to snort. For just a brief moment he fervently wished he could make Maeve eat those words.