Athanor answered with a flat face, the smallest grin barely surfacing on it. "And what if I was considering it?"
Lysia shot upright. "WHAT?"
"Why wouldn't I?" he said. "It was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. That deal would have turned my treasury vault into a never-ending ocean, the very same vault a certain someone has been busy draining dry."
He went on, entirely unbothered. "Every problem and every future threat lurking around my duchy would have dissolved with a single kiss on her lips in front of a hall full of guests. My conflict along the southern borders. The trade routes. I could have forced any number of commissions in my favor. And best of all, the rest of the dukes and duchesses currently plotting behind my back would have had no choice but to bow."
"You—" Lysia hissed.
But Athanor kept right on going. "And beyond the sheer profit of it, Hestia is breathtakingly beautiful as well. Or so the entire kingdom insists. So I see no loss anywhere in the arrangement."
